I can’t take my eyes off Power Girl’s boobs. They’re like separate life forms that threaten to envelop the planet. If you’re going to draw boobs that big on a superheroine, can’t you at least weaponize them or make them mind control devices? Make them Boobs O’ Doom?
Michael Turner’s drawing of Power Girl on the cover of Justice League of America #10 is just silly, but it’s been polarizing. Some people find it funny (I’m one of those), others think that Turner simply can’t draw anymore, and others find it offensive and representative of everything that’s wrong with the way women are portrayed in comics.
That argument usually comes down to the way women are drawn, which is clearly as sex objects. That’s horrible, because we’re never portrayed as sex objects in any other medium. Never. Everywhere I look there are realistic portrayals of women in the movies, on television and especially in advertising.
That’s called sarcasm.
Movies, TV and advertising notwithstanding, the idea that the way women are drawn in comics creates an unattainable standard for women and plants the idea in fan brains that we should look like our over-sexualized comic counterparts is as silly as Turner’s drawing. It’s doubtful that guys reading comics think that women do or should look the way we’re drawn in comics. It’s a fantasy world populated by fantasy people.
It’s no different than me ogling Jeremy Piven (my mouth dropped open when he showed up in nothing but a towel in this week’s Entourage) or Matthew Fox or Trent Reznor. They’re hot. Do I expect my boyfriend to look like that? No. Do I expect all guys to look like that? No. The guys I’ve dated who did look like that were jerks and didn’t like Star Wars. Seriously, if you say Bubba Fett instead of Boba Fett, you can keep walking, pal.
My point is that the average fanboy probably knows he’s not going to get a porn star girlfriend and would probably be happier with a girl he can talk comics with. And maybe watch Caddyshack with.
There’s all this hullabaloo (oh my god! did I just say “hullabaloo”? when did I turn 80?) about the way women are drawn in comics, but what about the way we’re written? Jodi Picoult wrote Wonder Woman giving herself a pity party. Mary Jane Watson is your average bad girl, Gwen Stacy is your average good girl and they fight over Peter Parker. There isn’t much more to them.
I came across an Anti-Comics-Feminist Bingo card based on a general Anti-Feminist Bingo card. The idea is that your opponent in an argument about women in comics will have used three or more of the expressions on the card. I guess this is supposed to make me feel some kind of solidarity with my comic-reading sisters as we share a knowing snicker and eye-roll, but all it’s really doing is irritating me and perpetuating the idea that you can’t joke with a comic chick.
Here are some of the more annoying entries on the bingo card, along with my responses (in parentheses). “But, men are drawn unrealistically too!” (Well, they are.) “No one wants realism in comics!” (Not in our superhero comics. That’s a fantasy world.) “If you don’t like them, don’t read them.” (Seriously, don’t read them. Speak with your money.) “If you don’t like it, shut up and write your own.” (Now, that’s an empowering idea.)
Do I like the way women are drawn in comics? Usually not. But, I recognize it for what it is, and it isn’t a misogynist plot to keep women down by coercing us all into developing eating disorders and wearing spandex (although I do think that’s on the Bush agenda between now and November 2008). It’s a fantasy world.
By the way, “Boobs O’Doom” would be a funny name for a super villainess. She’s an Irish gal who went in for a breast reduction, and a mad plastic surgeon (who had read too many comic books) gave her high tech implants instead. One has the power to read minds, and the other has the power to control the minds of men, which is totally redundant because they already did that before the surgery.
Like what you see? Subscribe to Pink Raygun by Email, or Subscribe via RSS
Related Stuff:
Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
The size of the ideal woman has changed radically over the years. You only need to look at fashion models and womens and mens magazines to see the changes from big to almost boyishly flat and back to big again. Comic books have always celebrated big breasts and yes I feel celebrate is the correct term. Yes comic books objectify women, so does most art in some form or another but comic books have also always championed the strong, secure woman that mainstream sources have always found threatening. Few women have written mainstream comic books and so their representation has been through the male perspective. Look at Gail Simone and her work on Birds of Prey to see well written female characters. The comic book reader does not expect women to look like Powergirl any more than they expect a spiderbite to give them superpowers.
Great read, especially when combined with some of the other Power Girl/JLA #10 commentary. It’s led me to the following question/challenge at my own blog (http://captionbox.net/loosepages/?p=312):
Name a flat-chested heroine…even one will do.
?
Setting aside the whole feminist schtick for a moment, Michael Turner’s depiction of Power Girl is not at all sexy when it all comes down to anatomy. A man/boy or a girl who likes girls could idolize this image and believe the character to be sexy but taking it one step further, Power Girl would look like a mutant if she took her top off! To have boobs that size and in that location (which is way too low!) you have to have one of two things 1) “the fakest boobs ever” as Molly from Runaways would say or 2) breasts so outrageously large, and victim of gravity, that they hang well below the knees and need to be folded up in order to form that rotund shape. All I can think about when I see the image is option 2, it’s disturbing to say the least but anyone holding a woman with breasts that large in such sexual fancy is in for a world of shock when the clothes come off!
"…can’t you at least weaponize them or make them mind control devices? Make them Boobs O’ Doom?"
Looks like the idea of weaponized boobs has made it's way into the real world.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20081128/tod-ugandan-…