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Article by Alpha-Girl
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. 34 Comments
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Oooh, so much truth in that thar article. Too many (so-called) feminists defeat their own arguments by seeing feminist causes even where none exist.
Sorry Girl-Wonder types but, the minute you started accusing the DC artists/writers/editors of misogyny, you lost your case. Does poor old Stephie deserve a trophy case? Absolutely. But the fact she hasn’t been given one is a result of poor writing and a cavalier attitude towards the nature of the characters involved (principally Batman, not Steph), rather than any deep-seated hatred of women.
Does Turner’s depiction of PowerGirl show him to be sexist? No. Look at his work on, say, “Superman/Batman: Supergirl” and it’s clear he just can’t draw characters very well – male or female. In the world of animation, he’d be assigned to drawing backgrounds (at which he often excels!), leaving the characters to someone else, someone with a better understanding of human anatomy and facial expressions.
Focus the criticism where it belongs. Turner didn’t design PowerGirl’s costume (or her disproportionate breast size!) He just can’t draw it as well as others.
I’m not sure I’m following you. You’re saying that because comics picture women as sex objects and movies, TV and advertising also picture women as sex objects, we shouldn’t complain about the comics?
The problem with the egregious awfulness of the sexy!sexy!art in many superhero books isn’t that men can’t distinguish fantasy from reality, or that women are insecure about superbabes. It’s that women *are* portrayed as sex objects – not people – everywhere, often, and it’s tiresome and tiring. Why shouldn’t people object when they see it in comics too?
“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?”
Well, there’s a fair amount of hullabaloo (fabulous word!) over that too. You mention Jodi Picoult’s pity party, which has been well-discussed, and Mary-Jane and Gwen have both come up for feminist criticism.
As re: Bingo – it’s Bingo. If someone replies with one or two points on that card, no one generally gets miffed. It’s when they start adding up that I get irritated. Moreover, those lines are shorthand for arguments which come up all the time, and are easily refuted.
Men are drawn as superpowerful subjects, not supersexy objects. There’s a difference in the portrayl of “unrealistic”. “No one wants realism in comics” is often paired with “but rape happens to women in real life too!”, hence the placing them side by side. If I don’t like something, I *don’t* continue to read it, but that doesn’t bar me from saying why I didn’t like it, and won’t continue to read it. And I don’t object to being encouraged to make my own comics – I object to the part where it’s “shut up, and make your own comics”, or, “If you don’t make comics, you’ve no right to complain.”
And as for misogyny – who the heck said it was a conspiracy? We’re referring to institutional misogyny – the set of prejudices and assumptions which infect society and result in things like art that objectifies women. It’s not usually done out of malice. But it’s done. And we get to say so.
I have to agree that to often women are portrayed in a sexist way in comics. However, I realy don’t think big boobs are the real problem here.
As mentioned above: comics are set in a fantasy world, explicitly so even. Fantasy looks come with the territory.
Also, it is not as if guys are drawn in a realistic way either. Most of them look far more muscled and tough then their real life counterparts and some of them are quite yummy as well. I don’t hear any fanboys complaining about that and neither do the fangirls for that matter.
I draw myself and I love drawing my girls with big boobs. Why? I just like the look of big breasts. I don’t feel like the large cup sizes I draw are demeaning to women, I see them as a celebration of female beauty and glamour.
Since when is it wrong for a woman to have verry feminine lucious forms anyway?!?
I should also add: I am the proud owner of a pair of big boobs myself. Does that make me a vision of sexism created by my genes?
Anyway, you would not believe the amount of @#$& I have to put up with from other females because of these things that happen to be attatched to my body. I have big boobs, so I must be stupid, shallow and mean right….. I feel for my “fellow” comic sisters. They face the same stigma as I do.
The problem with comic women is not the way they are drawn, it’s the way they are written.To often are women portrayed as stupid, shallow,weak,naive or bitchy. There are some good female characters out there, but they are strongly outnumbered by the before mentioned kind.
This is a problem that originates from the writer however, not from the person drawing the thing.
I also want to point out that complaining about looks is a verry shallow thing to do. Women are already seen as shallow, obsessed with looks and insecyre about their own appearance. Do we raly want to add to that bycomplaining about some comic charactre’s breast size? Aren’t we more self secure than that?
Instead of demanding paper and pencil breast reductions, we should be asking for cerebral upgrades!
P.S. “Boobs O’Doom”….. tooooo funny!
If we’re going to address institutional misogyny, is comics, or any media for that matter, the right place to do it? Shouldn’t we be speaking for ourselves, making ourselves more than sex objects in the REAL WORLD, rather than letting the images speak for us? Are we really saying that, as women, we aren’t strong enough to shrug off the images portrayed by the media?
The Supreme Court and the Bush Administration is chipping away at our reproductive rights. There are now states that now have anti-abortion laws on the books that hold no exception for instances of rape or incest, or for instances when the woman’s life is at risk. Statistically, we still only make about 91 cents for every dollar a man makes for the same job. The workplace is hostile toward motherhood: we have no legal right to paid maternity leave, whereas most European countries have at least 12 weeks of paid leave. And that’s mandated by law.
