Tag Archives: charts

April 3, 2013 · 10:22 pm

If women don’t talk about men all the time, what do we talk about?

Remember the Bechdel Test? It’s that set of three rules that helps determine the presence of women in TV and movies? Rule 3 stipulates that two women must discuss something other than a man. Back when I wrote that overview, some hilarious internet denizen wrote back, “but women do mostly talk about men…” Hardee har har. Bro, I think you’ve been watching a little too much SATC.

Though his joke was clearly stupid, it did make me wonder how much of what I discuss with my girlfriends has to do with dating, men, sex, etc. We like data and graphs around here, so we did a little experiment. My best friend and I gchat much of the day most days. Although our gchats are in no way a comprehensive view of communication (lacking face-to-face, phone, text, and email), there’s no reason to think they aren’t a reasonable proxy for our typical patterns of communication.

I went through and tagged two weeks worth of gchats with their subject matter and the amount of time devoted to each item. Then, I graphed that as a ratio of the whole. Bottom line: Gentlemen, we hardly talked about you at all. 

Screenshot_4_3_13_4_44_PM

Related Post: What are the most common names of men I’ve dated?

Related Post: Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman

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July 1, 2012 · 2:15 pm

Sunday Scraps 64

1. WEIGHT: Super stellar essay from my recent Jezebel favorite, Lindy West, on the intricacies of talking to pre-teens about fitness, nutrition, weight, and body image.

2. ART: Ahhh, this short comic by Chelsea Martin, “Heavy-handed Acne”  is just so beautiful and poignant and I love it (via The Rumpus).

3. PRIDE: Buzzfeed collected 32 images from Pride that will probably make you cry… in the good way.

4. WORDS: Basic but superbly addictive word game from Shy Gypsy. Make word associations across the map to keep the game branching out (i.e. Cow and Horse share the word Cowboy).

5. TECH: Fabulous, fascinating interview with Genevieve Bell, the director of interaction and experience research at Intel,  about the contents of our cars and the life cycle of technology (Slate).

6. CAREER: The unbeatable Jessica Hagy (of This Is Indexed) has contributed a series of her trademark line graphs, on the subject of finding a career path, to Forbes.

Related Post: Sunday 63 (Cabrini-Green, Merkel vs. Rae Jepsen, Anne Friedman, school lunches)

Related Post: Sunday 62 (Is this racist? Authors in bikinis, Sandberg, grammar points)

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May 8, 2012 · 5:00 pm

Trending Up

Two years in a row more than half of Americans have reported being in favor of same-sex marriage. That is a trend, and I shall celebrate it as such: Here’s how it breaks down:

From Gallup.com, 5/8/12

This poll didn’t show the split by age, and that’s what I’m interested in. From my vantage point as a 24-year-old who has exclusively lived in Boston and Chicago, the rate of progress is excruciatingly slow. But, in the scope of American history, much less human history, the pace of public opinion is moving at warp speed.

I recently finished Travels in a Gay Nation, an excellent collection of essays and interviews from LGBTQ celebs like David Sedaris, George Takei and Barney Frank, plus pieces about average folks and their experiences growing up queer. Every piece by someone over 40 shared an awe and gratitude at the rate of change we’ve seen in the last ten years. David Sedaris wrote about the mindblowing joy of meeting a teenaged gay couple at a reading. They attended his event together, holding hands.

To me, holding hands is no big thing compared to marriage rights or legal protection, but to a gay man who came of age in the 80s, it’s a world of improvement.

Obviously, such luxuries are not afforded everywhere. Spend a few minutes on this chart from The Guardian:

Click for interactive exploration (from The Guardian)

Hover over each state to see specific rights and limitations for marriage, hospital visits, adoption, employment, housing, hate crimes and schools. You can see big trends by region (though mad props to Iowa, right?) plus really fascinating, minor differences in policy. For example, Massachusetts protects sexual orientation in schools, but not gender identity.

Related Post: Remember when my brother didn’t know gay people couldn’t get married?

Related Post: I don’t like places that discriminate against my friends.

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December 8, 2011 · 8:05 pm

Truth

Have you ever seen a truer diagram?

