aiya
(Also posted to Tumblr, since I have access to that at work...)
I'm almost hesitant to even put this here, but it bugs me and I haven't started my workday yet, so you get my prolly disjointed thoughts about a conversation I had with my hubby this morning. Mostly because it brought to mind meinterrupted and her "seething ball of feminist rage" tag. I don't want to start any potentially wanky arguments on my journal, please, but conversations are okay. I don't have the time or inclination to get into arguments online, after all.
It started with the discussion about a girl writing to Disney asking for a plus size princess to relate to. He kind of agreed with one speaker in the morning that thought it wasn't a good idea, because then girls wouldn't try to get to a healthy weight; he did think that woman was going overboard when she said "If you want to have diabetes and heart disease and reproductive issues, then by all means, be plus sized!" He didn't seem to get my point that plus sized right now starts with size 12, and that's not exactly unhealthily overweight. Disney princesses are drawn to look more like size 0, which most women can't attain in a healthy way. That to me is more dangerous than drawing girls that actually look like girls. Because it is a question of can you relate to the character or not. I'm half Asian, and I brought up the fact that growing up, there was NOBODY on TV that I could really really identify with, and that when "All American Girl" came out, I was all over that even though she was Korean and not exactly the same culture. My God, an Asian woman on TV that was funny and had interactions with people and was real. FINALLY!
He didn't get it. He's a cis white male, and his privilege was showing, especially when somehow the conversation turned toward comics. Which is really when I started thinking of you, meinterrupted, since you're my source for all new comicy things. I haven't really followed any books, and it's only because of my recent Natasha-based Marvelverse stories that I even troll the Wikia at all. (research and accuracy in comic canon? hahahaha. I still try. :D ) I started getting pissy when he said that it's not just marketing's fault, because it's the artists that cater to the fanboys, and that the skimpy costumes allow some female cosplayers to have an excuse to dress that way. (Okay, he may have used more unflattering language than that.) He also felt that the recent movement to add POC's and Nightstar being gay was a gimmick, and that it really had nothing to do with the story at all.
I brought up the lack of Wonder Woman movie or Black Widow movie, and his argument was that their stories weren't dynamic enough to carry a whole movie, and that their rogues gallery was lacking. (To be fair, he said the same of Hawkeye.) His argument in a previous conversation we had was that women could only really have women as a villain, and then it would come down to a catfight, which no one really wants to read. Men, on the other hand, had other men as well as women as villains, but they never hit the women because of sexism. Which I cry bullshit, but I wasn't much of a comic reader, so I didn't have much to argue toward my point. (My geekiness is all writing and RPG stuff.)
He is a good guy, I wouldn't have married him otherwise. But sometimes he makes comments like that which make me want to smack him upside the head for being so ignorant.
I'm almost hesitant to even put this here, but it bugs me and I haven't started my workday yet, so you get my prolly disjointed thoughts about a conversation I had with my hubby this morning. Mostly because it brought to mind meinterrupted and her "seething ball of feminist rage" tag. I don't want to start any potentially wanky arguments on my journal, please, but conversations are okay. I don't have the time or inclination to get into arguments online, after all.
It started with the discussion about a girl writing to Disney asking for a plus size princess to relate to. He kind of agreed with one speaker in the morning that thought it wasn't a good idea, because then girls wouldn't try to get to a healthy weight; he did think that woman was going overboard when she said "If you want to have diabetes and heart disease and reproductive issues, then by all means, be plus sized!" He didn't seem to get my point that plus sized right now starts with size 12, and that's not exactly unhealthily overweight. Disney princesses are drawn to look more like size 0, which most women can't attain in a healthy way. That to me is more dangerous than drawing girls that actually look like girls. Because it is a question of can you relate to the character or not. I'm half Asian, and I brought up the fact that growing up, there was NOBODY on TV that I could really really identify with, and that when "All American Girl" came out, I was all over that even though she was Korean and not exactly the same culture. My God, an Asian woman on TV that was funny and had interactions with people and was real. FINALLY!
He didn't get it. He's a cis white male, and his privilege was showing, especially when somehow the conversation turned toward comics. Which is really when I started thinking of you, meinterrupted, since you're my source for all new comicy things. I haven't really followed any books, and it's only because of my recent Natasha-based Marvelverse stories that I even troll the Wikia at all. (research and accuracy in comic canon? hahahaha. I still try. :D ) I started getting pissy when he said that it's not just marketing's fault, because it's the artists that cater to the fanboys, and that the skimpy costumes allow some female cosplayers to have an excuse to dress that way. (Okay, he may have used more unflattering language than that.) He also felt that the recent movement to add POC's and Nightstar being gay was a gimmick, and that it really had nothing to do with the story at all.
I brought up the lack of Wonder Woman movie or Black Widow movie, and his argument was that their stories weren't dynamic enough to carry a whole movie, and that their rogues gallery was lacking. (To be fair, he said the same of Hawkeye.) His argument in a previous conversation we had was that women could only really have women as a villain, and then it would come down to a catfight, which no one really wants to read. Men, on the other hand, had other men as well as women as villains, but they never hit the women because of sexism. Which I cry bullshit, but I wasn't much of a comic reader, so I didn't have much to argue toward my point. (My geekiness is all writing and RPG stuff.)
He is a good guy, I wouldn't have married him otherwise. But sometimes he makes comments like that which make me want to smack him upside the head for being so ignorant.