Objectification and Misogyny in Comics

I was bound to get here sooner or later.

Honestly, I was lucky in that I didn’t encounter much that was terribly awful. I think part of that is that the majority of my reading selections came from reading good reviews of the books and remembering them, plus getting advice from a friend who shares comics with her children. The worst for me was Love and Rockets, which came about completely randomly, as another friend had been given it, and happened to have it with her while we were talking.

The interesting thing about Love and Rockets is that it’s supposed to be considered fairly progressive, in that the characters are allowed to age naturally and have different body types, and this was totally true. At the same time, there was one feature that consistently stood out, and I can’t find a good way to explain it without it sounding like I am making some crude pun—a big emphasis, prominent—but yes, sure, some women were fatter or older, but they all seemed really chesty. Maybe none so much as the one girl who kept getting asked if the movie she’d just made was porn, but still.

I need to give them credit, in that the characters were diverse from each other, mostly independent, and so in some ways there was a lot of respect, but the breasts were just so in your face. It may have been worse because I didn’t care for their writing or artistic style, so I had this vague sense of irritation throughout the entire magazine. Actually, I don’t think what we have here is really either misogyny or objectification, but maybe just a breast fetish. Congratulations?

Even if the Hernandez brothers are off the hook, that does not mean that the issue doesn’t exist anywhere. I had read an excellent article on it some time ago, which I could not find, though I found several other good articles.

I do not have a problem with artists drawing attractive people with good figures—that’s how typical casting ends up in Hollywood. The nerdy girl with poor self-esteem that was always feeling slighted by Peter Parker was just as attractive as anyone else except that she wore glasses, so yes, that’s how it works.

It is a more disturbing though that the female costumes are so much more revealing than the male costumes, and that it is considered so necessary to draw women in such a way that both breasts and butt are prominently on display that they have a nickname for it: the “brokeback.”

(And yes, having such wildly disproportionate breasts would tend to create back problems, but not like that.)

One post I’d read argued that maybe part of the problem is that the trade draws certain personality types to it, where they are more likely to have poor social skills and a weird mental relationship with women. People like this might be more likely to create the kind of art where you would expect the following:

“One study conducted by Jessica H. Zellers shows an examination of how women are depicted in eighteen graphic novels. She finds that “of the suggestively clad, partially clad, or naked individuals, about three times as many were women (296) than men (107).” From the graphic novel sample where there were 1,768 male characters and 786 female characters, only 6% of all males were suggestively clad, partially clad, or naked; while of all the females, 38% were suggestively clad, partially clad, or naked. Additionally, of all males, 2% were naked, while of all females, 24% were naked. Zellers writes: “It is incredible that almost one out of every four females was, at some point, depicted in the nude” (2005).”

Honestly so much has been written and argued about this, that I’m not sure that I have anything useful to add, and most of the arguments end up being this is bad versus people like it, and the men are objectified too. (No, it is not the same.)

What I will say though, is that I am becoming more aware, especially with the recent discussions on funding birth control, that there is real misogyny out there, and real fear of the empowerment of women, even though we should have conquered this long ago.

I also believe that you can’t really have misogyny without having misanthropy as well. Women are an important half of this world, bringing many good things to the table, and if you cut us off because you regard us as something lesser, there is a loss. Subjugation of women does not only hurt women, just as racism does not only hurt minorities.

One argument on the sexism that had kind of a point was that sure people just say that it’s a moral outrage, but they don’t suggest any alternatives so it’s just whining. Well, if you know something is wrong, but are not sure what to do about that, I don’t think that means you are not allowed to say anything about it, but okay, here are some of my suggestions.

One, comic book publishers can have a huge impact by the artists and writers they hire. They can ask to have the G-cups brought down to D-cups. They can limit use of the brokeback. Is that censorship? No, you are not making things illegal, but you are deciding that you have standards for your product. Since these are corporations, and the G-cup brokeback sells, I do not expect to see this happen, but it still would not be unreasonable on their parts.

Something that might be more likely is the comics industry making more of an effort to recruit female artists and writers, and maybe even males who just seem to have healthier attitudes. This can be combined with efforts to increase the reader base, removing the stigma of comic fans as basement dwelling scary people. That’s good for the genre overall.

For readers, don’t buy the trashy ones. Write about you complaints. Tell them, I was reading this series, but I have to stop because of what is happening with Starfire. That’s not censorship; that’s capitalism.

For the readers, writers and artists who are totally down with the way things are, I won’t recommend diversity training, because apparently that just makes things worse. However, meet more people. Talk to different kinds of people.  Male and female, different ages, different jobs. Get to know them. This will feel weird for the less socially adept, but it can be very rewarding, and it may change your worldview.

Actually, all of my solutions always come down to having better people out there, which is unfortunate because it is the hardest thing to manage. But it would improve things so much!

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2012/02/21/she-has-no-head-no-its-not-equal/
http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/non-fiction/articles/the-objectification-of-women-in-graphic-novels/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-we-work/201203/diversity-training-doesnt-work

Edited because I came across one of the articles that I could not find when I wrote this:

http://comicsalliance.com/superheroine-sex-art-story/