Superheroines

You'd probably never heard of Malin Akerman before Watchmen. And with pretty good reason. Before this what'd she done? 27 Dresses. An uncredited turn in The Invasion. And the reason she'd never done anything big is that she sucks as an actress. After the movie came out, though, there was a big storm of talk about how sexy she played the Silk Spectre, probably an obligatory media hype deal. In my opinion, the Silk Spectre was much sexier in the comic than in the movie.

(The comparison image I found on a design blog called Eithin, which had some interesting analysis that might explain why I like the comic better.)

Of course, this is not Akerman's fault: superheroines are always sexier in print than on the screen. I'll grant a couple of exceptions, then prove the rule.

Mystique:

Played by Rebecca Romijin-Stamos, she's a lot sexier than comic-book and animated versions.




Wonder Woman:

Played by Lynda Carter is comparably sexy to her modern comic-book alter-ego, and certainly sexier than the original newsprint version.


Invisible Girl/Woman:

I haven't yet gotten up the stomach to watch the Fantastic Four movies, but I'm willing to grant that Jessica Alba can do a sexier portrayal of the housewifely Sue Storm.







But most of the time it goes the other way:

Rogue:

Why change this sexy Cajun into an awkward, accentless adolescent? What you lose: great big tits, tons of superpowers she gained by draining other mutants, confidence to stand beside other X-Men as an equal, and a facade of independence developed to cope with her inability to ever get physically close to another human being. In particular, the tension between her confidence in her power and her emotional vulnerability when anyone threatens to actually get close makes her character interesting and complex. What you gain: teenage angst, a lame Iceman love triangle, and an equally lame mentor relationship with Wolverine.

Storm:

Storm, like many of the X-Men has undergone some drastic changes over her 40+ years of existence in the Marvel universe. In changing her to real life, not only did Storm lose one of her enduring features (great tits), but she became a much flatter character. We know Halle Berry can act (see Monster's Ball and a surprisingly good job in Swordfish), but we also know she will let herself totally phone it in and go through the motions to collect a paycheck (Catwoman). Over the course of the X-Men movies, she became less and less of the former and more and more of the latter.

Jean Grey:

The first incarnation where I met Jean Grey, the old X-Men cartoons, taught me that redheads could be sexy. The cliche is that they're unstable, in my personal experience, they were simply bookish, and most live-action portrayals showed them as comic. Even Ginger, from Gilligan's Island, should have been sexy but wasn't. She paled beside Mary Ann. Despite her rockin' bod, she was ditzy and bland as a character.

All this to say, Jean Grey was sexy in the cartoon. Smart, strong, independent but emotionally vulnerable, and with great tits she was a joy to watch, despite the limited quality of the animation. And then she became the Phoenix. Throw me into that fire.

Famke Janssen seems like a good choice to play her. She's got a good bod, some acting experience, and she understands the role, as shown by the quote on her Chickipedia page: "We've always been ready for female superheros. Because women want to be them and men want to do them." Perfect. But she does a moderate turn at best as Jean Grey. Costuming is partly to blame, again, when instead of using her awesome Phoenix alter-ego, they just put her in a trench coat much of the time.

And I could mention others like Electra, Batgirl, Batman she-villains Catwoman and Poison Ivy, even Aeon Flux.

Do I have an argument here? Yes, and here it is: superheroines are always sexier in comics because:

3) Their clothes are unreal--what fabric can cling like that & still not bunch, bulge, or tear?

2) They're unreal--we know you can't have those tits & that body, but a man can dream, can't he?

1) They're deeper--comics don't spend a lot of time developing character, but you throw a crumb out here and there over the course of decades & it adds up to something. Actresses rarely inhabit the roles, they just go through the motions, and nothing is less sexy than just going through the motions, which is Malin Akerman's chief sin.

Breasts: How Big Is Too Big?

I remember one of my first discussions on the topic of female anatomy, probably around 4th grade or so, was on the subject of breasts and how big is best. Funny that now, more than a quarter of a century later, I'm not only still talking about it--it's a major part of my job.

In 4th grade, I was generally of the opinion that bigger was pretty much better, but the opinion that ruled the day was more than a handful doesn't matter because what're you going to do with the rest of the breast? Never mind that since then I've learned there's a lot more things you can do with breasts than just touch them--this remains a legitimate, defensible opinion . . . that I don't happen to share.

