To clarify where I'm coming from in relation to the previous entry, allow me to explain my radical view on objectification/sexualization of bodies in the media. Many will probably disagree with my view, but I'm neither for it nor against it: I'm completely fine with it, as long as it's fairly equal. The unequalness of it is, to me, the entire problem.

Almost every time someone complains on a message board or blog about the sexualization of female characters in comics, there's the one person who pops up and says: "hey, the men are idealized as well! The women have the bodies of supermodels, and the men have the bodies of superheroes." Which is firstly annoying because I like my female characters to have a little more muscle (and general body mass) than the average starved supermodel. But my main point of this post is: there is a difference between idealized/attractive characters, and objectified/sexualized characters.

Female comic characters are sexualized far more often than male characters. Really, male characters are very rarely sexualized, because most of the artists in comics are straight men, and they only want to sexualize the gender they find attractive. Even if they sometimes don't even realize they're doing it. I will buy that some don't realize their doing it, though many do and just don't realize how alienating it is to most (not all, most) women.

A lot of female readers have been calling for a toning down of the sexualization of the women. But many in the comics industry seem extremely reluctant to do that, because it might alienate their male fans who are so used to it (and in some cases buy them just for that; I worked in a comic store for several years, and met a few of these).

So maybe the solution is simply equal opportunity objectification. How would you do that, you ask? How about I show you an example of how not to do it, with a little help from David Finch.

Here's a page from a preview for Spider-Man Unlimited #14 before it came out.



Note: both are in poses that would accentuate their butt.

Black Cat: shiny butt. Spider-man: strategically covered butt. Fail.

Next page:



If I were required to draw that first panel, I would've zoomed out a bit so you could see Spidey's nicely rendered butt as well.

I realize it may look like that pose of Black Cat is a little gratuitous, but this sequence of pages is actually about her butt, so it's relevant to the plot. (I don't know if it's more sad that I could have been joking that these pages are about that, or that I'm completely serious. From the dialogue, she's apparently trying to flirt with him. With her butt.)

(This is also one of the reasons why MJ was split from Parker, by the way. This story came out when they were still married. The marriage limited Spider-man because the only dialogue they could write was Parker trying to keep his mind out of the gutter, rather than just going with it.)

Panel 3. Black Cat: pointing her butt at Spidey while talking to him. Spidey: Still hiding his butt off panel. Fail.

I could keep going, but it'd get a little repetitive. I'm not even all that into butts, it was just something that jumped out at me on that first page. And Spidey does finally show his butt a few pages later, but Finch apparently is no Gil Kane.

Basically, the idea is: for every ridiculous pose meant to show both boobs and butt simultaneously, draw a male in a similarly ridiculous pose. If you're one of those artists that likes to draw all your superheroines nipping out under their costumes, draw the guys nipping out too. Or something. Someone else tell me your male equivalents of these cliches. I'm not that greatest at coming up with that sort of thing.