Of course it's a sexy, and sexist, costume. And of course comic books have been notorious for objectifying women for well over half a century now. But so have noir films and detective fiction, most action movies, and pretty much any genre aimed squarely at guys (of any age).
But that's the point about adapting superhero comics to film: the target demographic is almost exclusively male, as it always has been. Whether it's little boys, or little boys who grew up into big boys. They --- *we* --- are the ones who read the comics, and are interested in seeing those comics become movies. *Not* Oprah Winfrey or the National Organization for Women.
So who, exactly, are you trying to PC these costumes up for? A bunch of feminists who have absolutely no interest in comic books or CBMs in the first place....?
Eh, I know it's like arguing with a brick wall, and you guys will choose to remain ever vigilant against those sexist superheroine costumes for the sake of flowering maidenhood and all (you might want to tell all those girls that dress up in those costumes at all the cosplay conventions to quit reinforcing the stereotype too, no....?), but I'll just close with this:
Lynda Carter dressed up like Wonder Woman in the 1970s. Star-spangled panties, huge cleavage and all. And her show was a massive success --- for men and women alike. Men and boys, who obviously appreciated the eye candy; and women and girls, who actually adopted WW as an empowering force for the growing women's rights movement. I know that's hard for you kids to understand, but I grew up in the 60s and 70s, so I had a bird's eye view, so to speak.
In other words: Lynda Carter dressed up in the WW hooker garb, unchanged from the comics. And you know what? Nobody got offended. Pretty amazing, huh.
1: You brought up the Batman films in your former post. In the Batman films the suits were not form fitting, and were made from a completely different material than what they look like they're made of in the comics. Also, they were all black, which was not Batman's color scheme in the comics until after that. Many other characters you mentioned, like Dare Devil and Captain America, were changed upon similar lines. My suggested change to Spider-Woman's costume, tailor it in such a way and make it out of a material so that it isn't form fitting to the point of looking like body paint, is no more significant a change to the costume than the changes that were made to the characters you mentioned. You can't accuse me of wanting to change the costume to the point that it is no longer recognizably her and no longer a true super hero costume when you cite examples of good costume adaptations that are changed to the exact same extent as what I'm suggesting.
2: You argue that objectifying women in comics and in comic book movies is okay because the target audience and the people who like comic books and comic book movies are men. This is wrong for three reasons:
A) It's demonstratively untrue. Women do read comics. Women do read super hero comics. The demographics of comic book fans are more male than female, but women who love comics and love super heroes do exist. I'll list some right now:
Gail Simone
Angie Harmon
Felicia Day
Teal Sherer
Jill Pantozzi
Jane Espenson
Marti Noxon
Lauren Faust
Amanda Connor
Lindsay Ellis
Kasey Poteet
Aeryn Walker
Rosario Dawson
Tori Amos
Leah Moore
The vast majority of the women on this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_comics_creators
The people who run this blog:
http://girlsreadcomics.wordpress.com
The people who run
this blog:
http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/
Katrina Hill
Morgan Webb
And Kevin Bacon.
(okay the last one was a gag)
Every name on that list is someone who is enough of a public figure that you can google them to confirm their geek cred.
Many of these women would self identify as feminists, and all of them, and many women besides them, are legitimate fans of the super hero genre and/or the comic book medium and they don't deserve to be marginalized because their numbers are fewer.
B) Wether or not it is true (which it is not), rampant and blatant sexism is the reason a lot of women are driven away from comics. I hear a lot of stories about women and girls who were interested in comics and super heroes, they saw a Batman or X-Men movie and thought it was pretty good and decided to try and check out some comics about those characters to see if they would like them too. Five minutes after walking into the comic book store they left without buying anything and vowed never to return again because everyone there was either ignoring them completely when they asked for help looking around or spent the entire time staring at their breasts. Now that's the behavior of the fans and not the content of the comics but the two do feed into each other. There's also always stories of women who, under more friendly circumstances, really tried to look into comics but the first things they were exposed to were gratuitous T&A or female characters being brutally murdered by a villain simply to give a male character something to be upset about, which turned them off to comics.
Alienating half of the world's population from an art form is kind of completely lame.
C) Comic books and comic book movies don't exist in a vacuum. They're a form of art and the influence our culture and how people think and treat each other. Perpetuating stereotypes and ****** world views in art is dumb.
3: You bring up cosplayers, which is a false equivalency. Cosplayers can do whatever they want, I don't care. They're expressing themselves, their bodies, their own opinions of their bodies, and in some cases their sexuality in a way that they feel comfortable with and is fun for them in a setting where the entire point is to get together with like minded people and have a good time. That's great. I respect that enormously.
But that's not really the same thing as the representation of a female character in a work of art. Specifically a female character who is a terrorist and an assassin, lives a life of violence, and ultimately joins a government agency and works as their field agent to atone for her sins. Putting her in an outfit so tight and made from such a thin material that it perfectly forms around the shape of her breasts and makes it look like she's pretty much naked would serve no purpose besides sexualizing her for the sake of sexualizing her. Not using her sexuality as a point in the story, not saying anything about it, just doing it for it's own sake. It's not her, as a character, expressing her sexuality in a way that she's comfortable with and enjoys, it's sexing her up solely for the titillation of others regardless of wether or not it makes sense for the character or setting. That's what I think isn't okay.
4: Wonder Woman.
... okay?
I mean, yeah, her costume was very comic accurate in that show. It also looked wicked silly because that show was wicked silly.
I mean, there, it comes down to a matter of tone, intent, and execution. The Wonder Woman show was basically a live action cartoon, and they put her in the cheap and silly looking costume because it was what she wore in the comics, more or less, and that added to the silly cartoon like tone. That was the purpose behind it, and the show never went out of it's way to sexualize her in it, which is why it never really bothered anybody.
And that's really the point. This all started when someone said the costume on the show
needs to be so tight that bit "shows off her curves and her breasts and everything." That's not making a super comic-accurate costume for the sake of making a silly tongue in cheek live action cartoon show, that's making a super comic accurate costume for the sake of sexualizing her. There's the difference.
And I want to make it clear that, at the core, my reason for my not wanting the costume in the show to look exactly like it does in the comics, level of form fitting-ness and all, is because it would look stupid. This isn't going to be the 70s Wonder Woman, it's not going to be a silly live action cartoon. At least I hope not. And a costume tight enough and thin enough to show off her curves that perfectly would look awful. She wouldn't look like a super-assassin she'd look like a stripper. It wouldn't be something you could take seriously. It would also be wicked sexist, don't get me wrong, but looking laughably bad is the first thing that springs to mind.
And I'm not against her costume design. Keep the design. Keep the color scheme. Keep everything. Just make it looser fitting and made from a thicker material than body paint. That's not any more of a change than any other movie or TV adaptation.
I'm not fighting for banality against exceptionalism. I'm just fighting for good tailoring.