From Jessica Hagy at This is Indexed. She’s so smart. She has a book, too, and I’m trying to figure out who I can buy it for. Any takers?

One of my holiday goals this year is to buy exclusively from individuals or small businesses. I’m avoiding Amazon/Target/Kmart/Walmart/B&N as long as possible. The rest of the year, I have to be hyper-aware of cost, which is why the discount chains serve me so well. But during Christmas, if only for a few weeks, I’d rather spend a few extra dollars and support my neighbors than get FREE SUPER TRIPLE AWESOME SHIPPING MEMBERSHIP SAVINGS from a chain. I thought I might have to make an exception for an audiobook I wanted to order, since my local book store doesn’t carry audiobooks, but they ordered it for me!

Related Post: The This is Indexed guide to bad movies.

Related Post: The This is Indexed guide to Hollywood starlets and eating habits.

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November 14, 2011 · 3:29 pm

The Sexperience 1000 (I promise I did not come up with that name)

In sex ed in 11th grade, we played that get-to-know-you game with a line of tape on the floor and categorical allegiances called by the teacher. She’d say “I’m the oldest child,” and if you fit the statement, you’d cross the line and then we’d collectively discuss the category. The point of the game is to watch as people move back and forth across the line and realize that everyone truly is a beautiful snowflake. Or something. Not entirely sure. It got super weird for me around religion, but that’s a story for another time.

The point is, this interactive series of charts called The Sexperience 1000 is basically like that game, except digital and way cooler because it wasn’t restrained by highschool guidelines of propriety. It’s a survey of 1,000 UK residents, and as you move through the questions, the individual respondents appear to march in and out of circles. Ladies are pink, gentleman are blue, and you can do all sorts of fun filters by age, sexual orientation, etc. For example:

Click to enlarge

Totally fascinating, right? Look at all the dudes self-conscious about pleasing their partners? And not surprisingly, the “shape of my body” is mostly pink. I’m kind of thrilled that such a huge chunk of respondents say they aren’t self-conscious about anything. Either they’re lying, or they should be explaining their tricks to the rest of us.

Here’s another one, but you really should go check it out and explore at your own pace:

Click to enlarge

Related Post: Narrow-minded garbage like this piece from The Atlantic try to pretend that a “normal” sex life really exists, and that it sounds boring as hell.

Related Post: Why I don’t think that sex-negative politicians deserve to have their sexual histories exposed.

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August 5, 2011 · 12:34 pm

Flowchart on The Frisky!

Last week I surveyed a gazillion people about thoughts on first-date sex. Responses ranged from “Ew, just….ew” to “why the hell not?” I’ll be writing about this for the Good Men Project next week, but while you wait with bated breath, I consolidated some of the answers into a little light-hearted decision-making flowchart. The Frisky has kindly posted it for your enjoyment:

Related Post: Last time I was on The Frisky, talking about orgasms… or not having them.

Related Post: Safe sex is important! NSFW animated PSA in which genitals dance.

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July 31, 2011 · 2:17 pm

Sunday Scraps 21

1. JOY: I don’t know who can avoid sniffling at this amazing Buzzfeed gallery of pictures of happy gay couples moments before or moments after they tie the legal knot in New York.

2. TERRORISM: Glenn Greenwald’s Salon essay about the pervasive assumptions about terrorism and Islam (even by the NYT) is really interesting in the wake of the attacks in Oslo.

3. GENDER: I fell a little bit in love with this Good Men Project essay by Brian Gresko about being an occasionally cross-dressing straight man and about how his bouts of beautification helped him meet his wife.

4. MEDIA: NYMag recaps the paywall decision of the New York Times. Apparently, it’s working. Who knew people would still pay for content?

5. GEEK: Flowtown makes awesome graphics, like this one about the evolution of “geeks.” Tech geeks, video geeks, music geeks, gadget geeks…. What kind are you?

6. FNL: Lorrie Moore has discovered a secret: writers love Friday Night Lights. She writes about all the reasons why for the New York Review of Books.

Related Post: Extraordinary playhouses, Ambien in Dubai, blood spatter analysis = Last Sunday.

Related Post: DSav, Westboro Baptist, Doc JFK and We Are Superstars = Two Sundays Ago.

