Are comics sexist? Or just sexy?

Cafe Society
1

There are a ton of blogs out there be female comics fans and various stripes of SNAGs that complain that comics are too sexist, with their wasp-waisted heroines with enormous breasts wearing latex bodysuits that do nothing to conceal, and everything to reveal their bodies, often posed in ways that male readers would find appealing in a sexual sort of way.

Some likely suspects (links disabled because potentially NSFW):

Bomb Queen

Power Girl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3AInfinitecrisis2.jpg

Witchblade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3ASara_Pezzini_-_Witchblade.jpg

Red Sonja:
http://www.redsonja.com/htmlfiles/p-C108003.html

Vampirella:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image%3AVampirellano1.jpg

I could go on and on and on and on. But I think you get the point.

I don’t believe them. That is, I acknowledge that comics have women with very appealing figures wearing revealing costumes and often posed in ways that are appealing to males, but I’d argue that’s being sexy, not necessarily sexist. Guys like to look at sexy women. And despite all the hoopla about all this sexism from some readers, publishers keep publishing sexy women in increasing numbers. Why? Because 90 percent of comics are bought by older teen and young adult males. Most of whom appear to like sexy women.

American comic book publishers are just appealing to the interests of their fan base.

Furthermore, there’s nothing wrong with doing so. Sure, most female superheroes and villains look nothing like women in the real world, but then again, most male superheroes and villains don’t either. Both are idealized representations of their sex. And the fact that female characters are more often posed in sexy ways just reflects the fact that most readers of comics are male and straight.

Look at the comics that appeal to women, mostly foreign manga. Do the males in those manga look “realistic” by any definition of the world? No, they’re the most waifish, big-eyed, feminine looking guys imaginable. Nothing wrong with that, either.

Manga that appeal to women are called “shoujo”

and that’s a guy’s face in the illustration.

Just don’t try to persuade me that it’s wrong to make comics that appeal to a male readership, without also maintaining that it’s wrong to make comics that appeal to a female readership.

2

Personally, I find most American comic book women oversexualized. I mean, there’s sexy, and then there’s, “LOOK AT MY TITS! LOOK AT MY ASS! YOU CAN’T MISS THEM!” Such characters might be nice to look at, but if there’s not a compelling story going on I’m not really interested.

I don’t know if I’d call the phenomenon sexist though. Juvenile and shallow, maybe.

3

Didn’t this get discussed in your thread last month, EC (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=425427&highlight=power+girl ) ?

For what it’s worth, I find many of the comic book heroines extremely sexy, but it’s hard for me to deny that they’re sexist as well. It’s pretty obviously because the majority of comic book writers and artists and fans are guys. That there are women among them doesn’t change this fact, and many of the cites in last month’s thread argue the points effectively.
Women aren’t invariably depicted that way. I’ve remarked before that the original Red Sonya actually made sense. Inspired by a Robert E. Howard character from a completely different and cultural setting, the comic book RS was effectively invented by Roy Thomas and Barry Smith (there wasn’t a “Windsor” in his name then) as a master thief who dressed in a mail shirt (that had long sleeves! Down to her wrists!), short pants, and boots. She was perhaps improbably good-looking, with long red hair that I would’ve thought would be hard to maintain in that age and keep looking that god. But she didn’t have those beestung perpetually lipsticked lips, that massive chest, or the silver dollar bikini. That she metamorphosed into that form at the hands of other artists and stayed that way shows what the trends are and how the expectations of fans work. I expect the “new and improved” Red Sonya sold a lot better.

4

Yes, female characters are far too often oversexualized. Their sexuality and their sexiness is their key defining characteristic, over their powers, backstory, other personality traits or plotlines. Batman and Green Lantern are posed as being heroic, regal, badass. Vampirella and Witchblade are posed as being sexy.

It’s not that women are drawn unrealistically, it’s that, unlike the males, they’re drawn unrealistically sexy, and nothing but. If this was the rare exception, it wouldn’t be a problem. But as a huge trend it’s not okay.

5

slight hijack –

Do dudes jerk off to comic book women?

