This is more of an off-the-cuff post, inspired by this blog post right here. Now, I don't know from Braddock, but it did get my mind-wheels turning about the portrayal of women in comics.
It's not that I have a huge problem with female leads in comic books being incredibly attractive, because for the most part, the male leads are, too. After all, comics are entertainment like anything else, and visual entertainment media star beautiful people. Sure, you got you Seth Rogan's, but for every one of him there's a dozen Brad Pitt's. So I'm not going to get too riled up over "cheesecake" art, because that's part of the business. Even characters like Spider-Man and Wolverine, who should be creepy and thuggish, respectively, are usually portrayed as more or less studly dudes. So I'm not going to get particularly riled up over "cheesecake" art, because more often than not, it's just part of the business.
But I do draw a line between "cheesecake" art and "sexually exploitative" art. The cover in the linked blog for Psylocke issue two is a perfect example. The very laws of human anatomy are distorted to force her t and her a into the shot at the same time. This is grotesque in many senses of the word. Is this really necessary?
This also tends to fall in line with another common offense of the superhero genre: completely useless "sexy" costumes. I'm going to ignore how every female costume seems to have high heels for the moment, or I'll be here all night. But when functionality gives way to sensuality, we have a clear problem. The Batman family women are a good example of how to do female costumes right. All of his female proteges essentially wear an outfit similar to Batman, Robin, or Nightwing. Similarly, Spider-Man's various female counterparts wear the same type of skin-tight outfit he does, for the same reasons: it's useful for characters who rely on speed and agility.
But Psylocke, as our poster girl for the moment, is a ninja. You know who else are ninja? The Hand. And the Hand cover themselves from head to toe. It's not only good for stealth, it conceals their identity, and allows them to hide any number of weapons on their person. I don't even want to know where Psylocke would have to hide a shurikin. (And yes, all of these complaints go just as much for Elektra.)
So, combining the completely useless costumes that forgo practicality for sex appeal, and artwork ready and able to ignore good workmanship for T&A shots, we have some shamefully exploitative material. And frankly, this taints the entire hobby. Like it or not, (and I really don't, but what can you do?) most non-comic readers consider comics a "genre" rather than a format, and guess which genre they associate it with? I don't know about you, but I don't appreciate being thought of as a creepy deviant because of my fandom.
And beyond social perceptions, this type of work even affects our own insular community. I've got a (female) friend who swears by Witchblade. She freaking loves it. But I've been hesitant to give it a chance, because it's one of the most famous examples of exactly what I'm talking about. Sarah! Put on some pants!
So this is a plea to all current and aspiring comic artists: sexually exploitative material isn't edgy or even sexy. It's creepy, weird, and degrading for both the subjects and the readers. Just say no.
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I was there in the comments flame war too; okay, it was a very one-sided flame war, with one douche-bag calling the columnist a " Feminazi ", and everyone else calling him on his extremely narrow view of gender politics.
ReplyDeleteStill, I agree that there's a key distinction between " good " sexual art and exploitative art. To use an example from my own work, the image I drew for the front page of my online comic site was meant to portray the female protagonist in a more attractive light than usual ( hey, it's meant to get attention ), but I tried to keep it tasteful and not have her do anything out-of-character or undignified.
That's the province of the Greg Lands of the comic world, who think copy-pasting an O-face is good enough.
Yep.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as a female weightlifter who is *also* a comics fan, I'd like to see some of the female characters who are supposed to be super-strong (and whose strength isn't of supernatural origin, like Buffy's) or good at boxing/martial arts who looked the part a bit more. Bigger, more visible muscles, broader shoulders, flatter chests, stockier builds --- not every character; after all, not every male character looks like the Hulk or Strong Guy --- but right now it seems like every female character gets the exact same body, blown up or scaled down according to how tall she is.
I didn't realize you had posted about this over here - so forgive me for arriving late in the game. Thank you, both for this insightful post and for your addition to the dialogue on CSBG - I'm still a newbie and so the personal attacks and vitriol of a few people in the comments was a little hard to take but overall I was really pleased with the level of dialogue and to see so many feminist leaning fans on a site as big and mainstream as CBR - I think that speaks to a change we're seeing happen.
ReplyDeleteSo thanks for all your comments - and I hope you keep reading She Has No Head! I don't plan for every column to be quite that crazy exciting, but I do want to talk about important stuff over there and so I expect that is often going to upset people and I think you've got a great opinion that should be shared - especially when you agree with me! :)
Kelly
I never really considered myself a "feminist", or feminist-leaning, until I started law school this past fall, and was told that's apparently what I was. Huh. I was just trying to inject some common sense into various gender-oriented debates, but there you are.
ReplyDeleteEither way, you only like me now because you haven't posted anything I've disagreed with yet. =P