Women in Comic Books
Chase Fowler
It's no small secret that women are glorified eye candy in most comic books nowadays. As a fan of comics I recognize this but there are a few exceptions to the rule. Batwoman(the character pictured above) is one of the few exceptions. She isn't made to be eye candy, she's made to be a female hero. She's, I believe, the only openly gay leading lady in a comic book and actively shuns male help as she feels she can do it herself, which she does. Another exception is Wonder Woman, she is a princess of the Amazon. She is a powerful woman who can go toe-to-toe with Superman if it came down to it. According to themarysue.com(http://www.themarysue.com/comic-book-demographic/) about 25% of comic book readers surveyed are female, that makes the comic book reader demographic by and large male. The artists know if they want to sell books they have to appeal to mostly male readers, they can do that by A) making the female heroes the damsel in distress or B) incredibly attractive. They chose the attractive route but at the same time they’ve made female characters more independent. It’s a trade-off that will continue to be made until there is a larger percentage of female readers or female writers/artists.
The image provides us with the idea of fierce and maybe complex women. Her responsibilities may be stressful as an independent female. This super hero was meant to inspire females and to make them feel that their own self can beat any battle. The way her hands are placed on her head is either showing a sign of power or maybe she's having trouble getting the credit she deserves from male super heroes. As Chase stated, most of the reader population are males. They are attracted to this picture maybe because of the red and black contrast. These colors (and the black leather suit) are usually involved in some risky business. Also, the women’s hair is long and full. She is definitely meant to be attractive but is far less revealing than other characters I have seen.
ReplyDeleteIn many cases although the women are designed to look very good and be beautiful many comic book artists these days do strive to make their main female heros more independant and just as powerful and popular as their male counterparts. Stan Lee broke ground when he created Storm as a strong leading black woman, and from what I've seen he's created most of his female characters to mirror the male characters quite well. Throughout his comics strong independant women are shown such as Susan Storm of the Fantastic Four, X-23 in the X-Men comics, Black Widow of the Avengers, She-Hulk of the Incredible Hulk comic series as well as many many more. A lot of comic book writers sadly reduce women to nothing but eye-candy or damsels in distress but some are very open-minded about who can put on the mask and save the world.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to read that 25% of comic book readers were women, I didn't think the percentage would be that high. I have never read comics, nor do I know much about them, but i have seen enough covers here and there to know that they flaunt women on their covers to obviously attract young male readers. I am guessing they made Batwoman gay to get more gay readers, and more female readers. It looks like the comic book companies could go toe toe to with alcohol companies any day of the week.
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