If you answer, I’ll just believe you have it on good authority, and not that you personally jerk off to them.

I wouldn’t judge anyway. Everyone’s probably jerked off to weirder shit than comic book women at some time or another.

But, I simply can’t get titillated by animation. I’d probably JO to some old lady’s feet before I’d do it for Power Girl.

6

On the one hand, the men are usually portrayed just as overtly sexual and muscularly exaggerated as the women, but as the comics are not marketed towards girls or gay men, it tends to not be recognised as such.

But on the other hand, I personally have never liked the way women are portrayed in typical American superhero or fantasy comic art. I prefer the characters who are dressed more logically, and have more realistic physical proportions. In the UK comics I grew up with, most of the time the female characters were much more believably portrayed (as far as that goes in fantasy or SF stories) compared to what American comics normally have.

It’s an interesting thing that the comics not aimed at juveniles tend to have less of that going on, and seem to portray women, and almost all the characters, in a shade more realistic a fashion.

7

Yes. Not my thing personally, but there exist massive, massive, massive archives of comic-book superhero porn on the internet.

8

I grew up in the “Silver Age” of comics in the 1960s (and still read them into the 70s). In both this era and the preceding ones, women were by and large not sexually overdone, and neither were males. Superheros, with their skintight garb (since the days of The Phantom and of Superman) have long been essentially anatomy studies, but they tried to be relatively realistic studies, weighted toward more muscled. I’d say that starting in the late 1960s things started getting glimmers of hypersexuality, what with Vampirella and Underground comics and the like, and that it hit mainstream comics in the 1970s, when Red Sonya gor her sexier costume and Power Girl’s bosom started inflating. And the male superheroes started getting muscles that notrmal human being don’t have, like extra muscles in the underarm areas, so they started looking like umbrella-muscled freaks, with layer upon layer of power.
Heck, some of the art i saw was very far removed from the sexier-is-better trend. Classics illustrated never subscribed to it, nor did treasure Chest. I notice they’re both gone now.

9

It was touched on, but it was hardly the center of the thread. In this thread, I wanted to deal more specifically with the issue of sexism, what is it and what it isn’t. In doing research for an article on Wonder Woman, I found blog after blog after blog which decried the sexism of comics but whose sum total of evidence was that this or that superheroine was portrayed in a sexy manner.

Now, to my mind, sexism is a belief about another gender, generally untrue, which tends to limit their ability to express their full potential as human beings. The classic example would be “You can’t be a fill-in-the-blank! You’re just a girl!” from the 50s, where fill-in-the-blank equals some gender neutral occupation such as lawyer or doctor or auto racer.

By that definition, it’s not sexist to observe that males generally have much greater upper body strength development, because that’s generally conceded to be true. It WOULD be sexist to say that no woman can be as physically powerful in terms of upper body strength as a man, because physical conditioning has an awful lot to do with that, as anyone who’s ever seen a female bodybuilder can attest.

It’s also not sexist for women to be sexy in ways that appeal to men. And men do like sexiness in women, especially visually. That’s just part of being a guy, it’s not sexism. Making women sexy would only be sexism if it was used as a rationale to limit them. For example, having Power Girl constantly losing fights to bad guys because she’s so concerned with concealing her large breasts from view.

The classic example from the 40s would be a panel from Wonder Woman where she has to wander around blinded by tape because her feminine vanity won’t let her pull out her long, beautiful eyelashes, which are stuck to the tape. But that was from the 1940s.

I haven’t seen a lot of this in modern comics. Power Girl and others totally kick ass. Male fans seem to like this in a superheroine. They like 'em sexy, but they’re not looking to belittle or limit them for their sexiness. Hence, not sexist.

A great example of what I’ve been talking about. Why are they sexist just because the superheroines are sexy?

I expect she did. Despite all the howling you read on the blogs, male readers like their female superheroines sexy. I see nothing wrong with that.

10

Because they aren’t allowed to be anything *but *sexy. Batman, Superman, Captain America, these guys all have attributes much important to their characters than their rugged good looks and tight-fitting clothing. Heroines often don’t. They’re sex objects first and anything else second if at all.

