Creative Freedom – reason gratuitous female boobs and butts must be preserved at all costs in That Thing That I Like
Censorship – reason gratuitous female boobs and butts are not featured in That Thing That I Like
~Ozzie
An excerpt from the Dudebro Dictionary
Creative Freedom – reason gratuitous female boobs and butts must be preserved at all costs in That Thing That I Like
Censorship – reason gratuitous female boobs and butts are not featured in That Thing That I Like
~Ozzie
Which brings us to the question that inspired this piece — so f#$@ing what?! Do clothes make the hero? And the answer, honestly, is a resounding, ‘eh.’
Which is not to say a costume is irrelevant. There is the oft heard question, “Why would you fight crime in a bathing suit?” That question, by the way, is totally fair. On one hand, if you are an nearly indestructible Kryptonian, you could fight in your birthday suit and not have to worry about getting skinned alive if thrown into a building or bounced through the street. And hey, the less under your secret identity day clothes the more comfortable, right?
On the other hand, even Superman wears tights, so why can’t the women? The swimwear approach to costuming after all is routinely mocked, be the hero female or male. Just look at Aquaman and Robin. One suspects that they are mocked for the swimwear of justice because that kind of costuming is perceived as something only a super heroine should wear. Because female heroes are drawn with bare limbs and scantier uniforms not because they don’t need the physical protection but because it’s sexy.
Ah, male gaze. My old frenemy.
So that’s the solution, right? Just slap some dockers on them ladies and everything’s equal in female and male depictions, right?
Well, not really, no. Putting a female hero in pants does not mean she is somehow protected from an artist positioning her primarily for the male gaze. For example, Marvel Comics recently began a new ongoing called Fearless Defenders which stars Valkyrie and Misty Knight. Both of these characters wear pants and, yet, I lost count by about page five of how many times Misty’s ass took center stage in any given panel. Basically, where there’s a male gaze will, there’s a male gaze way — pants or no pants, tights or bared legs.
To Pants or Not to Pants – The Superhero Uniform and its Discontents – Dan Roth (via bikiniarmorbattledamage)
While chezapocalypse site remains on a prolonged hiatus due to maintenance, so the article can not be read in its entirety*, this excerpt still encapsulates well the subtle complexities behind fixing female superhero costumes, the issue we touched upon earlier this week.
Props to the author, Dan Roth (@pointlessarguments101) for writing this!
~Ozzie
*fear not, dear readers, Wayback Machine to the rescue!
Which brings us to the question that inspired this piece — so f#$@ing what?! Do clothes make the hero? And the answer, honestly, is a resounding, ‘eh.’
Which is not to say a costume is irrelevant. There is the oft heard question, “Why would you fight crime in a bathing suit?” That question, by the way, is totally fair. On one hand, if you are an nearly indestructible Kryptonian, you could fight in your birthday suit and not have to worry about getting skinned alive if thrown into a building or bounced through the street. And hey, the less under your secret identity day clothes the more comfortable, right?
On the other hand, even Superman wears tights, so why can’t the women? The swimwear approach to costuming after all is routinely mocked, be the hero female or male. Just look at Aquaman and Robin. One suspects that they are mocked for the swimwear of justice because that kind of costuming is perceived as something only a super heroine should wear. Because female heroes are drawn with bare limbs and scantier uniforms not because they don’t need the physical protection but because it’s sexy.
Ah, male gaze. My old frenemy.
So that’s the solution, right? Just slap some dockers on them ladies and everything’s equal in female and male depictions, right?
Well, not really, no. Putting a female hero in pants does not mean she is somehow protected from an artist positioning her primarily for the male gaze. For example, Marvel Comics recently began a new ongoing called Fearless Defenders which stars Valkyrie and Misty Knight. Both of these characters wear pants and, yet, I lost count by about page five of how many times Misty’s ass took center stage in any given panel. Basically, where there’s a male gaze will, there’s a male gaze way — pants or no pants, tights or bared legs.
