Continuing the discussion from Can you figure out what’s wrong with this picture of a half-naked 16 year-old girl with breast implants the size of her head?:
Exposed shoulder is considered “half naked” on Boing Boing? SWEET MERCY!
Gotta say, this is the least funny try at this “joke” yet.
Yes, we know some guys can’t tell the difference between:
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An anatomically unlikely underage girl drawn in painted-on spandex, with breast implants, in a product intended for children.
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Any picture of an adult woman with a noticeable bosom.
Other people can, though, which I guess is why we’re pretty much OK with things like that poster. A poster which is, nonetheless, sexist in a different way, to a different degree, and in a different context.
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I think you’re missing the point as to why the objectification of women… no, not women, a teen age girl… is offensive to some of us.
And yes, that is sexist too. Read this and try to get some perspective:
Also, to the best of my recollection Scarlett O’Hara didn’t don that outfit to fight crime.
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I think the point of that poster is to make us say, “VA-VA-VOOM” and that the complaint about the comic cover is that it does the same. So this post is essentially here to support the characterization of the comic cover, or…?
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Here’s Janelle Asselin’s original (and nuanced) complaint about it: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=52103
And it always bears pointing out that this is more significantly about the grotesque reaction she received for making the complaint: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/21/female-journalist-gets-rape-threats-over-comic-book-criticism.html
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I actually read that whole thread, and I was trying to point out that I think Ramone is unwittingly supporting the opposite position that they appear to want to.
The un-nuanced version is that sexualizing teenage girls on comic book covers is skeevy. So I find it odd that in order to combat the “half-naked” claim, an image in which a woman is being overtly sexualized is used. If the point is that Scarlett O’Hara is not half-naked then the corollary is that the state of dress she is in is a sexually titillating one even though she is not half-naked. Thus, the only complaint that Ramone could be raising is that the word “half-naked” was used inappropriately, but at the same time they are suggesting that the essential content and meaning of the headline was correct.
And that’s not just a frivolous point, it’s a self-defeating one. As I said, since Scarlett is being sexualized in the poster, the implication is that Ramone agrees that Wonder Girl is being sexualized. Thus, the complaint about the use of the word “half-naked” only makes sense if we think English is a language where metaphor and exaggeration are unheard of. To use “half-naked” when you mean “dressed in a sexually provocative way, regardless of how much clothing they are actually wearing,” seems like it’s within the normal bounds of how people express themselves.
Now if Ramone was actually mocking people in the original forum subtly, then bravo. I can’t tell that from the post alone.
And holy crap all that “as big as her head” nonsense. If you actually save the image and count the pixels you’ll see that her if breasts are roughly circular with radius 1 then her head is an oval with major axis 1.22 and minor axis 0.83. Since 1.22 * 0.83 = 1.01, her breasts are the same damn size as her head! Any claim to the contrary is either an argument about where the top of her head is under her hair or an argument point about how its unfair to assess what you are actually looking at and you really have to extrapolate to three dimensions.
I came into that thread a few minutes before Falcor, and I am glad to have had this opportunity to vent.
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Perhaps the major comics need to have a trial month where all of the fellers are drawn like this
and then come back and see how the boys are feeling about exaggerated imagery…
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Nor was it sprayed on.
Rob, I actually AGREE with your thoughts on the cover. The message behind the boob-to-head ratio is all kinds a wrong. But BB c’mon, “half naked” is going a little far with the headline (which is really all I was saying). Let’s be honest–esp. on a site that has made no bones about posting near-nude folks at Burning Man or cool R2D2 bathing suits. 
Unwittingly? Ouch! My point was NOT about the cover at all actually–it was the headline to the post itself. Look, I LOVE Boing Boing. I’m here every day (maybe not commenting, but always reading, appreciating, loving it). But the heading was a little sensationalized, was all I was saying.
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Sorry DC, Marvel is already ahead of the curve on that one! http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/
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What an odd comparison. That bathing suit model appears to be an adult, is not presented in an overtly sexual way, and actually has a reason for being half-naked (she’s modeling a bathing suit). And she is still showing less cleavage than the 16-year-old crime fighter on the comic book cover.
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… and everyone’s still discussing the image rather than the fact that opining on it drew threats in response.
I vote for killing the topic again.
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Yes, kill the topic for it infects all other topics. I just misread another unrelated topic as “Magical ring jiggling.” It’s too late for me, but save yourselves!
Actually she’s only 22% naked if you extrapolate the surface area of the skin based upon the average 16.5 year old female with 750cc strippermax breast augmentations. And as humbabella demonstrated, the breasts are only comparable in size to her head if you measure them on a single axis and fail to extrude the image into three dimensions in your head.
If boing boing hadn’t sensationalized this issue with its headline, I wouldn’t have to think about all that stuff instead of the real issues, which I’ve been just itching to discuss! As it is, though, I can’t even read the post until the description is corrected because ＨＥＡＤＬＩＮＥ ＥＸＣＥＰＴＩＯＮ ＥＲＲＯＲ
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And my point is about the headline too. To quote myself:
I’m not sure it was meant to be technically correct. Also, if you took a time machine to when that movie poster came out, I guarantee you that you would have found people complaining that Scarlett was “half-naked” on it. I’m sure you could travel to places in the modern world where a person showing their ankles would be described as half-naked. Of course those people would sound prudish today, but would not sound so prudish if a 14-year-old were posed in the same way.
Since “half-naked” is a phrase that really expressed how provocatively a person is dressed rather than how much skin is covered, using an image that was made to be provocative as a sarcastic example of half-nakedness seems to make the opposite point that you wanted to.
A quick note about the vile attacks on the author of the story: God I wish I had something to say. Finding out that a woman was threatened with rape because she said something about a comic book, a video game, a political issue, a movie, a novel, or pretty much anything else other than a baby picture on facebook has become so expected that I just don’t have anything anymore. The problem is not comics, geek culture, or anything like that. The problem is that threatening to rape a woman is an acceptable way to express even mild displeasure with their opinion on the internet. Acceptable, here, being a word that means that no one seems to be able to think of anything we can do about it. And that includes me. I just have no idea.
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I’ve had a hard time parsing THIS headline, and it was only today that I finally realized the first word is NOT A VERB!
