Any time I vent my annoyance with the scolding scolds who hop up on their high horses to lecture us about how female comic book characters are too sexy and/or unrealistically dressed, some poor soul will miss the point and tell me that, nuh uh, it's way worse for the female form to be idealized because, um, sexism!
It's all quite vexing.
Look: Superhero comic books deal with fantasy. That's kind of the whole point. These are fantasy worlds. And you know who populates fantasy worlds? Fantasy people. And you know what fantasy people look like? Our idealized versions of ourselves. But don't take my word for it! There's this whole concept, "heroic nudity." The Greeks and the Romans dug it. Wikipedia has a useful summary of the topic:
Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the use of nudity in classical sculpture to indicate that a sculpture's apparently mortal human subject is in fact a hero or semi-divine being. This convention began in archaic andclassical Greece and was later adopted by Hellenistic and Roman sculpture. This concept operated for women as well as for men, with females having themselves portrayed as Venus and other goddesses.
Comic books, are, in many ways, little more than modern mythmaking. But because we are a nation of prudes—prudes, I say!—we can't have Naked Hercules-style heroes* prancing around. So we have the next best thing: over-muscled dudes in skin-tight clothing prancing around! Make no mistake: these are idealized forms. Virtually no men look like the men portrayed in comic books. They are hyper-attractive ideals of what men should look like. This is, of course, not limited to comic books. It is also apparent in comic book movies, like Batman Begins:
And Man of Steel:
And Captain America:
And Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer:
So please, excuse me if I'm slightly skeptical when we feign outrage over the fact that women in comic books are drawn to be uber-attractive vixens with costumes that highlight those factors that humans find appealing. Is this what your average woman looks like?
Of course not! January Jones is playing Emma Frost, an idealized form of a woman. Her status as "a hero or semi-divine being" is revealed, in part, by her physical beauty and her clothing-optional manner of strutting around. There is a millennia-long tradition of such art. Let's not lose our minds when we see someone dressed up like that. Or like this:
(Photo Credit: Anna Fischer via Compfight cc)
Or like this:
(Photo Credit: keneden via Compfight cc)
Comic books represent myths and fantasy; comic book characters represent idealized forms of who we wish we were and how we see our heroes. This goes for men just as much as women, but the idealized form for each is not identical: With men we focus on huge muscles; with women we focus on exaggerated curves. Let's try to keep that in mind the next time we decide to freak out about "unrealistic" costuming on our lady heroes.
*A friend who asked not to be named linked to the Naked Hercules gallery and joked yesterday: "Next year maybe female cosplayers can subvert traditional artistic conventions of male heroes."
(Featured Photo Credit: San Diego Shooter via Compfight cc)