To Pants or Not to Pants – The Superhero Uniform and its Discontents – Dan Roth (via bikiniarmorbattledamage)
While chezapocalypse site remains on a prolonged hiatus due to maintenance, so the article can not be read in its entirety*, this excerpt still encapsulates well the subtle complexities behind fixing female superhero costumes, the issue we touched upon earlier this week.
Props to the author, Dan Roth (@pointlessarguments101) for writing this!
~Ozzie
*fear not, dear readers, Wayback Machine to the rescue!
While this video by Movie Bob came out relatively long ago, in anticipation for the first pics of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, it still tackles some meaningful issues for our blog: how adding pants and/or covering skin on a female character redesign doesn’t yet fix the problems inherent with her old, more revealing costume and in-story presentation.
That’s why we ridiculed J. Scott Campbell’s outrage over Wonder Woman’s new shoulderpads
pauldrons, but didn’t go so far to praise the covering new costume he hated so much.
It’s an adequate superheroine outfit and has Diana’s iconic elements intact, but its supposedly biggest change, the skin-covering catsuit, seems indeed like an uninspired, colored-in afterthought.
While, as Bob points out in the video, there will always be a crowd unsatisfied with the changes (especially for such a popular character), I say it’s crucial to just PUT AN EFFORT into a redesign. Only then things can begin to work out.
See, for the record, BABD’s favorite re-imaginings of Wonder Woman:
~Ozzie
As Bob said, there’s a lot to unpack and while we’ve seen that it’s certainly possible to cover female character head-to-toe and still have her be ridiculously sexualized. I also feel that arbitrary statements like “makes her less like the other two” are at least as responsible for bad re-designs.
Ironically when it comes to characters like Diana, a large part of this is that the comics industry is influenced by unhealthy amounts of nostalgia so instead of doing completely fresh re-designs they tend to insist on homaging the original.
And when the outfit was as ridiculous as Wonder Woman’s original outfit it’s kind of hard to make something that looks credible. Particularly since people aware of her origins tend to go with “sexy pinup dominatrix” rather than “genuinely intimidating and dominant woman”.
I will say this though, if you really want to take the stance against “modesty” approach and tell people that it should all just be allowed to hang out – there’s someone who should be wearing a lot less than Wonder Woman. No. Really.
– wincenworks
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Indivisible is a crowd-funded RPG by the creators of Skullgirls, the project was successfully funded and flooded our inbox with requests for commentary. It opened up with the trailer below, and revealed more info and characters as it reached funding goals.
Now, as you can see the cast game has a very diverse cast both in terms of demographics, and in quality of attire.
While overall it’s easy to see why so many people are getting excited about this, a couple of major issues jumped out at me. So, for now, I’m going to address the matters that are specific to BABD in very broad strokes.
(Obviously this is based entirely off the crowdfunding campaign, since the game isn’t released yet)
Things that are awesome, specifically related to the blog:
- There is a lady tank and she is BIG (Phoebe)
- Anja’s transformation at 0:56 in the trailer
- Anja girding her loins at 2:50 in the trailer
- Anja’s outfit makes sense it in that it was what she was wearing and she’s adapted it for action.
- The badass known as Qadira
- This badass known as Toko
These things are not awesome:
- Phoebe’s outfit seems to be ridiculously sexualized, as though to compensate the audience for her being bulky in size
- Anja’s transformation in the in game footage doesn’t seem anywhere near as intimidating or powerful, rather more of a cutesy palette swap
- Qadira doesn’t appear on the line-up above because she was one of the last characters to be revealed.
- Conventional sexy ladies seemed to be prioritized up the front of the line-up, to the extent Thorani’s gets dangerously close to the women as reward trope.
- Pretty much all the guys have weapons and/or obvious martial abilities while Thorani, Yan, Phoebe, Zahra and Nuna (ie most of the female early release Incarnations) look support or non-combative roles
- I have no idea what is going on with Yan’s costume… it looks suspiciously like like a Playboy Bunny outfit.
So overall, there’s some really cool stuff and I can really see why many people are super hyped up for this game, but in the context of the issues this blog examines, there are some big problems here.
Some of them might get changed before release, but a lot of them are also with how they choose to pitch this game.
– wincenworks