Like Sakura, I also have large breasts for a gal of my size and put up with more crap from women than I do from men. I may get looks from men, but women feels it’s appropriate to come up to me and ask where I got my boobs and insist I’m lying when I say “my mom”. My other favorite comment is when a gal insists some guy is only talking to me because of my boobs.
I’ve been starting to draw comics myself and I’m sure at some point females will be appearing in them. As an artist I’ve been trying not to make all my females look as if they required a special table to walk around! Personally I find it unrealistic to expect all females to have huge breasts. Usually I shoot for a C-Cup, and I realize even this can be on the large side of things. By the same token I don’t draw all my males with bug huge bulging muscles. Its just not realistic. Yes, there are a few exceptions to this rule, I won’t lie about it, but those exceptions DO also happen in real life, but they’re just that, exceptions.
I watched a comic that I enjoyed reading degrade into a T&A book over the years as the artist of it got more confident with his work. I won’t name which. Not just for the females, but also the males. The females dressed with less and less realistic clothing, and even the supposedly physically weak(?) males had pectorals that looked like they could crush bear cans…… I should also note that you could see the muscles of these males under presumably business suites…. I think that’s about when I lost all respect for the artist at that point.
I think part of the problem of women (and males) being protrayed in the way they are in any medium, is a self fulfilling one. Some people (male and female) see magazines, ads, movies, whatever and get a mentality (be conscious or not) of “I want to look like that,” thinking that is the only way to attract a mate. Then they set about to try and fit that mold and it only fulls the media to continue this mentality. (That and “sex sells” seems to be the answer I get a lot…..)
Breaking this mold will certainly take quite an effort on everyone’s part, not just the people who make the medium, but also its viewers. Its important to not get carried away with what you see on television, in movies, or read in a comic book. They are in fact fantasy, and the characters drawn with-in are usually idealized versions of that artist’s fantasy.
I would suggest that you actually read Karen’s column for yourselves first.
Respectfully submitted.
Typical! A conversation about snoobs gets five comments YET my various entries of badly punctuated yet scintillatingly, sublime diatribes of congealed and rambunctiously moistening fiddle faddle gets nary a flicker of a twitch from the flaccid consciousness that nests here!
You people are obsessed with hooters! SO what the Power Girl has a rack that defies geometry? Good for her! I salute her and so does Harry Callahan here, don’tcha big man?
“Go on out and get some air, fatso.?
Top man H. So this old comics demeaning chicks debate; I want to unleash your true feelings.
“If I tried that your head would be splattered all over this field.?
Um… we’re not on a field!
“Now, where’s the girl?
Girl? You mean Powergirl? Here… on this comic…. Check out the rack on that!
“You know, you’re crazy if you think you’ve heard the last of this guy. He’s gonna kill again?
You’ve lost me. All I know is that this ridiculously inflated set of imaginary jubblys makes La Petit Tamworthian strangely happy… am I wrong?
“Get out of the way, Hammerhead?
Thats very nice of you… if a little forward.And there he goes… Detective ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan, the cutting edge of modern policing and post, post, post modern feminism. Where were we? Oh yeah… I was making toast…
This isn’t an attack on Karen. I simply used the bingo card to illustrate a point.
Arilou, this is just a friendly discussion about common concerns.
I hear you on the boobs, Alpha-Girl, Sakura. Mine are ginormous too, and I got endless grief from my friends, family and workmates over them. I hate comments like “Power Girl sucks because all she has is big breasts!” too.
But the issue isn’t that Power Girl sucks – Power Girl is totally awesome. The issue is that everything about Power Girl is made to revolve around her boobs. Look at that cover up there. Her face is totally vacant, her breasts stick out like a shelf, and *someone drew her that way*. There is nothing wrong with having big breasts. There is a lot wrong when writers and artists emphasise, over and over, that the most important thing about a character, the best reason to value her, is that she has them.
It goes like this. Culture says “women have no value outside being sexy or mothers, and thus must be sexy (or motherly) always. Big breasts are sexy.” Is it any wonder, hearing and seeing that everywhere, that some small-breasted women get angry, and displace that anger onto large-breasted women? They’ve been denied some measure of worth! It’s stupid, because the real target is the misogynistic cultural values that say “sexysexysexy!” and not “person.”
As for fighting misogyny in the “real world”, as opposed to comics (which surely appear in the real world?): I do. I donate; I speak at public functions and in private conversations; I teach young women; I live in. I also do this. It’s not an either/or thing. I think culture is important; that culture comes from and influences the real world, and that seeing women as objects of desire, rather than the subjects of stories is a poisonous reflection of a disgusting worldview. That’s why I critique it.
Also, I note you’re using American examples of “our” rights. I’m not American, although I sympathise with and am enraged by the plight of American women.
Wait…what do you mean Turner can’t draw anymore ?