Yeah, but it’s still about fulfilling a male fantasy. I think this Shortpacked comic nailed it nicely:
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Well Superman is wearing his red super Speedo, otherwise we’d know whether or not he’s circumcised.
I leave it to the true fanboys to debate the invulnerability of his foreskin. Talk amongst yourselves.
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The heart has reasons that reason does not understand
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Yes, I looked at the art and thought the character’s dysmorphically-enhanced breasts were close enough to the size of her head to justify that description—in a headline that is itself obviously a tautologous, rhetorical question.
You talk of “hysteria”, but come now. I’m not the guy whose reaction, to a story about sexualized children in comic art and a critic’s subjection to rape threats, was to begin googling porn stars
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Notwithstanding the many other issues this is about, they aren’t presented and described literally as minors, for a start.
This is definitely headed into wtf land, yep.
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So, does the story pass the Bechdel Test?
I’m a big fan of strong, capable, empowered female protagonists. I like Patricia Briggs, Elizabeth Moon, Gail Carriger, Cherie Priest… So I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that the cover may be inappropriate. I’m very, very much against the vile misogynistic driving trollies that is often used against critics of hyper-sexualization of female comic book characters. But I’m also against the “check your privilege” counter driving trollies.
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What? Did you skip the comment thread entirely? The first 20 comments or so were complaining about exactly that.
Now, I like Girl Genius and I defended it there, and IMHO it gets a pass because (if you look at the comic) it’s got about as many cute, female-gaze-friendly boys in compromising positions as ladies. (It’s made by a husband-and-wife team, and Kaja is not shy about her preferences.) Sexuality in comics is fine, it’s the double standard I don’t like.
I agree that the picture used in that particular Girl Genius post was weird and unrepresentative and made me frown.
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And this discussion, right here, needs to be front and center in the illustration of male privilege in full, florid, rampant display. I tend not to use that term, because angry idiots have poisoned it, but we’re seriously over 100 comments of outrage and explaining and justifying why this isn’t as pervy as it really looks like.
Seriously. Maybe, just maybe, we need to all admit we’re kind of fucked up, as a society, about sex. And teenagers. And sexual objectification. And we probably can’t have an honest discussion about it, ever, because of the constant flood of “But I’m not the problem!” and “But you do it too!” and all the rest of the bullshit that straight men keep throwing out there.
Grow up.
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I noticed how you conveniently ducked the second part of my question…
Is this where you tell us how 18 yo “ladies” with no pubes, sucking lolipops wearing pigtails and schoolgirl uniforms does nothing to sexualise minors?
WTF land here we come!
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He-man may be idealized sexy with all his exposed muscles, but he’s not really objectified sexy, which is what the main point is about. We’re not talking about him, we’re talking about this:
Edit: And we’re talking about how a woman who says that a teenage character is being treated like sexy Flanders gets rape threats as a matter of course, in case you can’t figure out who the enemies really are.
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Because they are different things.
One is an aspirational, heroic depiction of a minor-age character in a comic book ostensibly aimed at children, criticism of which resulted in rape threats, death threats, and professional ostracism aimed at the female objector.
The other was an adult model at an adults-only website that ran some ads here a decade ago.
Like I said, there’s a lot more wrong with this teen titans cover than the age of the character. But the relentless, angry equivocation between depictions of minors and adults in this thread is not a heartening thing.
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I don’t read comics and never have. But I’ll admit a prediliction for women with atypically athletic builds that are beyond the feasible reach of most women to attain, and to whatever extent that contributes to the problem, I’ll admit that I’m part of that problem.
I’ve found Kimmo’s approach to Beschizza’s post to be rather disappointing in its utter missing-the-point-ness, but I think that it needs to be possible to discuss things like the merits of a sensationalist, misleading headline that nevertheless leads into a legitimate and serious topic (and specifically, a legitimate and serious article on the topic too).
I don’t see how that implies male priviledge. I don’t see 100 comments explaining why “this isn’t as pervy as it really looks like”, but rather a few posts saying “not as pervy”, a few posts saying “it gets done to men too” and a lot of posts saying “WTF is with the headline?”. But if you’ve been on BB a while, you’d also know that this is Beschizza’s signature style. It is instantly recognizable (with only a 5% chance of a false positive identification) - a dry, caustic UK-rooted sort of sarcasm that frequently gets readers as riled up as the contents.
I’m actually glad the he posted this one - it manages to touch on at least two important issues wrapped up as one - but I do wish that he could ease off the hyperbole that can be so misleadingly diversionary when it comes to topics like this. The BB crowd is not exactly known for its lack of pedantry, and with a different title, we could perhaps have seen more men acknowledging the problem with both this sort of illustration and the sort of response that the original (female) critic received, rather than watching a crowd of geeky wordsmiths get wrapped up in Beschizza’s floridity.
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Bullshit. I don’t equate them. The producers of the smut previously peddled here do. You seriously think these images are fine as long as they are “Barely 18”? WTF indeed. I’d post examples but…
Only one person here is talking about barely-legal porn, and it’s you.
Please evict me from your head: I can’t stand the thought that some metempsychotic part of me might be experiencing its contents.
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Whatever keeps you on that horse…if you seriously think that’s okay you need to watch this STAT.
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Let’s remind ourselves here that the accusation of headline inaccuracy here is so utterly trivial that it would not have been possible had the headline been “Can you figure out what’s wrong with this picture of a half-naked 16-year-old girl with breast implants the size of Tom Cruise’s head?”
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I do think you can articulate a difference, but, frankly, it is feminists who point out that depilated teenage porn models are used to give the impression of underage models. While you can point out that the character in the comic is underage, one can equally point out that the character represented by porn models is as well, even if it is implied rather than explicit.
Also, it is a bit disingenuous to dismiss BoingBoing’s relationship to suicide girls as being strictly that of a former sponsor from a decade ago.
http://boingboing.net/tag/suicide-girls
And here is a BoingBoing post featuring a Suicide Girls photoset of a NSFW Batgirl/Barbara Gordon circa 2012:
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We’re talking about the wrong thing. Let me remind you:
“After criticizing the new ‘Teen Titans’ cover, Janelle Asselin was
name-called and threatened with rape. The worst part? No one is
surprised. You’ve seen this scenario before, and you’ll see it again
(until more of us do something). Woman writes about something
traditionally regarded as a male-orientated industry or area of
interest; if she’s conveying love, she’s doing it “for attention” (so
what?) or “fake” (whatever that means); if she criticizes, she’s
insulting, whining, moaning, on her period; if she says anything at all,
her argument or point is made invisible because her damn biology is
getting in the way.”
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…less than a year ago…how time flies!
