Ryxander's Rules for Sexy Women in Entertainment
OK, so much has been bandied about lately on the internet about the oversexualization of women in just about everything (but often comics), and I can no longer resist laying out my own opinions.
It's pretty simple, for me. I have no problem with the fact that heterosexual boys like to look at scantily clad girls. I have no problem with people giving them sexy girls to look at. But I really wish they (by which I mean comics, movies, video games, book covers, etc) would just follow a few simple rules:
1) Sexiness Should Support, Not Undermine, Character Coolness. This should just be common sense, because cool characters are sexier anyway. Don't make your female characters JUST eye candy, or take a character who IS more than just eye candy and spend so much attention on making her ALSO eye candy that her coolness is lost or glossed over in the process. And, of course, make your female characters as cool as your male ones and give them equal screen time where appropriate.
2) Equal Opportunity Sexiness, Please. If you want your audience to include heterosexual women, it would be nice to see some kind of parity between male and female sexiness, thanks. Give us some hot guys with their shirts off (and good hair? Could we get some guys with good hair?) in roughly equal proportion to the ladies with their boobs on display. Give us about as many normal-to-nerdy-looking girls getting a really hot guy as normal-to-nerdy-looking guys getting a really hot girl. (If your audience really IS all heterosexual guys and it's just a cheesecake-fest, never mind, carry on. But please don't write us ladies off as an audience for no reason. We are a large potential market.)
3) Don't Shatter My Suspension of Disbelief. Again, this is just common sense, and I am not sure why this is so hard. Don't twist people into uncomfortable or impossible positions for no reason, where there are plenty of perfectly sexy REAL poses you could use. Don't have your female characters randomly wear virtually no clothing for NO REASON WHATSOEVER when it doesn't fit the context (like, I love Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, but WHY DOES THE MAJOR HAVE NO PANTS?!?!), or have action hero babes wear ridiculously impractical clothing, or, for the love of Zeus, dress the Preschool Teacher Barbie in a tight, shiny miniskirt and heels (hey preschool teachers! I bet you TOTALLY dress like that at work, right?). This ties in to #1, above. If a video game character's idea of dressing for adventure is to run around in a thong, I am going to have a lot of trouble believing that anyone is taking them seriously. I don't mind a bit of bending of realism, like somewhat low-cut armor (so long as the armor looks cool otherwise and the movie/comic/etc is not trying to be realistic) or costumes you would totally pop out of if you actually did a backflip in them for real, but please do not bludgeon my immersion to death with a sledgehammer.
That's it. If a comic/movie/etc follows these rules, so far as I'm concerned it can have as many women running around in string bikinis and negligee as it wants without annoying me in the slightest.
Since it's way too easy to come up with examples where these rules get broken, I wanted to give some shoutouts to cases where they're actually FOLLOWED.
Like, YAY HUNGER GAMES! Katniss wears SENSIBLE CLOTHING in the movie! She doesn't randomly have her raincoat unzipped halfway down her chest and have a pushup bra on! THANK YOU!!!
Also, for characters where being sexy is part of their shtick and perhaps even one of their superpowers, please compare Michelle Pfieffer's Catwoman vs. Halle Berry's Catwoman. Both sexy, but the former gets way more respect from me, thank you. My husband assures me that she is also sexier despite wearing much more clothing, but of course YMMV.
Xena, Warrior Princess also is badass despite having cleavage and a miniskirt with her armor, and that whole universe is quite good about following the Equal Opportunity Eye Candy rule.
Fred Perry's Gold Digger comics sometimes push the boundaries of plausibility, but are also very good about equal opportunity hotness, and he seems to largely be pretty good about finding at least vaguely plausible poses for his characters (and a wide variety of body types and ethnicities, too, so thank you Mr. Perry!).
Trinity in the Matrix movies (bearing in mind I never saw the third because I was warned off, and really I'm mostly talking about the first anyway) is also a great example of sexiness without sacrificing coolness or believability, and as for equal opportunity eye candy, they certainly didn't cast Keanu Reeves for his acting ability.
The Thor movie was great about this. Sif's armor was BADASS as well as sexy, there was plenty of boy eye candy, and Natalie Portman's scientist chick didn't have her shirt randomly half unbuttoned like so many female scientists do in entertainment media (though she was wearing way too much makeup for a chick living in a trailer in the desert and interested only in her research, but I'm willing to give that a pass).
In general, I would also propose the rule that if ladies see your sexy female character's outfit and want one for themselves, you pass, even if it's not completely plausible. Genuine awesomeness will let you get away with a lot.