Now, we can all agree that Sheyla Hershey, with her record-breaking 38 KKK is pretty gross and disproportionate, but that doesn't really matter, because her goal is not to look good. Instead, she's locked in an existential battle with the universe, her own personal quest for breasts. It's like that racer in "The Distance," you know? All the rest of us are just shadows, a phantom audience whose participation in her show is neither necessary nor important--she just goes on to the exclusion of all else, sacrificing health, personal relationships, even beauty to attain her insane goal. I can dig it, and even admire it the way I admire those idiots who died trying to scale Everest's icy heights, or even that symbolic leopard frozen atop mount Kilimanjaro (yeah, squirm, Hemmingway, squirm!)

Anyway, I got distracted there. My point is, how big should a woman's breasts be, ideally? This particular phase of my consideration was brought on by Page 3 Girl, Nicola McLean.

Page 3 Girls, for those who don't know, are women who appear topless on the 3rd page of the British tabloid, The Sun. Nicola McLean was--and continues to be--one of the most popular Page 3 Girls ever, with her perky 34B breasts, which I have to say look pretty good to me.

But then she decided she wanted bigger breasts, so she quit being a Page 3 Girl (where they stand for no such nonsense), and embarked on an abortive acting/modeling/general celebritying career, which eventually hit its high point as being a WAG (Wives and Girlfriends, normally refers to footballers' significant others) and with the reality show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. It was in this role that she became the focus of a survey on breast size conducted at British plastic surgery clinics, where women were asked, simply, are her breasts too big? Look at her picture from a stunt in the TV show (with idiotic product placement) and decide for yourself.

The overwhelming opinion: Yes, they are too big. The majority of women agreed that a C-cup is the ideal size for a woman's breasts, not McLean's ludicrous GG. Now, consider a similarly proportioned WAG with greater market penetration in the US: Gemma Atkinson.

Dr. C's Science Corner: Men Proven to Objectify Women

If you had any doubts, here's a pretty definitive statement that men really do objectify women. 'Strue.

Researchers at Princeton did an experiment where they showed college-aged men inside an MRI pictures of women in bikinis and noted that the areas of the men's brains associated with "handling tools" lit up. And when men were shown images of fully clad women, this didn't happen. Ostensibly, this is evidence of something known as "benevolent sexism," but it's really much simpler than that. Put a college-age hetero male alone in a confined place with pictures of women in bikinis and of course the first thing he's going to think about is "handling a tool."

In a related study, men were shown to associate bikini-clad women (as above) with first-person verb forms like [I] "push," "handle," and "grab." Whereas fully clothed women (as below) were more often associated with 3rd person verb forms like [she] "pushes," "handles," and "grabs." Go figure.

Movie Review: Ginger Snaps

While my friends over at The Larryville Chronicles are considering feminine werewolf fiction, it seems appropriate that I should talk about Ginger Snaps, a movie that centers on a young woman who becomes a lycanthrope, and slowly, methodically, "wolfs out."Ginger Snaps is no Werewolf Woman, nor is it a Howling II. Sex is at (or near) the center of the movie, but it is not an exploitation flick. Our heroine Ginger is played by the sexy Katharine Isabelle, whom you probably know from . . . well, you probably don't know her from anything else. She's in a few things, but it seems like she was pretty much made for this role. And she's in all the sequels, which tells you her career went nowhere after this. Anyway, Ginger and her Brigitte (excellently played to mousey Mokey perfection by Emily Perkins) are a couple of isolated Goth chicks who are also late bloomers biologically, meaning they haven't started their periods yet, even though Ginger is 16 and Brigitte 15.

The movie really starts moving when Ginger gets her period, gets attacked by a werewolf, and suddenly gets really sexy hot and therefore popular with the guys, which results in strain between the sisters. Brigitte and Ginger who used to share everything suddenly have nothing in common because Ginger is into boys now, and is, well, becoming a werewolf. The developing tension between the two sisters is probably the best part of the movie from a non-genre standpoint, the place where the movie best delves into the core of human relationships by exposing how the simple process of moving on in time alienates us from those who used to know us well.

