It’s no secret comics and feminism have a contentious relationship, because of the dreaded Women in Refrigerators Syndrome (something even my beloved "Dark Knight" succumbed to). It’s also no secret that girls who ARE into comics tend to gravitate more towards manga volumes rather than superhero books, and who can blame them? How can you get into a series when your favorite heroine might get raped, murdered, or depowered?
That’s why I’d like to give special attention to the new Powergirl run written by Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, with art by Amanda Connor. I think it’s not only an example of how female superheroes should be handled, but how superhero books as a whole should be handled.
First off, Powergirl has all same powers as her cousin Superman, and is shown to be just as capable. Plus unlike lessers writers Gray and Palmiotti play up Powergirl’s physique without getting exploitative. I think it’s better to just address this aspect head on, rather than deny a woman’s impact as a sexual being altogether.
Plus unlike Wonder Woman, Powergirl’s alternate identity is as CEO Karen Starr, a competent and successful business woman. Showing Powergirl/Starr trying to balance her life as a superhero as well as a working woman trying to have a normal life outside of day-saving is probably one of my favorite parts about the series. I have a feeling the issues addressed in these scenes would resonate even removed from the context of this character.
But most of all, it’s fun. Remember fun, what we used to have? I think Powergirl could really serve as a great example of comics in the future, and the fact it’s headlined by an extremely talented female artist is no small coincidence.
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Not sure there’s so much a shortage of webcomics by women as there is a shortage of high-profile webcomics by women. (Actually, one of my all-time favourites, Inverloch, was by a woman. Though possibly no mere mortal, given that she was producing 8 high-quality colour pages a week whilst studying and working in a part-time job for quite a while…)
I hope that someday you will be able to forgive me.
Yeah, they don’t show spiderman as being that muscular or having giant balls.
But look at this picture of Superman. He is always shown as having the physique of a steroid taking body builder and is usually shown as having fairly big balls, except when his large striated leg muscles overshadow them.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, by the way. I’m just very immature and wanted to steer the conversation to Superman’s balls.
I don’t know those other characters. But Storm is great. She is probably the greatest feminist icon in comic books. She’s one of those characters that the fans always want more of, but the writers don’t really ever give it to them.
Man, all you people what are all “I’ve never read this comic but I think those four panels look sexist and therefore I will say bad things about it,” all I have to say is: Power Girl is awesome, yo. Probably one of the best books DC is putting out now, up there with Secret Six.
And while the book’s primary appeal for me is the fun action-adventure stuff, I do think scenes like the above DO add to the book’s awesomeness. Think about it: how often in entertainment media do you see a woman regularly getting harassed AND also rising above it? I mean, we’re talking about fairly common occurrences in normal, non-superpowered women’s lives– who addresses that? Nobody, that’s who. (Except Mad Men, but they tend to play it as a “LOL 1960s” thing). Power Girl not only acknowledges that such things happen, but it also makes the men doing it look like complete morons. Not to mention, how many of you have been hollered at from a car and made you want to throw a car back at them? Power Girl CAN do that.
Also, Palmiotti and Gray are just fantastic writers who know how to handle female characters, and Amanda Conner is very clearly having a blast on this job. It’s cheesecakey, yes, but it’s got such a sense of humor about it.
Girl Genius, Questionable Content and Something Positive are my morning reads.
I really liked Girls With Slingshots for awhile but she falls back on “boys are dumb” and “gays are funny” too often for me to really be really drawn in. Funny thing; those trends are quite recent, so working your way through her back catalog of work is pretty damn fun.
Storm is easily the greatest female superhero in recent history.
Scarlet Witch is cool too, as is Raven from Teen Titans.
They might look fake, but they’re you know SUPER boobs.
OVER-RATED
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OVER-RATED
“Superheroes of both genders are represented in physically idealized forms – men are chiseled and muscular, women are thin and have big breasts.”
Right, so men are power and women are sex. Nothing at all stereotypical or sexist about that!
Yay! I am glad you like it.
Excuse me? Men being chiselled is about sex in exactly the same way. You think the male readers care to see that? It’s the same thing.
Hmmm. Don’t you think that when you sexualize someone, or reduce them to their sexuality (or in this case a sexual object. boobs do not=sexuality), which is what is happening in the close-up screen shot, and what the man in the next strip is doing, that is objectifying? Sure, powergirl has more to her than everyone in her strip seems to notice (more than breasts) which is evident to the reader, but her acceptance and manipulation of sexism puts an approval stamp on the ogling of other characters which SAYS SOMETHING to the readers. I’m going to reply to your other post a bit more about what is objectifying about this. I’m glad you keep asking because it forces me to describe the mechanics at work rather than to rely on the pull of the words to do the work for me. Heh.
