Comments on Buzzfeed's real women in comic book poses

[Toilet]

I think I did a pretty half decent job for someone not very adept at photoshop. Could have put more effort in the thighs though.

Spoiler

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[Paragon Fury]

"But why are women only valued for their looks and men for their abilities?!"

Long version short; because that is the unique thing that women provide for their half of the equation for the human species. Men are largely interchangeable, and thus had to prove themselves otherwise - so men's abilities became the basis on which they are valued.

*Note; that when I say "valued" I mean by the base instinct part of the brain that has to look at something and make that snap judgement on it.

Wait, can you please elaborate this? Because before snapping at you for this comment, I want to make sure I didn't just misunderstand completely.

You're saying that in our very biology, women are valued for their looks and men for their skills? That men are interchangeable, i.e. it doesn't matter how they look?
...Or did I just make a gross misunderstanding of your comment?

While I unfortunately no longer have access to the article/paper that explains this much better than I can, the best way I could condense it is this;

Females and males were both equally judged by their physical appearance in the past because physical appearance illustrated a woman/man's ability to fulfill their part of the equation for continuing the survival of the species - females for carrying, giving birth to and nurturing children; males for protecting and providing for the women while they were vulnerable and at risk while doing so and in general doing tasks that you don't want women of child bearing age doing while survival is your #1 goal.

Then civilization "happened" (obviously not overnight, but just for illustration's sake) and suddenly a male's physical appearance was no longer the key element; thanks to the advent of things like trade, mass agriculture, artisans etc. a male could provide all of his portion of the survival deal without looking anything like what had been accepted for thousands of years. While the old ideal was (and still is) striven for, it was no longer the end-all-be-all; Gordon Freeman now had as much of a chance as Hunky McBearStrangler.

Unfortunately for females, the advent of civilization did not have the same effect. Up until basically 150 years ago a woman's physical appearance and build was important factor #1 in her ability to fulfill her unique half of the survival equation; it was/is literally life or death for her. Hell, even today in most modern medical facilities available women and children still die in childbirth and there is squat medical science can do about it. Your doctor can still take one look at your physical build if you're a woman and tell you in no uncertain terms that you should not give natural childbirth for your own safety.

Which means that while females have had thousands of years to get out of the habit of physicality meaning everything in males, for males female physical appearance is still important.

Even if it weren't, we're now being expected to act like it isn't in less time than we elect Presidents for.

As for the "men are expendable part"...its basically that females and males are basically the same outside of their reproductive functions, so because the male reproductive function is exponentially more active and lasts significantly longer than the female reproductive function the male must either seek to put himself notably above his peers, or eliminate them.

Essentially the notable, consistent throughout all periods of history and cross-cultural patterns of males being more aggressive, combative and competitive than females is because is because females can only hold the..."capabilities" of X men, and males have to fight to be one of the X or get left completely out and fail the only unique part in human survival they're capable of fulfilling.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Secondly you're being really judgemental and offensive, not to mention culturally insensitive to say that hourglass/thin "more often than not it's a sign of either starvation or dying". Frankly it says more about you than anything else. Believe it or not, but the whole world doesn't share your american/western european 68% obesity rate and where the average woman weighs 166 pounds.

Did you know that an "hourglass" figure isn't obtainable naturally, it's not a question of BMI either, anyone of average weight can do it, you just need to wear a corset so tight you can't breathe.

 

[Politrukk]

I see people talking about these looks "not being common".

If you ever thought superheroines were common I can see where you might be getting into cognitive troubles.

 

[Ryan Minns]

I tried to do a spiderman pose and now I need to see a chiropractor

 

[Politrukk]

Excuse me, but trust me when I say those male superheroes are generally NOT meant to be sexually attractive. They are meant to be strong; they are meant to be what a straight man wishes to be - but in no way they are meant to be sexy for women.
Some women out there might find them attractive; that does not mean that Hulk or Cable are designed specifically to be sexually appealing. Yes, even with all those bulging muscles.
While female characters are designed specifically to be sexually appealing.

Both characters, male and female, are exagerated. But there is absolutely no doubt the males are designed for power, the women for sexyness. And that's the point here. That's why superhero comic books used to be a boy's yard until a few years ago.

Ah yes, the power fantasy argument.

Is it not possible that women do not strive for the exaggerated body depicted? If men are a power fantasy, is it not possible that women can be a fantasy of beauty and femininity? I'm not saying this is a healthy attitude to have, but it certainly is possible. I know that these comic books are made for the male audience, and the perspective is limited, but let's think about heroes. If a male hero is powerful, an artist would think something to differentiate him with the common man, something like "So powerful he is like a Greek god or ubermensch." If a woman is a hero, the artist would think "So beautiful she is like a goddess, or fierce like a Valkyrie." It be a conclusion drawn from association with culture. It is very limited thinking, but the artist is not some pervert.

Things are distorted for a pleasing image. For a more scientific explanation, these artists deliberately or undeliberately create a caricature of the male or female form when they optimize for aesthetic pleasantness. The average male body is subtracted from the average female body (or vice versa) and the difference is amplified. The result for women is exaggerated breasts, hip ratio, round buttocks and feminine positions gone anatomically incorrect. You can see this in sculptures of Greek or Indian goddesses. For men, it's muscle tone, broad shoulders, not much hip going on, but not necessarily bulky, which can also be seen in art. By exaggerating the male or female characteristics, we have amplified how male or female someone looks, which can be a function of reproductive hormones. So what we have is super masculine men, interesting to look at for men, and super attractive to women when not ovulating. We also have super feminine women, also interesting to look at for women, and super attractive to men.

you clearly misunderstand the target audience.

Women in comics are not a fantasy drawn for women, they're a fantasy drawn for men.

they're not meant to appeal to women in that regard, that's not how they started out.


We can easily see this perspective change when we go from comicbook to tv or big screen.
Black Widow as meant to appeal to men:

You can ofcourse disagree with my reasoning but you can hardly disagree with the target demographic?
Comicbooks have always been predominantly pushed for male audiences.

Black Widow for a more neutral audience:

I think the transformation is even easier to spot when we look at Jessica Jones:

And due to who I've seen her become popular for I dare to say the target group for Jessica Jones was Women.

Specifically the tumblr kind of female teen.

Not just for the appearance of the character and the social issues that are being adressed in the show.
But casting choices like David Tennant lead me to believe this even more strongly.

 

[Politrukk]

powerful sexy women aren't sex objects. There's no reduction. All of this was trite months ago, of course Buzzfeed are late to the bandwagon.

They might at least have tried athletic flexible women, or are they not 'real' ?

ofcourse not, a figment of your imagination


It's a shame spider woman wasn't drawn in a pose like this:

I should have liked trying to see them copy that


or this for a supposed "in flight" pose.

Obviously there are people on this forum like who believe that last one is super unrealistic and impossible and photoshopped and maybe it is photoshopped.

but it's not even a complicated pose and I swear on my life I know of women who look like that and are able to do these kind of poses.



This is all obviously foregoing the conclusion I already drew in this thread that these characters were never meant to be idolized or related to by women anyway.

 

[Something Amyss]

Never underestimate how much the male mind can compartmentalize when it comes to sexual attraction. Yes, she's a half-human freak who should be dead because her waist is more narrow in circumference than her skull and therefore cannot possibly hold all the organs she needs to continue to live, and yes, she's covered in verminous rodents who have surely spread lice and parasites throughout her, but DEM TITTIES, YO

Seriously, I'm not even kidding. I have no idea if it's trained, inherent, or both, but my general experience is that a man is very much more capable of breaking a woman down into component parts and focusing on individual pieces divorced from the whole than a woman tends to be capable of, or at least more than she tends to be inclined to do.

I guess? But I would also think that would set the male standard of interest very, very low, meaning that this shouldn't be an issue in the first place. And given the outright tantrums that come from things like more realistic proportions (complaints that a woman with a 3 inch waist is fat, etc), I would think the opposite.