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July 5, 2011 · 1:56 pm

Jennifer Egan Makes Me Do Crazy Things

I recently finished Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll recall that Egan has been mentioned once on this blog already. In the wake of her win, she crapped on a couple of well-known “chick lit” authors, berating them for doing a disservice to literature penned by women. It was a little harsh.

Well, I went and read her book, and though I may not agree with her take on the lady literary landscape, daaaaaamn can that woman write. Her novel is a series of cartwheeling, somersaulting stories that cross paths and link up in more ways than you can count. It’s a chessboard of a book, but the payoff is well worth the intricate mind games required to keep up. As for my favorite chapter, it’s a toss-up between the chapter told in Powerpoint slides and the chapter about a PR spin doctor assigned to change the image of a dictator.

This is a book that will make you do crazy things. I drew out a map of all the characters and their connections, for example:

See? Crazy shit.

[UPDATE: I sent this diagram to Jennifer Egan on a whim. If I were an author, I would love to see anything creative that readers did in response to my work. She wrote back a SUPER sweet note,

Boy, do I love this.  Thanks for engaging so deeply with GOON SQUAD;I'm honored.  It's especially nice that you did so, given that you were offended by my thoughtless remark to the WSJ.  I wonder if you've encountered one of my public statements of regret over that comment?  In case not, I enclose a link to the first (of several) here:
klk

Related Post: A nifty captialistic way that new generations will learn to love Roald Dahl.

Related Post: Things to do with books besides read them….

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April 21, 2011 · 2:42 pm

“Curvy”/”Skinny”: Sex Drive vs. Confidence

Whether you’re into online dating or not, the OKCupid Blog OkTrends should be on everybody’s must-read list. OkTrends makes up for its sparse posting schedule with amazing content analyzing the messages, preferences, habits and opinions of 1,000,000+ users. Among the latest charts to come from this goldmine of human behavior:

First, clarifying our terms: Green represents women who self-identify as “skinny” (note: this is distinctive from “thin,” a different self-reported category), and yellow is the self-identified “curvy” group (distinct from “a little extra” or “full-figured”). Yellow is a bigger dot to reflect the larger pool of women.

This graph correlates sex-drive and self-confidence across time for these two groups of women:

  • At 18: Skinny women have slightly above average self-confidence, but slightly below average sex drive, while curvy women are exactly the reverse, slightly low self-esteem, slightly high sex drive.
  • At 30: Both groups are reasonably self-confident, but the sex-drive of the curvy women is twice as high.
  • At 40: Curvy women are more confident with higher sex drives, a stasis that remains until both groups’ sex drives tank by 60.

Does this mean that curvy women are better in bed or like sex more? No. As OkTrends points out, “Curvy, as a word, has the strongest sensual overtones of all our self-descriptions. So we’re getting a little insight into the real-world implications of a label.” So basically, it comes down to choosing your label. Women who pick “curvy” among the myriad of similar labels will likely also have above-average sex drives. We’ve got correlation but not causation.

Here’s my theory: There’s evidence that links self-esteem and body confidence to better/more satisfying sex. This makes intuitive sense to me, fewer body hang-ups = willingness to look silly = open to experimentation  = higher likelihood of enjoyment = wanting to do it more. I think the selection of “curvy” over the other label choices and higher sex drive are both consequences of the a third variable… basic body confidence.

Related Post: More linguistic play around the “plus size” demographic. Thanks Tyra!

Related Post: See, body confidence is hot as hell!

Related Post: More thoughts on online dating. Who pays? And does it matter? (yes)

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February 10, 2011 · 4:26 pm

Onslaught

I’ve been thinking a lot about media touch points. I’ve seen a zillion charts that map our general media consumption, our engagement with our phones/tvs/computers etc, but I wanted something a little more personalized. In other words, at what parts of my day can advertisers reach me, and through what vehicles? Where do I invite advertising in, where am I confronted by it against my wishes, and where can I avoid it altogether? I made a little chart:

Yikes. What did I learn from this little exercise? I should do more yoga.

Related Post: Another homemade chart… how to buy toys for girl without puking up glitter.

Related Post: the Rosie twist on a thisisindexed movie graph

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