I'm kinda iffy on Adam Hughes, sometimes his art isn't that bad, other times it is clearly objectifying.

However, this really pisses me off:



Clearly he doesn't understand why so many people are upset at Turner's latest image (or Power Girl's portrayal period). There are occasions when saying "Uhm, the entire concept is unrealistic, why are you focusing on this?" For example, being upset that certain dinosaur's from various "-assic" periods are being mixed together for an animated movie. Unless the studio says "based on a true story" there's not much to balk at.

This is entirely different, this is a portrayal of a female character; this is also a cumulation of portrayals of women in comics in general. This isn't combining two dinosaurs that were separated by millions of years in time, this is about portrayal of women. Do images like this cause men to sexually harass or assault women? No. Do they cause sexism and misogyny on a grand scale? No. Our society has that already from thousands of years of oppressing and objectifying women. We're only now starting to move beyond it, but it's clear women and men are not on entirely equal footing. Certainly, reducing cheesecake covers like Turner's won't change things around, but it WILL help.

This is one thing so many guys just can't (or won't) get. I hate to tote out the phrase "male privilege" since it is used frequently and often gets the guys who really do need to listen to just ignore it. However it IS. There are quite a few guys who do understand it, at least to a certain degree. However, since Turner is still getting work (and not changing how he does it), along with the myriad of other artists who do cheesecake covers and art in general.

This IS objectifying. There is an argument that the male characters are just as unrealistic. This is true, but in a different context. Male characters in comics are often unrealistic in their physical look, but they are rarely OBJECTIFIED. Objectification is the issue here, not just the unrealistic nature of the cover. The unrealistic nature contributes to the objectification. The cover is clearly unrealistic, but if that were the only issue, it is very unlikely many people would be upset about it. It's because Power Girl is objectified and objectified so blatantly that has people upset.

Both men and women are objectified in daily life, however, there are few who will argue that men are more objectified than women. It's very clear on TV, movies, ads, etc that women are objectified significantly more than men. This happens in every day life, as well. For example, a man came into the comic shop I work at and the first thing he commented on was my attractiveness. It wasn't for another full half hour before he even asked if I liked comics. (Which is another thing entirely, but I'll get into that some other time) That's just one instance from one woman. There are over three billion women on this planet and it is VERY unlikely that any of them will go through life without being objectified by a strange man. For the three billion men? Yeah, some of them will, but not to the extent women are.

So what does all of this have to do with the one lone image by Michael Turner? Or at the very most the amount of cheesecake/objectification in comic books at large? No, they aren't the deciding factor in the cultural objectification of women, but they CERTAINLY don't help. I'm not advocating censorship; most certainly not. What I am advocating is social awareness of the issue; that objectification in and of itself is not a positive thing. It's not an entirely negative thing either; it's human nature and as long as it's equal and held in check, it isn't anything more than people thinking "oh, she/he's hot!" On the scale that it is though, it is negative, and discounts the feelings of over half of the population. Not every woman will agree with what I'm saying, but to repeatedly put something like that unapologetically out there is saying "This is for the men, I don't much care what the women think." (which is of course, assuming all men are boob-obsessed...)

So no, AH!, this isn't about realism, or the lack thereof. This is about something that is a real issue in society today, an issue that affects over half the population. Turner's image is just a very small contributor to this problem, but it does contribute. As trite as it may sound, even little things can cause large ripples. That's all I'd like Turner, Hughes, and others to be conscious of.