11

I’m not a major comics fan, but is this actually true of modern comics?

Most comics I’ve seen lately have female superheros, they seem more or less similar to male superheros in terms of backstory and super-attributes.

12

As I’ve pointed out before, even in the 1950s Wonder Woman was sexist without necessarily being excessively sexy. I’m still amazed by the issue from the late 1950s where she exhibits and lists some of her powers. She shows great strength and agility, which puts her in the same class as male superheroes, but theree are two skills that seem to be meant to be characteristically “female”, and I havea hard time imagining Superman or J’onn J’onz doing them:

– She can run up a wall of glass

– She can thread a needle underwater.
I can maybe see the guys doing the first one, although it seems a pretty pointless skill. But I can’t even see the latter being suggested. Not even mor that jack-of-all-trades Batman (no matter how well prepared).

I think comic book writing has, in general, improved since thoase days. Sue Storm/Richards went from a pretty weak character (and “Invisible Girl”, fer cryin’ out loud) to a more assertive and pro-active one (and “Invisible Woman”). Power Girl still has the keyhole top exposing overabundant cleavage, but she has complexity and clever dialogue.

And lots of other characters are sexy without being sexist. Phil Foglio’s “Girl Genius” isn’t sexist, and in his Xxxenophile he had plenty of nude females, none of whom I recall being overblown.
But the norm seems otherwise. I’m a guy, and i like the occasional hypersexual character (Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose), but it seems absurd that so many of the female characters are wasp-waisted spandexed hourglasses.

13

Take a look at the Bingo card, Evil Captor, and see how many squares you can fill in.

14

And because the links on the card itself are messed up, here it is again in FAQ form.

15

Hobbes: Is that lady’s superpower how she can fit that body into that suit?

Calvin: Nah, they all can do that.

16

This should be framed and hung in a museum of Fatuous Rationalizations.

Appealing to teens and young adult males is the epitome of defining females by their physical attributes rather than by their characters and personalities. Two-dimensional by definition, these women are two-dimensional in every way, tits on a stick. While superhero comic books are filled with idiocies that give comic books the reputation of being “comic-bookish” pouring every female into the tightest and more revealing and impractical costumes and putting them in continuing sexual jeopardy marks the portrayal and treatment of female superheroes as nothing less than egregious.

Mainstream superhero female characters are sexist caricatures. Male superheroes are caricatures without being sexist as well. The difference is obvious to any adult observer.

You have no case.

17

I would also add that when Batman et al are drawn unrealistically, they aren’t walking around in a thong and a smile. The Batsuit does not have a hole to reveal Batman’s well-crafted abs. Superman does not stand around in the T&A pose to show off his manly chest and toned buttocks at the same time. Captain America does not have a massive bulge in his patriotic pants (okay, he has, but those pictures were pretty evenly mocked).

Why aren’t they? I mean, surely, female and gay/bi comics readers would enjoy a bit of equivalent cheesecake now and again.

18

Will you marry me, Exapno Mapcase? :wink:

19

You linked to that site in EC’s earlier thread.

And I have to say, I really hate that site. How about this, I concede that all their arguments are right, and mainstream super hero comics (Marvel, DC, Image, whoever else) are sexist. OK, frankly, so what? Their assumption seems to be that sexism is bad not only in practice in the real world, but in fiction. I don’t agree. And, to be clear, I’m not just talking about a particular character having a sexist viewpoint (which most people probably wouldn’t have a problem with, depending on how the character was depicted), I’m saying there’s nothing wrong with art that expresses a fundamentally sexist (or classist, or racist, or whatever) viewpoint. Art has no moral obligation to society, IMO.

Apparently a lot of superhero comics’ current readership (which includes me) wants to read about women depicted in a sexist manner. OK, and? If that’s what they want to read, then so be it. I don’t find anything wrong with that. Basically the people who run that site are trying to replace the current comics with comics they would like more. That’s fine, they can advocate for whatever they want, but I don’t see why comic companies are under some obligation to cater to them when they’re already catering to a current readership that apparently does like what they’re reading.

20

I’m taken, but my wife and I have been looking for someone to do housework. :slight_smile: