Art & Photography

I've noticed that sexism in comics has been a frequent blog topic lately. And there are good reasons for why that is so.

For example, it's fairly easy to see that female superheroes don't get their due. They're rarely given the status and careful development that male superheroes receive, and depictions of them are often so absurd it would be impossible to think of them as formidable characters anyway.

Female superheroes should be depicted appropriately. We instinctively equate muscles and physical stature with strength, because that's how things generally work in the real world. That is why Superman and like-powered male superheroes are almost always shown having powerful-looking physiques, even though few superheroes actually get their superstrength in the weight room. It's unfair and self-defeating to treat superstrong female characters so differently. Thus, for me, Alex Ross's version of Power Girl is a vast improvement over Michael Turner's (which is awful no matter how you dissect it).

I'm looking at this from the perspective of Amazon feminism, so I'm most bothered by simplistic binary representations of gender and gender role stereotyping; but there are quite a few other concerns being expressed about the treatment of female characters in comics, and most are legitimate.

However, I don't like to see feminism confused with prudery and sexual puritanism, as so often happens when topics such as this come up. Which is why C. L. Hanson's superbly written "Questioning Objectification" (and her follow-up here) is such an important contribution to the overall discussion. I heartily recommend it, especially to feminists.