Though I can’t think of many other civil rights lawyers who spend so much time in spandex. Do you suppose Thurgood Marshall spent his off-hours chasing after crooks while wearing high-cut briefs?
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Fair point.
Oh, and why does the Hulk’s shirt always rip off, while his pants always survive? What the heck are they made of? What is this wonder material?
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I don’t think that the Hulk is supposed to be attractive to anybody…Superman OTOH…Certainly the musclebound body builder look that superheros tend towards is known to be found attractive to a larger percentage of gay men than hetero women…
it used to be to get past the comics code… now, it’s so they can sell to a wide audience… Also, that is just a mystery. Actually, in the Marvel movies, doesn’t he always end up as a naked Bruce Banner?
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I’m going with nope on that. They are depicted that way to sell stuff to women. Which you could say is to attract men, but that’s wrong as well because - just like this article - most men don’t want a woman caked in makeup who uses 50 different products everyday before she leaves the house. So women buy these things because that is what society makes them think they need to do to compete with other women for men or at least feel good about themselves for being more attractive then their peers.
The vast majority of men aren’t going to care who made the shoes you are wearing, or your handbag, or the kind of makeup you have on…other women do.
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Same material you make a Freudian Slip from?
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I think it’s both. But they sell the stuff based on insecurities about our looks, and we’re supposed to look good to men in order that we don’t become old maids and fulfill our promise of bearing children.
And you may not care about our handbags, but we’re told that having that handbag will indeed make us more confident, hence attractive to men.
Right, I think we agree on this point, but it’s still about “getting a man”…
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But it’s not reasonable to be broad-brush on one side and not the other - that is, if you agree with the author’s position, to deny that male bodies in comics are intended to be sexually attractive to women because many women don’t find them attractive, you have also to consider that since female depictions in womens’ magazines are unattractive to many men, the purpose is also likely to be something other than male gratification.
I feel that there’s a recursive problem here - the ideal depicted isn’t pleasing to many men, so if women are pursuing it earnestly to achieve a ‘male’ ideal of attractiveness rather than their own, they’re doomed to failure. That the tendency is to couch this in terms of ‘winning or keeping your man’ is interesting and I find it much more concerning. However, it is not only men (or even mostly men) who are responsible for constructing this model of femininity.
No arguments with that here - I have no idea whether the majority of people recruited into comics are geeky guys, but even if they are, I find that the vast majority of oppressed or marginalised people still end up identifying with the values by which they are oppressed. They don’t desire to subvert or eradicate the issue, only to replace the oppressors and perpetuate it against others. You can see this amongst MRAs or ISIS recruits as much as you do amongst Louise Mensch-style ‘Lean In’ feminists - seeking equality insofar as they desire an equal opportunity to crack the whip.
I’m sure this is quasi-true (in that I think that the appearance of being aimed at teenage men is misleading - I think in reality they exist mainly to allow men my age and older to indulge infantile fantasies), and in addition I expect that, just like in gaming, true break-out titles achieve success by appealing to a totally overlooked young female demographic that execs continue to deny the existence of for years…
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You see, here’s my problem with your response - my wife isn’t a man. Although I guess that I made an intrinsically cis-focussed statement, which was careless of me, we are discussing a pretty exclusively cis-focussed dynamic, both in the depiction of men and women in cis-media, and what that means about cis-gender dynamics.
Certainly fashion magazines imply that the goal is to make women more appealing to men. And yet the models look consistently different from the most common models appearing in porn…Thinner and with smaller breasts. Now why is that? It’s not like fashion magazines represent a more achievable ideal for most women. It’s not like Cosmo isn’t overtly sexual…But there does seem to be something about larger breasts that is NOT what women aspire to, even in a magazine that touts ways and means to be more attractive to men.
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I think it’s because fashion designers are lazy and discovered that straight, slim women were easier to cut patterns for in the 1960s.
Obviously this is not a consideration when clothes are not required.
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It sounds exactly like the stuff in mens’ fitness magazines. I’m not sure what the substitute for ‘handbags’ is - latest gadgets, maybe?
This argument is ridiculous. I don’t know any men who aspire to look like the Hulk or Wolverine. Most men I know who actually care what they look like seem to be going for the skinny lumberjack look or like the models in the women’s magazines. The hulk has muscles because he smashes things with them. Spiderman is often displayed as svelte and fit as are many other characters. Fit is healthy and attractive. If superheroes were overweight someone would be complaining that we are teaching our kids to be fat by having fat role models. Sexualization occurs in your mind …not on the page.
I’m curious where you are getting this from. Is it that YOU don’t find them attractive? Do you know of studies that address this issue? Anecdotal? I suspect you might be correct to some extent at least, but I’m not sure this is about what people as individuals find attractive, but about what the perception is of what sells magazines or comics. What I think the article is attempting to do is to get people to maybe think about how women are depicted in comics in the first place. Also, I think it’s attempting to counter the argument that it’s no big deal because men are depicted as sexualized objects, too, but the point is that they are not.
And of course, men still general dominate publishing and comics, so there is that. Even if women are edited women’s mags, the publisher is generally male dominated domain.
Yes. But the industry still tends to be driven by the perceived desires of men, and that can be deeply alienating.
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So what is the goal? What would comics look like in the better world to come?
More realistic, in terms of how the characters dress? The current run of Ms. Marvel (Kamal Khan!!!) comes to mind of a character being a superhero and still looking like a normal person would look.
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What do you think of Game of Thrones? You posted a gif from it further back up the page.
So, because men (or you, in this case) don’t aspire to be Hulk or Wovlerine, it’s okay to have women with triple F tits. Got it.
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Yes. That argument it totally ridiculous, because you are telling us that your experience is valid and that ours is not.
Your starting off point it selfish (as is everyones) but you cast it as universal (this is not what everyone does, only people who have ego problems and are entirely selfish, do this).
But I’m sure you never objectify anything, amirite? Including subjective truth, riiiight?
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Humanity. They would look more like humanity.
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