Classic superhero bodies photoshopped for believability

[IronEdithKidd]

<3 for teh science funny.

[daneel]

Why is it degrees Rankine, but not degrees Kelvin, eh?

[OtherMichael]

@x_astromachine_

What characteristics would make a male’s costume sexual?

Hey, ladies people who are generally attracted to men! Could one of you answer this for us, please?

@anon50609448 @anon61221983 @IronEdithKidd* and so on and so forth (who may or may not represent the call-out in the line above).

This is really a sausage party in here. Which is somewhat ironic, but not really.

 

* sheesh I totally missed seeing you in here. Which is somewhat ironic, but not really.

[OtherMichael]

It’s not its in Kelvin. Hence the K. Kelvin doesn’t normally go negative, but this is really cold.

Rankine would be R

Celsius C

Farenheit F

Goobersystem G

Zaybercrotch-scale Z

Velocimax V

Yclept-confusorium Y

and on beyond zebra

The [formerly known as Prince] system, of course, is measured in units of SexyFunk

[FoolishOwl]

Have you ever noticed how infrequent it is, in these discussions, for heterosexual women to say much about what images of men they would find sexy? There’s usually a lot more of men posting their speculations about what women would find sexy, despite heterorsexual women being active in the general conversation.

There’s a habitual assumption that there should be a female gaze that is symmetrical with the male gaze. What sometimes strikes me, though, is why men insist on talking so much about what they find sexually attractive. It’s less about the looking than the talking (and the drawing, etc.). That’s where the power play really comes in.

[popobawa4u]

@OtherMichael

Nothing is “inherently” “defined”

@OtherMichael

What this represents is a misunderstanding between how you think your mind works, and how you want the collective mind of society to work.

I don’t “want” people to define their terms, rather I find their uses meaningful when some effort is made to do this. Agreeing with each others definitions and usages are beside the point of making them explicit.

Topics like this I think are a great illustration of why. Because confusion tends to occur when people posit rather emotional arguments framed with terms of considerable semantic baggage, often with numerous distinct, popular meanings.

When it seems to me that people are casually throwing around concepts such as “sex” and “power” and talk past each other by using them to mean different things, I think that pointing this out is in service of clarity and communication, that people benefit from this more than they do by assuming too much.

[x_astromachine_]

@FoolishOwl

Have you ever noticed how infrequent it is, in these discussions, for heterosexual women to say much about what images of men they would find sexy?

I keep asking the question, “What does a sexualized male character look like?” So far the only response I get is “Take a female who is sexualized and apply it to a male,” which I just frankly find a hard time accepting. I somehow don’t believe a man in high heels and garters is sexually appealing to most women outside of fans of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

@FoolishOwl

There’s a habitual assumption that there should be a female gaze that is symmetrical with the male gaze.

I think there is some sort of thing that draws women to sexual content, I mean look at the success of the 50 Shades of Grey. Maybe not symmetrical, since it’s popularity came from a book, maybe we could call it the “female library card” since they both involve checking out hot people.

[FoolishOwl]

@popobawa4u

Topics like this I think are a great illustration of why. Because confusion tends to occur when people posit rather emotional arguments framed with terms of considerable semantic baggage, often with numerous distinct, popular meanings.

There is definitely an issue, in a discussion like this, of people assuming that “sex” and “power” have ahistorically fixed meanings.

[Nelsie]

@Aloisius

This harms men regardless of whether that is the case or not.

I agree.

You’re aware that “This harms women” does not exclude the statement “This harms men”? And that neither does the statement “The idealizations are not equivalent”?

[FoolishOwl]

@x_astromachine_

I think there is some sort of thing that draws women to sexual content, I mean look at the success of the 50 Shades of Grey. Maybe not symmetrical, since it’s popularity came from a book, maybe we could call it the “female library card” since they both involve checking out hot people.

It’s definitely not symmetrical, and that’s how it’s interesting. As opposed to heterosexual men’s sexual fantasies often being mixed up with fantasies of male power over women, we have heterosexual women’s sexual fantasies sometimes mixed up with fantasies of male power over women.

I hope I worded that carefully enough. The most withering take-downs of 50 Shades of Grey I’ve seen were written by heterosexual women who objected to just that facet of it.

[nytespryte]

I always feel like when I talk about my own tastes that I’ll get dismissed out of hand because what i consider to be a sexy depiction of a guy would be considered too feminine by many people.

If I was going out of my way to depict sexy guys, I’d show nice but not over developed muscles. Lots of excuses to show shirts slipping off shoulders and exposed hips. Close ups of hair and lips and eyes, just thrown in for no good plot reason. Lots of suggestive stares and glances. Lots of suggestion of emotion under the surface that the guy is not sure about. The visuals would go out of their way to suggest availability, both sexual and emotional. The guys would be on display for the viewer in a way not necessary to the story. That’s how you artifically insert sexual context.

