my opinion:
the critics' main argument was that a cover with a male spiderman in the same pose would never fly. this has been debunked. as far as her being sexualized. sure she is. But are we saying that it's not ok for male artists to sexualize female subjects?
He actually sayin'; we've seen Spider-Man in the same pose and no one said a thing about it.
Three women attempt to "scale a wall" and re-create the Spider Woman Cover Art to test how anatomically correct it is.
Really? We're playing the
"Her proportions aren't realistic" game.
I think the real issue is media proliferation and young girls actually looking to fantasy as a model to inform real life choices.
Spiderman's character is always in poses that if you replaced him with Spiderwoman you could say its sexualized. He swings around with his legs wide open, he crawls around with his ass in the air, he straddles his opopents when they are defeated. Its you that is determining that in one instance its sexual and in another it isnt.
This. And it's not a context issue, it's an agenda "Now, I can use this to talk about the sexual exploitation of women, in comics" issues.
Truthfully--and it's hilarious--if these writers did actual research rather than literally judging a book by it's cover they'd find plenty of great examples of what they are accusing this Spider-Women cover of.
@Greenstrings
@The Electric Lady
The think the problem with this arugment is the way people are compounding issues and refusing to acknowledge they are creating "sole victim" narratives.
Does the artist also have pornographic on his resume? Yes. But, if he drew a woman breastfeeding, would we then have license to say it's "oversexualized"? No.
Women are sexually exploited in media, but, so are men. It's troubling that the people arguing the contrary either; won't acknowledge that the same is done to males or are bring up more overt examples of crude sexualization of women (that aren't Spider-Woman).
I'm a big comic fan/reader and my biggest gripe with the way women are drawn is; They'll draw big breast--which isn't inherently bad. But, they always look like implants (in shape, not size) rather than what a large set of natural breast would look like
. I digress.
The difference between Power Girl (cleavage window) & Psylocke (bikini body suit) and this Spiderwoman cover is; we have plenty of examples of Spider Man posing in similar positions (in the same type of clothing) and no one is screaming "TOO MUCH SEX."
Really thoughts of sexualization only pop up because it's a woman. As if a woman, in skin tight clothing (ie female swimmers, volleyball players, etc.) can't be neutral on the "sexiness" scale, but men can.
But, do we not live in a world where men are told that they need a big penis to be considered manly?Yes, we do.
Do women have it worst? Yea, I think so. But, men still deal with the same thing.
To suggest musclar men, in skin tight suits can't be sexual (the OP even states 47% of comic readers are women) is to practicing your own brand of cognitive dissonance.
The problem with this is; there is something to be said about the marginalizing of women in comics. But, this isn't one of those times.
. i do agree with not being hypocrites about it and calling it what it is. but calling it disgusting is a little over the top. if we want to compare it to black struggles, i see it like blaxploitation movies. they're all somewhat exploitation. some of them are good, some of them are bad. i guess i just don't see what the big deal is.
face