I mean, even this I'm not surprised attracts someone. I mean, God, it's hard to Google certain cartoons without rule 34 crap coming up. It's more surprise that this would be a mass appeal sort of thing.

I don't know. I like looking at attractive women, and I'm certainly a fan of breasts. But a lot of comic art is just...what...?

It seems like a lot of this art is aimed at people who really hate women. Not saying it's actually true, just seems that way.

 

[Sight Unseen]

The poses being criticized are sexual poses, ones that men in comics aren't subjected to in nearly the same extent. That is the entire point of it. You don't see men thrusting their throbbing crotch bulges to the front of the comic page to the same extent you see it with women. Its not about realism, its about sexual objectification and the gulf of difference between sexual objectification of men in comics and the sexual objectification of women in comics.

I think that the root cause of this is just demographics and target audience. Who are the majority readers of comic books? I'd wager it's teenager and young adult MALES. Most males are heterosexual, so of course attractive women in sexual poses will be a draw in for them. It's not a sexist conspiracy to demean women, it's just something that the majority demographic for the medium likely finds appealing.

A simple google (https://www.google.ca/search?q=female+romance+novel+covers&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj92tWI-dfJAhVipoMKHci4AGoQ_AUIBygB&biw=1920&bih=955#) search will confirm that men get pretty heavily objectified and sexualized in media that has a majority female audience, whereas the women aren't quite as much (although they still are a little)

 

[Norithics]

It seems like a lot of this art is aimed at people who really hate women. Not saying it's actually true, just seems that way.

Haha, as someone who draws primarily incredibly unrealistic art meant to titillate first (and networks with many other similar artists), there's zero chance we hate women. What we do hate is being told that we're harming people simply by expressing ourselves. If you don't like what we draw and it doesn't do anything for you, that's totally fine! Not everybody is going to be into it. But that's exactly the point: not everybody is going to agree when it comes to something as subjective as 'what looks good.'

For many of us, realism is almost irrelevant to appeal. Sure, if they looked nothing at all like people, it probably wouldn't do it for us, but in our eyes, it is the impression that matters most. Just like how caricature artists draw insane, whacked out, goofy versions of people's faces (and we recognize them anyway), there are artists who like to exaggerate physicality from the neck down. This is quite simply what we like, and what we like cannot be wrong any more than it can be right.

As for the question of whether it's problematic in its influence? ... I mean maybe! Maybe there are a few ladies (or gentlemen, I draw both pretty exploitatively) out there who look at my or my buddies' art and get incredibly bad impressions of what they need to look like in order to be desired. But rather than trying to prevent them from seeing what I draw, wouldn't the answer instead be a very real conversation on expectations in fantasy versus reality? If they've got the wrong idea, let's give them the right idea with a heart-to-heart. If they genuinely enjoy the idea of looking like that, let them express it in a healthy way: through fantasy. The same goes with guys having unrealistic expectations of their partners, or themselves, or really anybody translating fantastical cartoons into their personal lives!

 

[Jingle Fett]

Is there a point you want me to respond to or are you just angry because of the proximity of the word overweight to the word women? Because regardless my point still stands.

If you re-read my post, you'll see that I wasn't ridiculing the notion of the media setting impossibly high standards. I was ridiculing the notion of humans comparing themselves to fictional cartoon characters and getting upset that it can't be reached by the average person (let alone overweight ones).

Oh, so you were just saying that nobody thinks those standards are real? Is that why you labeled all of those women overweight when most of them very clearly aren't? Either your expectations and standards of what a woman's body should look like has been warped by media, something you assert doesn't happen, or every woman in your childhood was starving so you never actually learned what a woman who isn't starving to death looks like.

Secondly you're being really judgemental and offensive, not to mention culturally insensitive to say that hourglass/thin "more often than not it's a sign of either starvation or dying". Frankly it says more about you than anything else. Believe it or not, but the whole world doesn't share your american/western european 68% obesity rate and where the average woman weighs 166 pounds.

