What would make a male character’s costume sexy? That’s tough if we’re limited to the usual long underwear - that has pretty much zero sex appeal as far as I’m concerned.
Sexy clothes for men - well-fitted, not skin tight. Wolverine’s flannel, undershirt, and jeans when he’s in the Frozen North outline his body but don’t cling to it like a coat of paint. Men in super-tight drainpipe jeans tend to look cadaverous, callow, or silly. Slim jeans sitting at the waist (not drooping) describe the body’s contours.
Tailored, impeccable. Bruce Wayne’s tux is far sexier than the Bat Suit ever will be.
Conveying taste, style. Quality. With details, and personality. This store in Vegas is for me the equivalent of Victoria’s Secret for some straight guys. The clothing suggests thoughtful choice on the part of the wearer, but also a desire to impress the viewer - the realization “I am being looked at” which men’s clothing rarely conveys (and women’s clothing so often does). It says “I want you to look, and I want you to enjoy looking. I wore this so you would look, and it feels good when you do.”
Emphasizing the face, the eyes. My mother used to say “hats make everyone’s face more interesting” and if you go to something like the Charles Dickens Fair or a Renaissance Faire, you’ll see that’s true - even spotty, gangly teen boys look a little more “hmmm…” with a good hat on. Neckwear emphasizes the face. Color emphasizes the eyes.
That’s sexy to me. Long underwear that’s so tight I can check your pulse from across the room, in primary colors or mostly-black, with built-ins that emphasize your biceps and six-pack? Not sexy.
If it involves young children (particularly my children) I’m gonna go ahead and personally identify that as an “unhealthy sexual fantasy.” That’s one reason I don’t dress either my son or daughter like pole dancers.
I don’t have a problem with some comics having “sexy” characters; there’s room for all kinds of characters and themes in the genre. My problem is that there are almost no female superheroes who aren’t presented like sex objects, to such an extreme that it would be downright creepy for little girls to dress up like most of them.
There are some exceptions to that trend (for example, I like Batgirl’s new costume) but the industry as a whole is still obsessed with meeting the T&A quotient.
Great! That’s basically what I said. The point is participation, self-improvement, dedication, personal health and so on. Often focusing on weight as the main indicator of performance is wrong, and many sports don’t really require you to be particularly thin. Others (like MLB) could mean that some extra weight is an advantage, if you can put it behind a ball or in front of an opposing player. However, it’s not body shaming that fills the podium positions in sports like triathlon, long distance running and cycling with thin people, even if larger people also finish in reasonable times.
As you say though, it’s not about winning for most people in any case, so that doesn’t matter. Training and showing up means something; being thin and staying at home doesn’t.
Not really a fan of the whole “girls just get GROSS ROMANCE all over EVERYTHING” trope there, no, since the whole point of my comment was in response to a bunch of ill-informed speculation about “well OK what do people who are into men really like looking at?” because apparently the comic industry is under the impression that they wouldn’t sell any books without catering to the T&A fantasies of young straight men. So who gets gross sexytimes pants feelings all over everything to the detriment of the narrative, again??
Wow that looks actually functional and plausible. Still a bit comic book form fitting but not sure one can completely get away from that due to art styles but that rocks.
I dunno… are they sitting around reading books, wearing glasses, and being super-feminist in mindset? I’m not really into super-muscle bound dudes, in general, so superheroes never did it for me. I like sort of nerdy, geeky types. I don’t know how weird I am, though.
Yes, this. It’s also like (straight, maybe even queer) women are expected to have the same predilections that straight men do, if only switched to desire (in the case of straight women) a man…
