Obviously, I look at girls a completely different way from when I was five or even ten, but still, this was kind of blatant. Just look at some of them and tell me you wouldn't wanna jump their bones:
Psylocke, wearing an outfit that seems better suited for a Victoria Secret show than crime fighting
Jean Grey's pretty classic... but what's with the come hither look?
Who doesn't love a southern girl?..... especially when she's wearing short-shorts
That's Shadowcat??
So I know what you're thinking, 'but Hepzibah's part cat!' Honestly, would it really matter that much?
Clearly Rachel Grey inherited the Phoenix's hot gene
Am I the only one digging the green hair?Just to be fair, the artists even made the super villains hot:
Here's Lady Deathstrike
And last, but most definitely not least, Emma Frost (Really?? Yes, really.)And to show I'm not just some sick bastard, other people have noticed the, um, assets of female comic book characters as well. There's an entire website dedicated to them! So how t0 explain the voluptuousness of these (for the most part) childhood characters?
Well though comic books tend to be targeted towards kids, they've always dealt with real life topics. Death and sex are constantly prevalent in comic books. How many kids saw their first kiss in an X-men book, or first learned about the pain of love from Spiderman's and Mary Jane?
Sexuality plays a major role in many a comic book plot. As society's views of sexuality and the female figure have changed, so have the depictions of said female figures in comics. Most casual fans have seen the original X-men costumes, which by todays standards are tacky and ultra-conservative at best. As a whole, society has clearly become more comfortable with the overt sexuality of the female figure over the years, and this evolution is no different in the comic book world. Comics have always served as a medium for social activism (one would have to be blind to miss the connections between the racial tensions prevalent in the 1960s and the outcast X-men), and women's rights and progresses have no doubt played a role in the thought processes that have gone behind many a comic. So in some ways one could say the natural zeitgeist shift has led to female comic book characters dressing more provocatively in an effort to keep up with the seemingly never ending trend of female clothing becoming skimpier and skimpier; but then, one must also look at who exactly is creating these drawings.
Traditionally, the comic book industry tends to be dominated by men. Men think up the ideas, write the stories, and draw the pictures. It shouldn't really be a surprise then that there are so many attractively drawn female characters, should it? Not to get too Freudian on your asses, but I think it's safe to say that many of these characters are direct manifestations of what these male artists would want in a girl; their inner id more or less put to paper. Who doesn't like a girl that can kick some ass? Every guy, whether he admits it or not, has a thing for the conflagration of boobs and leather, and comics provide an unacceptable way for this fantasy to come to life, so to speak.
So where to from here? Well as a genre, comics, more specifically graphic novels, have always been on the forefront of acceptance of what is seen as social un-norms. Alan Moore's seminal Watchmen, which was released waaay back in 1986, dealt blatantly with the themes of sex, rape and homosexuality. It could be argued that mainstream Hollywood still tends to see these topics as almost taboo. Obviously the smaller core audience of comic readers allows the genre to stray away from the mainstream without offending those obnoxious know-it-alls I like to call conservatives, but still, it seems weird that the most forward thinking of our media is found in books full of pictures of men and women dresses in brightly dyed tights. But perhaps it is these pictures that allow comics to be so progressive in the first place. People (in general) see cartoon drawings and immediately think the material within to be of the conventional and "safe" variety, little realizing that these picture books are showing and telling them what they are perhaps afraid to see and hear. As Marvel, DC and other comic publishers continue their release of graphic novels in order to tap into the 'adult' market, the limits for the genre are boundless. The combination of words and pictures allow comics to touch the imagination in a way totally different from the way books do. Plus, books just don't give you Mary Jane modeling underwear.
Well though comic books tend to be targeted towards kids, they've always dealt with real life topics. Death and sex are constantly prevalent in comic books. How many kids saw their first kiss in an X-men book, or first learned about the pain of love from Spiderman's and Mary Jane?
Sexuality plays a major role in many a comic book plot. As society's views of sexuality and the female figure have changed, so have the depictions of said female figures in comics. Most casual fans have seen the original X-men costumes, which by todays standards are tacky and ultra-conservative at best. As a whole, society has clearly become more comfortable with the overt sexuality of the female figure over the years, and this evolution is no different in the comic book world. Comics have always served as a medium for social activism (one would have to be blind to miss the connections between the racial tensions prevalent in the 1960s and the outcast X-men), and women's rights and progresses have no doubt played a role in the thought processes that have gone behind many a comic. So in some ways one could say the natural zeitgeist shift has led to female comic book characters dressing more provocatively in an effort to keep up with the seemingly never ending trend of female clothing becoming skimpier and skimpier; but then, one must also look at who exactly is creating these drawings.
Traditionally, the comic book industry tends to be dominated by men. Men think up the ideas, write the stories, and draw the pictures. It shouldn't really be a surprise then that there are so many attractively drawn female characters, should it? Not to get too Freudian on your asses, but I think it's safe to say that many of these characters are direct manifestations of what these male artists would want in a girl; their inner id more or less put to paper. Who doesn't like a girl that can kick some ass? Every guy, whether he admits it or not, has a thing for the conflagration of boobs and leather, and comics provide an unacceptable way for this fantasy to come to life, so to speak.
So where to from here? Well as a genre, comics, more specifically graphic novels, have always been on the forefront of acceptance of what is seen as social un-norms. Alan Moore's seminal Watchmen, which was released waaay back in 1986, dealt blatantly with the themes of sex, rape and homosexuality. It could be argued that mainstream Hollywood still tends to see these topics as almost taboo. Obviously the smaller core audience of comic readers allows the genre to stray away from the mainstream without offending those obnoxious know-it-alls I like to call conservatives, but still, it seems weird that the most forward thinking of our media is found in books full of pictures of men and women dresses in brightly dyed tights. But perhaps it is these pictures that allow comics to be so progressive in the first place. People (in general) see cartoon drawings and immediately think the material within to be of the conventional and "safe" variety, little realizing that these picture books are showing and telling them what they are perhaps afraid to see and hear. As Marvel, DC and other comic publishers continue their release of graphic novels in order to tap into the 'adult' market, the limits for the genre are boundless. The combination of words and pictures allow comics to touch the imagination in a way totally different from the way books do. Plus, books just don't give you Mary Jane modeling underwear.
2 comments:
easily one of your best posts. touche.
uh i don't know who bn page protocol is. ~arney
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