Ok, here is why it is objectification: she is shown literally as [only boobs] in one clip. Reducing women to one (already hypersexualized) body part, which is called disembodiment, is linked to sexual assault and violence against women. I feel like its the worst and most obvious kind of objectification, to be frank.
Sexism means sex-based oppression. Sexualizing a group of people, especially within a context that continually sexualizes that same group (women), contributes to the work of reducing women to their sexual attributes. Depending on other characteristics of the woman in question, sexualizing images may also be racist as they would fall into the category of race-based oppression (like when you see hypersexualized images of WOC dressed in animal outfits. that’s racist and sexist.) Understanding objectification of women is fundamental to being a feminist. I’m glad you keep asking. Perhaps you’d be interested in doing a little work on your own though, as you keep saying that you don’t understand or know why this stuff is objectifying. Killing Us Softly 3 by Jean Kilborne is great about ads and would probably clear most of this up for you.
Sexism means sex-based oppression. Sexualizing a group of people, especially within a context that continually sexualizes that same group (women), contributes to the work of reducing women to their sexual attributes. Depending on other characteristics of the woman in question, sexualizing images may also be racist as they would fall into the category of race-based oppression (like when you see hypersexualized images of WOC dressed in animal outfits. that’s racist and sexist.) Understanding objectification of women is fundamental to being a feminist. I’m glad you keep asking. Perhaps you’d be interested in doing a little work on your own though, as you keep saying that you don’t understand or know why this stuff is objectifying. Killing Us Softly 3 by Jean Kilborne is great about ads and would probably clear most of this up for you.
That sounds a lot to me like the old “why can’t you feminists ever be satisfied?” used to shut us up when sexism still exists. Just because we are criticizing power girl doesn’t mean that there aren’t good things that are coming from this comic too, and that we don’t recognize them. Several people on here have done just that.
I like to follow bell hook’s lead and always remain compassionately critical. Just because you love it and it does good work, doesn’t mean you can’t learn from the bad work that it does too, and it doesn’t mean it couldn’t be better.
Please stop telling me that I should be satisfied. I am not going to settle for a world with oppression, be it sexist, racist, classist, or you name it. Okay?
how is it the same thing? I’m not being facetious, I just don’t understand. Please break it down for me?
it has GOT to say something about how the media distorts our perception of “normal” that you consider her waist to be in proportion for a fit person.
But what does it say? That ogling is normal? Everyone already knows that. If your point is to imply that ogling shouldn’t be normal, I can’t see how any significant part of the population will ever go along with that. I think the point is that you can sexualize someone without objectifying them. Isn’t that what true attraction is?
As a woman do you not like looking at chiselled male features? I’m pretty sure for alot of us those are standard male characteristics of desirability.
do you think ogling ought to be normal (which really means, morally right)? It’s true that a significant amount of the population is sexist and has no interest in seeing women as anything other than objects. That portion of the population is probably not ready to say that ogling is wrong. Heck, women are objects, we are SUPPOSED to ogle them, right?
So when the comic normalizes the ogling, which is to say, the character basically says she doesn’t mind, and she is using it to her benefit, it sends the message that real women who are ogled on the street (ie. sexually harassed) don’t mind it, heck, they wear that kind of clothing so you WILL ogle them, and then they can manipulate you.
That’s a victim-blaming fallacy if I ever heard one.
I was at a panel about women/comics/feminism last year at Comic Con and it was brought up that this team came in to the franchise, with its huge boob history, so they decided to just make the boobs even bigger and bigger and more over the top as a way to sort of show how absurd they are.
Which is interesting but of course it 1. dovetails nicely with sexist demands on how women should be represented 2. is not really achievable because cultural ideals of what a female body should look like are already so absurd.
Something Positive has strong female characters. http://www.somethingpositive.net/
Subnormality doesn’t have a storyline, though it does have repeating characters, but many (if not most) are female and the writer seems pretty pro-feminist. http://www.viruscomix.com/subnormality.html
What? You’re actually suggesting comics have made the male superheroes chiseled (which was the case even in the 1960s, though it’s increased over the years) because they were trying to increase their female readership?
Who knew comics have been trying all these decades to please women instead of men?