Women are entering the comic book world more and more, but in worse and worse ways. We might have beaten this topic to death already, but I am still disgusted by the way women in comics are objectified. For some reason, female villains are especially sexualized. As Tim Janson says in his article "The Dirty Dozen: 12 Hottest Villains in Comics," "we have more and more supervillians who are females in comic books these days. They’re not only bad, but they look good doing it!" This article proceeds to detail the "hottest" villains in the comic book world, complete with scantily clad pictures.
For example, we get this picture of Purgatori, who falls at #9:
She looks more like a porn star than an actual villain to me.
Another villain, #5 on the list, is Bomb Queen. She is given this picture:
with the caption " What makes this Image Comics star so deadly is that while your eyes are popping out of your head staring at her barely-there costume, she’s busy kicking your ass all up and down the street!" I mentioned in a previous blog post someone who said about Batwoman that "Boobs are not a superpower;" yet, in this case, it seems they are.
Unlike the girl in Alexon's post about Starfire who thinks comic book women's actions are more important than what they wear, this article is only highlighting these villains' clothes (or lack thereof). The only thing they are doing in these pictures is posing. It seems the only purpose of most of these villains is to be sexually appealing, regardless of their actual powers.
I agree that these outfits are shocking. I feel like this shows the idea of how sex and violence are connected in some way, which seems to be connected to Buffy and Spikes relationship in the sixth season.
ReplyDeleteThough I definitely agree that these depictions are vulgar and disgusting, I can sort of see why these evil villains are portrayed in an even more sexualized manner than super heroines. Society in general views promiscuous women in a bad light- so the fact that they chose to portray these supervillains as huge sluts just links to the idea that overly sexy women are seen as dangerous and evil.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the characters appear to be posing in those pictures, we can't rule out that they don't kick ass. However, I can't really comment on the villains' actions until I find out more about the plot of their respective stories. While I want to make it clear that I don't support women being portrayed in such a manner regardless of what character role they are playing, I also realize that this is all fictional. Maybe it's not the creator's fault for portraying these villains in such a way, but the article's fault for only focusing on the clothing as opposed to their villainous action, making only their appearance be the characteristic that matters.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that the article is at fault more than the creators of the characters. Since I don't really know anything about their stories, they could quite possibly be awesome, kick-ass villains. But the way the article portrays them is as sexual objects for us to gawk at.
ReplyDeleteI don't get what the purpose of displaying women in this image is. It gives me the idea that the people who draw these characters are actually sick perverts who's only way of getting action is through drawing women like this. It also makes me lose a lot of respect for the comic world as well.
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