How about you guys? What are your favorite examples of sexy female characters done RIGHT?
It's pretty simple, for me. I have no problem with the fact that heterosexual boys like to look at scantily clad girls. I have no problem with people giving them sexy girls to look at. But I really wish they (by which I mean comics, movies, video games, book covers, etc) would just follow a few simple rules:
1) Sexiness Should Support, Not Undermine, Character Coolness. This should just be common sense, because cool characters are sexier anyway. Don't make your female characters JUST eye candy, or take a character who IS more than just eye candy and spend so much attention on making her ALSO eye candy that her coolness is lost or glossed over in the process. And, of course, make your female characters as cool as your male ones and give them equal screen time where appropriate.
2) Equal Opportunity Sexiness, Please. If you want your audience to include heterosexual women, it would be nice to see some kind of parity between male and female sexiness, thanks. Give us some hot guys with their shirts off (and good hair? Could we get some guys with good hair?) in roughly equal proportion to the ladies with their boobs on display. Give us about as many normal-to-nerdy-looking girls getting a really hot guy as normal-to-nerdy-looking guys getting a really hot girl. (If your audience really IS all heterosexual guys and it's just a cheesecake-fest, never mind, carry on. But please don't write us ladies off as an audience for no reason. We are a large potential market.)
3) Don't Shatter My Suspension of Disbelief. Again, this is just common sense, and I am not sure why this is so hard. Don't twist people into uncomfortable or impossible positions for no reason, where there are plenty of perfectly sexy REAL poses you could use. Don't have your female characters randomly wear virtually no clothing for NO REASON WHATSOEVER when it doesn't fit the context (like, I love Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, but WHY DOES THE MAJOR HAVE NO PANTS?!?!), or have action hero babes wear ridiculously impractical clothing, or, for the love of Zeus, dress the Preschool Teacher Barbie in a tight, shiny miniskirt and heels (hey preschool teachers! I bet you TOTALLY dress like that at work, right?). This ties in to #1, above. If a video game character's idea of dressing for adventure is to run around in a thong, I am going to have a lot of trouble believing that anyone is taking them seriously. I don't mind a bit of bending of realism, like somewhat low-cut armor (so long as the armor looks cool otherwise and the movie/comic/etc is not trying to be realistic) or costumes you would totally pop out of if you actually did a backflip in them for real, but please do not bludgeon my immersion to death with a sledgehammer.
That's it. If a comic/movie/etc follows these rules, so far as I'm concerned it can have as many women running around in string bikinis and negligee as it wants without annoying me in the slightest.
Since it's way too easy to come up with examples where these rules get broken, I wanted to give some shoutouts to cases where they're actually FOLLOWED.
Like, YAY HUNGER GAMES! Katniss wears SENSIBLE CLOTHING in the movie! She doesn't randomly have her raincoat unzipped halfway down her chest and have a pushup bra on! THANK YOU!!!
Also, for characters where being sexy is part of their shtick and perhaps even one of their superpowers, please compare Michelle Pfieffer's Catwoman vs. Halle Berry's Catwoman. Both sexy, but the former gets way more respect from me, thank you. My husband assures me that she is also sexier despite wearing much more clothing, but of course YMMV.
Xena, Warrior Princess also is badass despite having cleavage and a miniskirt with her armor, and that whole universe is quite good about following the Equal Opportunity Eye Candy rule.
Fred Perry's Gold Digger comics sometimes push the boundaries of plausibility, but are also very good about equal opportunity hotness, and he seems to largely be pretty good about finding at least vaguely plausible poses for his characters (and a wide variety of body types and ethnicities, too, so thank you Mr. Perry!).
Trinity in the Matrix movies (bearing in mind I never saw the third because I was warned off, and really I'm mostly talking about the first anyway) is also a great example of sexiness without sacrificing coolness or believability, and as for equal opportunity eye candy, they certainly didn't cast Keanu Reeves for his acting ability.
The Thor movie was great about this. Sif's armor was BADASS as well as sexy, there was plenty of boy eye candy, and Natalie Portman's scientist chick didn't have her shirt randomly half unbuttoned like so many female scientists do in entertainment media (though she was wearing way too much makeup for a chick living in a trailer in the desert and interested only in her research, but I'm willing to give that a pass).
In general, I would also propose the rule that if ladies see your sexy female character's outfit and want one for themselves, you pass, even if it's not completely plausible. Genuine awesomeness will let you get away with a lot.
How about you guys? What are your favorite examples of sexy female characters done RIGHT?