Reveal perfume for women won’t get him to take his panties off
but “Reveal for Men” is apparently stronger.
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[quote=“anon61221983, post:163, topic:54279”]
Big
muscles are a male fantasy. That’s not to say that women aren’t ever
into them, but let’s face facts; women have never been the primary
target audience for superhero comics, and male heroes are drawn with big
muscles anyway. Make no mistake; women are there. But those big muscles are not there for women.
[/quote]I disagree with that for various reasons. One, it reduces the depiction of the male in comic books to “big muscles”, in order to suggest a male power fantasy, with no sexual component. But the male characters in comics also tend to have conventionally very handsome features, and great hair. This argues for a sexualized, idealized component in the depiction, as does the tendency toward skin-tight clothing. None of these things - chiseled features, great hair, tight spandex - are in any way necessitated by a male fantasy of simple brute strength, an interpretation I think the OP further over-eggs by giving the example of the Hulk, an atypical figure in comic books like the Thing. Many of the male characters in comic books don’t exemplify the hulking, body-builder look, having instead a slim, muscular build, which has been an archetype of male beauty as far back as Michelangelo’s David.
Also, I think the OP rather understates the extent to which many women (and gay men, and indeed straight men) find muscular, physically fit men attractive, on the basis of one person they reached out to on twitter, again in order to downplay any component of sexualization’/idealization in the depiction of males in comic books.
Where I think the OP is particularly wrong is in arguing that males aren’t sexualized/idealized in comics because comics are chiefly marketed towards men, and the muscles “aren’t there” for women. I don’t think this follows, any more than it follows that depictions of women in women’s magazines cannot be sexualized and idealized, because those magazines are chiefly marketed towards women, and if you argue that those magazines present for women idealizations of how women are supposed to be attractive to men, the same argument can be made regarding the depiction of the male in comic books, ie strong, handsome, athletically fit, and so forth.
Women are far more sexualized in comics than men are. I don’t know who could possibly argue against that. There are far fewer female characters than male characters that are sexless in comics.
I question the OP’s premise that male characters aren’t drawn with sexuality in mind though because comic books are supposedly marketed to men or because a twitter poll told her women don’t like muscles. Something can be sexualized regardless of who the audience is (see: every underwear advertisement ever).
Male characters drawn by male artists are often drawn with what the artist thinks is the female ideal of male sexuality. Frankly, it looks more like the male ideal of male sexuality to me, but it didn’t appear out of thin air. Where do they get the idea that women want strong, tall, handsome muscle bound men?
Have you ever read the description of men in romance novels? Heck, have you ever looked at the covers of bestsellers? The idea that this is the height of male sexuality is pervasive.
The image of the tall, dark, handsome muscle bound man doesn’t somehow become desexualized just because it doesn’t quite match up with what the female ideal of male sexuality is.
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In your rush to make your views known, I think you’ve missed reading the entire thread, not to mention the article or even the headline.
The headline says “equally sexualised”. The article does not deny men any sexuality in comics, it just says that they aren’t as sexualised as women. I think you have to be blind, perhaps by continued exposure to the boobs’n’butt pose, to believe that men are as sexualised as women in comics. There is simply nowhere near the same degree of sexualisation in the way the two sexes are depicted in the typical mainstream US comic.
You also have to have avoided the numerous instances on the internet and media in general, not just the examples in the article, of women saying what they find sexy in a man, and compare that with what you see in comics.
Furthermore you seem to have missed that the Hulk is posed beside his female counterpart in the post. it would be natural to expect that given their names that they should have the same mutation, yet Hulk is hyper-muscular, while She-Hulk looks like a swimsuit model. What’s up with that?
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Says they who crashed the party, signing up five hours ago…
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Speaking as someone who has had sex with curvy women, muscular men, and a couple of transgenders…
I’m just bragging again.
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[quote=“JollyWombat, post:7, topic:54279”]
Are there supposed to be a league of flabby superheroes?
