Canon het couples with extreme sexual dimorphism?
Belle/Beast (Beauty and the Beast), Liz/Hellboy (Hellboy), Betty/Bruce (The Incredible Hulk).
I've been thinking about this lately, the fetishization of the dainty woman and the hypermasculine man. He is gigantic, and violent, and muscled up into absurdity. He is dangerous to everyone else, but not to her -- whether because of some intrinsic ( Read more... )
I've been thinking about this lately, the fetishization of the dainty woman and the hypermasculine man. He is gigantic, and violent, and muscled up into absurdity. He is dangerous to everyone else, but not to her -- whether because of some intrinsic ( Read more... )
Also Kitty/Colossus: This and the following page from the mid-80's (check out his hands, thinking of your Sam!discussion) and this cover from 200..7?, who, interestingly, haven't been a case of, uh, inflation, which I was wondering about in a men's-size-in-comics way. Kitty's in fact got a bit taller as she was fourteen and Peter nineteen or so in the first*, and both in their twenties in the second, +/- art styles, of course. It's not as beasty as the Swamp Thing, but there's that definite air of Power Held In Check By His Love For Her.
Ahahaha, I have that Heroic Anatomy book, and it's HILARIOUS. It does have some redeeming points by way of useful figure-construction techniques and so forth, but the thinking behind Why We Draw Men And Women Like This In Comics is dreadful: It's basically Comics Are For Boys, so men must look powerful, and women "sexy", with a huge dollop of women are also not-men, so anything that the male heroes have, the female ones can't, because then we'd be drawing masculine women, which means we fancy manly things, which MAKES US GAY. Seriously. There's a section on how to draw sexy women, but not one on how to draw sexy men. The best bit of the book, though, is Terry Moore's section, which basically rips the piss out of all the other "sexy women" anatomy. Anyway. Yes. My brain went wandering along why comics had so many examples of this Thing. The World of Warcraft piece you link to is very illustrative, I think: a lot of assumptions about one's audience, plus the make-up of the people producing it in the first place... I was racking my brains to think of a woman who pencils for superhero comics, and I couldn't think of one. Colour, yes. Writing, yes. Cover art, yes (Jo Chen's stuff for Buffy springs to mind, and, GUH. Oh! She does do pencilling. I stand pleasantly corrected). Maybe it's a Girls Play Bass thing. Ugh. Sweeping statement has its own broom. But I digress.
Perhaps there's a bit of great ape family anatomy hardwiring in there, too: AFAIK, all the males of the species of great apes are physically larger than the females.
This does do a number on me, but in RL rather than in response to media... I remember being really surprised that I wasn't the stronger of the two in a previous relationship because I was the taller... It was a real shock and somewhat unsettling to find out. Something else that I'm conscious of is of looming or not. If someone's smaller than me (when in a relationship together, I mean) it could give me an unfair advantage in pretty much anything, as a completely separate but related thing to any physical strength I do or don't have, you know? I'm not hugely tall in the general scheme of things, but I've got a good 5-6 inches on the average height for women in this country, and well, I've found being loomed over to be extremely disconcerting, so I certainly don't want to replicate it. Apart from a situation in which it would be welcome, of course. *cough*
*Bit iffy, but she's a genius, and therefore of equal brain to an adult, so it's TOTALLY ok. Which, interestingly, is a reason she gave when chasing him at this point. IIRC, they didn't get together until the Astonishing X-Men arc that that cover above is part of.
Great post. It's really got me thinkying, thank you. :D
Reply
Did you scan stuff for me? DID YOU??? You did, you scanned stuff! ♥ ♥ ♥
Ah, Swamp Thing! I was only familiar with the movie version, which I saw a long long time ago, and can't really remember, and in which she's named... something else. Alice maybe?
On that second link, I'm so taken with that first painting. It reminds me of the Fey Tarot Lovers. (I've been trying to remember that card for days, and did just this second, so you get spammed.) :)
Ooh, I didn't know about Kitty/Colossus, thank you! Giant trashcan lid hands! Wow, that cover, that's. Wow. And now I'm looking at this image and thinking, you know, I've been framing this discussion, at least in my head, as "his thighs are massive." "His shoulders are enormous." "His [fill in the blank] is gigantic." But it's also true to say, "his head is fucking miniscule." Ahaha, that amuses me.
Reply
XD XD XD
Ooh, yeah. The Terry Moore section is so much saner than the others. How messed up is it that advice like "draw real women" is a notable exception.
Have you played WoW? I know nothing about it. Just that it's this huge thing.
jaklsjdfkl Jo Chen is AMAZING; thank you for the link! Everything is... luminous.
In regards to the RL, yeah. That's. I will take this to a less public venue!
Reply
Leave a comment