Even most little people aren't that thin when they're nourished and healthy, no way other adult women in the world are living healthy lives at 60 pounds.

Is there like a chart somewhere that defines "thin" as 60 pounds? That's news to me.

But you know what, you're right. I've now seen the light. 3 of the 6 women in the article totally aren't overweight or heavy. They're totally average and my standards were unrealistic. I've now learned what an average woman who isn't starving to death looks like!

Spoiler

AVERAGE AMERICAN WOMEN WHO AREN'T STARVING TO DEATH

It's outrageous that photoshop is required to make them look like comic book characters.

 

[Something Amyss]

-snip-

You addressed a lot of things I didn't say. You addressed very little I did say. In fact, given the way you phrased your response and the way I phrased my comment, you're bordering on a 0% rate. You're free to say what you want, but it'd be really helpful if next time you went the net logical step and simply didn't quote me, either. It implies some relevance.

The closest you came was assuring me you don't hate women, which was never in the air to begin with.

 

[Norithics]

You addressed very little I did say.

Well then! Sorry for wasting your very precious time.

 

[briankoontz]

Cosplay benefits from realistically proportioned characters, so that real people can reasonably simulate them. The higher the proportion of fictional characters with ridiculous physiques, the more that cosplayers are pushed toward having or obtaining a ridiculous physique to match the character.

Given that cosplay is supposed to be democratic, at least setting aside the expense and time of matching oneself to a character, it's a very bad idea to continue to support the Ubermensch physique in fiction to anywhere near it's current degree.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

This gave me a good laugh.

Some of those artists clearly took the concept of "Dat booty" to the max. Seriously, once you compare it to realistic anatomy, some of the characters look like slug people.

 

[Luminous_Umbra]

Every time I see that Spider-Woman pose used for an article, video, or whatever like this, it just makes me sigh. Not just because she's doing a pose that Spider-Man has also done on a cover, but the simple fact that Spider-Man has done tons of ridiculous poses, often highlighting his ass and crotch in comics.

I mean, yes, this is certainly an issue, but I would say that the Spider-_ are fairly equal in this regard.

I wouldn't say they're equal, because although Spiderman does do a lot of squatting and crawling, those aren't conventionally sexy poses for men. A woman squatting with her legs open is an FHM pose - but a guy doing the same thing isn't exactly what you'd expect from a Burt Reynolds photoshoot. With spiderman, you can be fairly confident the writers weren't aiming to put him in a sexy pose for the benefit of a presumed straight female audience.

I wasn't specifically referring to that pose though. What I mean is things like this:

Spoiler

 

[RandV80]

I'm reminded of this old article, about Rob Liefeld and his inability to draw reasonably proportioned human beings.

http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/4/21/2960508/worst-rob-liefeld-drawings

Might be a more entertaining subject for discussion, as it talks about the same general issues, and as it's not only about poorly drawn or fucked up female characters a certain loud and local minority demographic won't brown their drawers about it.

Holy shit!

Spider-Woman:

Spiderman:

I mean the Liefeld article is hilarious enough, but wow I'm laughing my ass off here, we need a photo shoot for guys on this too!

 

[LetalisK]

It's almost like comic books do fantastical things. What's next? Breaking the laws of physics?

I think the important part isn't so much that something is absurd, but rather the motivation behind it.

Um, yes, I think that was kinda the point that was being made.

I should clarify that I was refering to the OP and its "spines do not work that way" recurring joke, not the link(my bad for not being clear), though I do find the line "spines do not work that way" humorous.

 

[RedRockRun]

Oh no! The evil misogynistic nerds are attacking again! If they're not stopped, everyone will objectify women and become rapists! The horror! The horror!

 

[Lady Larunai]

Comics and superhero's have been realistic since when?

seriously these comics are in no way meant to be attainable or imitated by either sex, to assume otherwise it just a lack of basic common sense

not to mention the arbitrary focus on females despite males pulling of similar or more awkward poses at times, this gender war with its female "victim" bias is getting really old.