What's Wrong with This Picture?

[sherlockholmes]

The image below has been making the rounds on my Facebook. It originally popped up on my feed on the page for “It’s Okay to Be Takei”, and has been posted around by about five or six other people. Images travel fast on Facebook.

Comments

[sun_set_blvd]

IA about the bashing. These kinds of images are so frustrating, you see so many examples of this type of image being all "progressive" by showing what "true beauty"/brains/whatever whilst deriding other women for being "bimbos". Especially when the Geek Culture alternatives, created mainly for men anyway, are problematic.

[suraktaarati]

This is what I came here to say.

[sun_set_blvd]

I really don't like how they've selected images so that most of the top row are wearing revealing clothes and the bottom row are covered up, as if to say "Look at these jezebels!" It's irritating especially with someone like Lady Gaga (who I'm not even a fan of) where that photo is so different to her general look anyway, and nobody would describe her as a "Barbie" type.

I don't buy for a second that most sci-fi fictional women are realistic or positive female characters anyway.

[darth_snarky]

Yeah, and it's not like geek culture doesn't have characters in sexy, revealing outfits. They're just not in this meme.

[sherlockholmes]

This comment needs to be accompanied by a picture of 'slave leia's from a convention....

Seriously though, I agree. My biggest problem is still the praising of one group by demeaning another though -- that isn't fair.

[purple01_prose]

Or comic book heroines! Sometimes I look at them like, JFC, can only Dustin Nguyen actually draw women?

[darth_snarky]

Considering geek culture's favorite outfit of Princess Leia's is the metal bikini (and that the Star Trek lady I see around the most is not Dax* but Seven of Nine in her silver catsuit--I mean, if you want Barbie and a ray gun, there you go) I think geek culture can shut the hell up. Just because you fetishize women's ability to kickass doesn't mean you're any better. Objectification and sexualization are still objectifying and sexualizing no matter how you slice it.

*it might be unfair of me because Ezri was only around for the last season, but of course it's the leggier, busty-er Jadzia Dax

[sherlockholmes]

It's one of the biggest 'what makes a strong woman' mistakes, I think. Like, making a woman physically strong isn't a bad thing, per se, but it isn't the be all and end all of 'good role-model' and I don't like that this macro is implying it is (and that it's doing so at the expense of real women, of course).

It makes me think of Kate Beaton's Strong Female Characters comic.

[lonely_hour]

words from another person float to my head when i saw this: requiring women to be feminine and punishing them at the same time basically sums up sexism.

[greenie_breizh]

I was thinking that. Apart from the fact that images from geek culture are clearly self-selected to erase the very sexualized images of women you can find in geek culture, this also bothers me because it clearly celebrates "masculinity" over "femininity"... while at the same time not actually presenting any actually masculine woman, because, hey, butch women are dykes and who finds THAT attractive?

Ugh.

[katiemariie]

I hate this picture like burning. Aeryn Sun does not approve.