The movie tries very hard to bring lycanthropy into the mundane world. Part of this is accomplished by its blending of the supernatural with the natural: the linking of werewolfism and menstruation as monthly curses, the transformation into the werewolf compared to puberty ("hair where there wasn't hair before"). This part works metaphorically, but I was unimpressed by the movie's attempt to turn lycanthropy into a disease that can be cured with homeopathic medicine, although Ginger's passing it on like an STD leads to some humorous moments. The movie is engaging and funny, and Isabelle is super-sexy, even (or especially?) with a tail.

But in the end I don't think the movie quite comes together. One thing that's missing is the visceral, painful transformation of the body that makes werewolf movies like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London so successful. This is not just special effects, it's the visual evidence of the body being wrested out of one's control, the instant when the animal within takes over and a man becomes a monster before his very eyes, which is why werewolves are more often men. This is something all men have experienced, especially under the influence of desire, but also under anger, something that makes us hang our head in guilt or embrace with false bravado the shameful acts we have perpetrated in those moments.

In place of this transformation, Ginger Snaps substitutes a gradual transformation. Kudos for the attempt, but Ginger's frustration over razors filled with lupine hair is just not the same thing. And since Ginger's final transformation occurs off screen (probably due to a lack of special effects budget for this Canadian flick) the final sequences are detached from her character, and the conclusion, I felt, was very flat. The movie is certainly worth watching: it's interesting, and it's better than a piece of crap like Cursed.

Warning: Adult Content Below


I have long known about Ginger Snaps, but have avoided watching it partly because I blame it for the disappearance of a porn site I used to love with the same name. It focused on redheads, of course, but its series were different because the girls weren't necessarily pretty in the standard sense of models, they were cute/sexy and had faces with personality. They were also better at "selling" the moment--they genuinely looked like they were really engaged in the moment, a feature that is all-too-often lacking in porn. Here's a sample of one of my favorite series so you can see what I mean.

Review: Stripperella

Stripperella was recommended to me by the Netflix system, probably for my combination of interests in Cosi Fan Tutti and Batman: The Animated Series. It was one of those Netflix surprises, when something that was 128 in your queue suddenly became number 1 when you weren't looking. So, I watched it.

How was it? you may ask. Sometimes it was better than expected, from both a prurient and political standpoint.

It was certainly more titillating than I expected. I knew it was produced by and shown on Spike, the so-called first TV station for men, but actually the home of almost 24-hour ST:TNG reruns. Plus, it's basic cable, so what I'm expecting is risque jokes and skimpy outfits. Stripping in the background, and that consists of taking off coats, scarves, parkas, maybe a shirt, but no actual nudity. Surprise: not only is stripping a centepiece of several episodes, but there are a lot of breasts on display. Animated breasts, of course, but very well drawn and capturing many of the qualities of great breasts. Dynamic, balanced, and well-shaped, these breasts are much better than your average anime fare. And Stripperella looks great, especially when she goes undercover as a nun (Sister Mary Hadalamb) in the episode where she faces off against a crazed plastic surgeon (episode seen below, but no pics of the nun costume).

Stripping sequences are well-rendered and imaginative--at least as entertaining as watching real-life strippers, partly because the sequences are shorter and it's easier to maintain interest over these shorter spans. And partly because these are fantasy women and the "floating eye" of the camera can put your eye just where you want it to be. There is one sequence, performed by Stripperella's alter ego, Erotica Jones, that is especially long and lovingly illustrated which pushes the limit but works overall because it is working at an internal barrier set by the series: you never actually see Stripperella topless (perhaps a condition of Pamela Anderson's work on the series?)

Sociopolitically, I guess the main question is whether Stripperella is degrading to women, a question I might not be fit to answer, but I'll take a stab at. Stripperella as a character is not, I don't think, a degrading portrayal of women. Sure, she's supersexy in a Barbie-perfect way (happy 50th, BTW), a sexualized figure of femininity, but this is not her only characteristic or even her defining characteristic. Nor is she more unrealistic than most super-heroines, and her explicit characterization as a sexual being seems partly to be a call-out to comic book sexiness.

And she may be a ditzy blonde, but her universe is one in which everyone is idiotic, so she comes off as being remarkably grounded and even smart.

