I seem to be posting a lot about comics lately...

[telophase]

...so here's a link to a post by Noah Berlatsky over on comiXology about bad superheroine cheesecake, titled "Adding Incompetence to Insult."

But more often, you get images like those above, where Star Sapphire's costume makes her look vulnerable, not tough…or the Marvel Divas cover, where everybody but Hellcat is making with the bedroom eyes, and the only threat is that Black Cat's costume may pinch so tightly that she actually pops apart at the waist, causing everything from the torso up to go swooshing about like a deflating balloon.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Have you looked at the male super heros? They are just as absurd as the females.

I haven't, actually. Do the male superheroes have unrealistically gigantic, bulging, knee-brushing genitals straining in outline against their skimpy outfits?

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

Nope, but neither do the women. They both have crazily absurd chests. And backs, waists, hips, legs, arms, etc.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Women's breasts may be functional as well as sexual, but there's no denying that they're sexualized in a way men's breasts aren't. It's disingenuous to pretend otherwise when you're comparing male and female bodies in art.

Men's bodies in superhero comics generally aren't realistic either, but they're not treated the same way women's bodies are--they're they idealized image of what men want to look like, not what men want to fuck. The way women are treated in superhero comics is sexist because it's entirely one-sided.

Marvel and DC have little interest in selling comics to women; when they make an effort like this--in principle, this book is meant for women, and what little I've heard about the writer suggests that he's not a bad match for the material--they fall back on the same same tactics they use to sell books to men (images of women men want to fuck), because they don't know how to do anything else. Bad, sexist art in comics is nothing new; it's just particularly eye-roll-inducing when the entrenched sexism is highlighted so.

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

...they're they idealized image of what men want to look like, not what men want to fuck.

Don't be so sure. I sense a lot of repressed homosexuality in most of the male comic book readers I know.

I include myself in that. Well, except the "repressed" part. :)

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting theory, but I don't buy it. I don't think it'd scale well, either.