It’s hard to get into comics these days, and it’s not just because there’s an insane amount of canonical back story for each universe and you need to parse through the entire thing to fully appreciate modern-day comics. It’s because there’s an insane amount of latent sexism under the surface.
Seriously, look at this shit:
What the hell is this? Either they just removed this poor woman’s spine so that her boobs and butt could be facing the audience at all times, or she was hit by a train and her body is now a mangled, twisted octopus of misogynistic paraphilia. Either way, something is severely not right here.
Sensing that something was amiss, artist Noelle Stevenson of Gingerhaze came up with a way to fix all the sexist poses:
How to fix every Strong Female Character pose in superhero comics: replace the character with Hawkeye doing the same thing.
And thus was born The Hawkeye Initiative, a Tumblr where artists would draw the Avengers’ Hawkeye in sexy poses to highlight how incredibly stupid they were. The drawings range from professional-looking . . .
To adorably cartoony . . .
To disturbingly arousing.
But seriously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with sex appeal. Being sexy on your own terms, in ways that make you feel comfortable, is great. That’s the kind of sex appeal we should be encouraging. But there’s a difference between that and a man creating this weird, wholly impossible sexual ideal where woman contort themselves into these fucked-up, sexy jellyfish monsters because god forbid, we go one panel without seeing both Wonder Woman’s boobs and ass. Please, for god’s sake, cut these stupid poses out. We get it: you’ve never actually met a real woman before. No more of this shit.
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