Overall, she comes off as a moral character, deeply concerned about social causes and prepared to stick her neck (and tits) out for a friend in trouble.

As a series, Stripperella suffers from a number of problems. First, the episodes quickly fall into a routine of small set-pieces from which they do not vary, making the episodes quite boring after a little while. Then, the series underwent a change of producer, leading to a change in the animation style, characters, plots, and themes. While early Stripperella episodes had an animation style similar to Batman: The Animated Series, this changes mid-series into something more like The Flintstones. Stripperella's character, whose early version had an angry edge (especially when stripping) that implied a (slightly) greater depth, becomes merely her surface, a dumb blonde. The plots become dumber, the gags cheaper, characters blander. Even stripping, the only thing the early episodes took really seriously, something with real stakes-- an artistic avenue of expression with genuine rewards for success and consequences for failure--gets played as a joke.

I'd watch early episodes of Stripperella again with a bunch of guys and a bunch of beers, if somebody else wanted to, but I wouldn't go out of my way.

Like Two Fawns, Twins of a Gazelle

Is how the lover describes his beloved's breasts in the Song of Songs, and he later says,

Your stature is like that of the palm,
And your breasts like clusters of fruit.
I said, "I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit."

Suburban Literature

The other day I was watching The Ice Storm, and it reminded me that one of our regular readers is teaching the novel in his upcoming Suburban Literature class. I don't remember what else was in the syllabus, but I remember it sounding like a pretty good list.

But one text that probably escaped consideration was Housewives at Play, which is in its own way a meditation on many of the important themes literature raises about the nature of suburban life: the isolation and loneliness imposed on us by the separateness of the suburban households, our inability to know our neighbors, our inability to know ourselves or even maintain a semblance of a unified self under the stress of the numerous roles we play during the course of our lives, the fragility of the family, and the difficulty of finding true and lasting satisfaction (sexual and otherwise) within the confines of the heteronormative social structure. Of course, it's also a classic of lesbian dominatrix comix. I can't reproduce the cover or frontispiece here w/o violating my own 70s PG standard, so here are the first couple pages of the first issue to give the flavor of the art, etc.



















You can imagine where it goes from here. Yes, there. And there. And there.

In later episodes, the plot spirals ludicrously out of control in the nature of a genre text that explores every inch of its limited territory, but at its core the story is about insuppressable desire and the consequences of following that desire. In later episodes, Catherine seeks therapy for her sexual addiction, tries to dissociate herself from friends who encourage her "abnormal" behavior, and is finally forced to separate from her family. In more recent installments, the comic portrays a whole community of women forced into separation from their families. These women still love their husbands and children, but like refugees or prisoners they can only express this love in letters.

So, is this a serious piece of literature? No, it's a genre text, primarily designed to fulfill its generic obligations, but, like all genre texts, it brushes against real life in sometimes illuminating ways. Here's how the artist & creator, "Rebecca" describes the rationale for the text:

I think it first started for me when my kids were small. I would take them (one toddeling, the other in stroller) down to the playground in the section where we lived at the time for sun, air, and playtime. The 3 year old would busy herself in the sandbox while the baby and I sat and watched the world go by. That world of course, was filled with what I now like to reffer to as "hot mom's". You've seen them. Pretty young girls ranging in age from 20's to 40's with diaper bag and stroller in tow, having absolutely no idea (or do they?) how sexy and desireable they look. They wear shorts and baggy pull overs, and every time they bend or stoop to check the baby an opportunity is given to peek down her blouse (at full, swollen breasts) or at the curve of her hips and ass. Their hair is perfumed, silky, and the latest magazine style which compliments perfectly her wardrobe from JCPenney.
Ahem. Well then. Let's face it though, God definately knew what He was doing when he made women. Any woman who won't admit she admires (or is jealous of) how pretty her neighbor/teacher/sister/hairdresser/etc is is just not being honest. I love girls, and I love drawing them. I love depicting them in all sorts of ways that (most likely) would never happen, except in my neighborhood (the one in my mind). I can (and do) have a sex fantasy everywhere from the grocery store, bank, walking in the park, or the fitting room in Kohl's. I spend most of my days horny and wet. If my children only knew what their mom does at home all day..teeheehee. Kisses to you all, my wonderful fans...Rebecca