[/quote]Having a female hulk be more hulk-like is not an extreme opinion.
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This is a valid point. In topics of “sexualized” depictions where people show lots of examples and claim that these frame the problem, I always ask about the origins of these images. Like the previous comics discussion I recall. I asked how many of the illustrations were done by men vs women, but nobody seemed to know or care. It seems very much relevant to the discussion to consider.
Also, FWIW, as much talk as there is about “hot” and/or “sexy” wimmin in comics, if this is their goal I think they fail quite badly. Lingerie-inspired costumes might look comfortable, but they don’t suddenly make somebody with a poodle-like physique “attractive”. I know that what I am saying here is quite subjective, but that’s the point.
Aren’t you assuming the archetype of male beauty hasn’t changed at all?
That’s not what the article said, though - it said that women are sexualized far more often in comics, not that men never are. No one has said that - only that this happens to depictions of women far more often, because the (real or perceived) target demographic are indeed young men.
I think that might hold water, if comics were aimed equally at men and women. and I think it would be wrong to suggest that women who find straight men attractive wouldn’t find comic male attractive, but the fact that the consumers for superhero comics are indeed overwhelmingly young men, what do you think that says about the expectations of people working on these comics and why they draw the characters as they do? (at least at the time of this post in 2008 - if you can find some more up to date demographics, I’d love to see them):
Keep in mind that often times, big franchises, which are worked on by numerous people over the years, have a set of best practices in regards to how the characters look/act/etc -which were probably worked out over a long period of time, and have been worked out not just by the artists, but the editors of the comics, too.
Right, but there is imagined to be a objective “norm” for attractive women (which we can all agree is very much a subjective thing), and I’d bet that there are a set of best practices at large comic imprints about such things. This is why you get much less variety in how women look in (most, mainstream, mass produced) culture in terms of the main characters than actually exists in the world. Several people have made this point in order to back up their claims that these don’t matter - they are “fantasy” and hence idealized. And that’s exactly the problem. This “idealized norm” doesn’t reflect what people are attracted to in the real world.
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Comics are…fantasy.
If they were about “humanity” it would be a documentary, which tend to be less amplified in it’s depictions.
And yes, boys tend to read them more than girls so the representations of the images and action tend to be male oriented.
This argument could be said of twilight movies in reverse, but frankly blokes don’t give a shit.
Marvel should make a one-shot of Thor doing laundry.
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Oh, thanks for clearing that up… Here I kept waiting for superman to fly by…
The problem with that argument is that mythology indeed reflect truth, or arguments about the truth, even if they are made up.
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blokes will be blokes, EH PAL?
Sigh.
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I rated The Avengers butts when I re-watched the movie last week:
Captain America
Black Widow
Thor
Hawkeye
Iron Man
Bruce Banner, before he gets angry.
Note: Bruce Banner is always shown in the world’s ugliest pants, so he loses by default.
I think the Marvel movies are good examples of characters portrayed as sexy while avoding over-sexualizing them. Black Widows costumes are well done, imo. Sexy and sleek, but not vulgar, and very practical (as far as fiction goes, anyway).
Also, in my opinion, Loki is the prettiest of them all.
Some have argued that Marvel plays with the female gaze in a way that a lot of movie franchises never have before (not to say they don’t also play with the male gaze). I agree, and I think it’s done very well.
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I think it could also be argued that most men represented are young to not-quite-middle age (because it’s okay for men to be a little older), but still white and fit. That said, there is still a little more wiggle-room for men then there is for women, for certain. Villains (of which most are men) especially get a huge vast array of variety, while women tend to be a little same-ey. But this seems to be the case in media in general. Fat hubbys and “hot”, thin wives, for example, is a common trope.
Truth! Why don’t people understand this…
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That’s not really his fault. He has to wear “angry pants” the same way other people might wear “fat pants,” but he has to wear them all the time or risk running around butt naked the first time he gets an unrequested perfume sample at the mall.
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