Short answer: I like alot of guy on guy anime and manga. And Jack Harkness. Also goth guys in makeup and/or dresses.

[jerwin]

depends on his kink.

[shaddack]

@ChickieD

A friend who is a very geeky lady painter of fantasy, recently posted these wonderful reimaginings of female characters - I love these. They do not feel like the opposite of something, but like real full-fledged lady figures:

Oh the reimagined Princess Peach! I could imagine a night in a bar with her, swapping war stories and discussing relative merits of napalm vs gelled triethylaluminium as incendiaries … and getting singlehandedly outdrunk in the process. Way preferred over the original always-in-another-castle version.

[shaddack]

@OtherMichael

…and stored at a constant -5° Kelvin*

• YES I KNOW

…just sayin’…

Negative temperature

[popobawa4u]

@FoolishOwl

There’s a habitual assumption that there should be a female gaze that is symmetrical with the male gaze.

Positing such a thing as a female gaze definitely need not be a habitual assumption. I have dug for this in a fair amount of feminist writing on the net, and the refutations didn’t withstand scrutiny. Quite a few people even insist that lesbian porn made only by women, only for women still represents male gaze automatically because these values are built into the technology itself, and/or that women are so disempowered that they cannot conceive of what could possibly characterize a female gaze.

And considering any sort of symmetry here is secondary to certain assumptions of the model of “male gaze” in the first place. Such as the peculiar philosophy that desire for participation can be equated with the notion of desire as acquisition. When one does not share this assumption, the rest of the case for possession-by / object-of gaze falls apart. What might appear universal to one might be of extremely limited applicability to another.

@FoolishOwl

As opposed to heterosexual men’s sexual fantasies often being mixed up with fantasies of male power over women, we have heterosexual women’s sexual fantasies sometimes mixed up with fantasies of male power over women.

Sounds like two sides of a similarly dysfunctional outlook. I very much doubt than anybody “has power over” anybody else. It sounds more like a immature way to avoid power as self-mastery. Relationships between equals probably just don’t offer enough drama to satisfy most people, so they would need to abandon most story formulas and actually think of something.

[ChuckV]

Yeah, he seems to be trying to look uncomfortable/unappealing. He doesn’t seem to be genuinely attempting to flaunt any sexuality, unlike the comic cover which is his putative model.

[anon26940528]

I love this discussion.

“Women are consistently posed in comics to emphasize sexual characteristics and to draw the male gaze.”

“That’s like, your opinion man.”

Part of the problem is our culture does not have a strong history of objectifying men in the same way, so it becomes difficult to demonstrate by counterexample, since much of what is considered “objectifying” and “sexually suggestive” is culturally determined. This provides easy cover to people who say, “What? That’s not sexually suggestive,” in part because it’s impossible to prove an individual image is suggestive or not by an objective standard.

Straight men are especially prone to errors here, since they don’t have any sense of what is or is not sexually suggestive in men. This leads to clueless statements about “power” being attractive, and the drawing of false equivalences. The level of artificiality in the various poses is also more readily apparent to women.

[jerwin]

@Brainspore

It’s not like Emma Frost is showing a lot of skin because she’s about to go swimming and she’s wearing a swimsuit (Namor the Sub-Mariner) or she’s wearing a skin-tight leotard because she’s going to do some acrobatics (Spider-Man). She’s a flippin’ telepath with a background in academia for crying out loud. She doesn’t have any more reason to dress like that than Professor Xavier does.

If you say so.

[Brainspore]

Comic dude #1: A lot of people have been accusing us of sexism for drawing all the female characters to look like strippers and negligee models. Should we think about a costume redesign that looks more like something an actual woman might consider wearing in public?

Comic dude #2: Nah. Let’s just add a page or two of vaguely neo-feminist sounding monologue to rationalize it.

[Brainspore]

@ActionAbe

Straight men are especially prone to errors here, since they don’t have any sense of what is or is not sexually suggestive in men. This leads to clueless statements about “power” being attractive, and the drawing of false equivalences.

I’ve got a pair of boy/girl twins who are into superheroes so the difference may be easier for me to see than some people. Case in point: a while back I made their day by photoshopping their faces onto comic book superheroes. There were a lot of options for my son and I went with one of his favorites:

But when it came time to make one for my daughter it became immediately apparent that my options were much more limited because it would look creepy as fuck to put a little girl’s face on almost any female superhero out there. I ended up having to go back to the 60s to find an acceptable one.