It’s the same reason sleazy entertainment magazines analyze the bikini bodies of critically acclaimed actresses and soulful singers only wear underwear on their album covers – popular culture shamelessly depends on sexist stereotypes.
For women, this usually means scrapping substance in favour of sexual objectification. If the comic book industry seems more removed from popular culture, don’t be fooled; mainstream comics seem just as satisfied with this kind of exploitation as the more popular multi-billion-dollar industries.
This is not because of anything inherent in the medium itself; it’s because of the way publishers of superhero comics choose to rely on sexist stereotypes that only benefit men. In short, women are often forced into shallow, unrealistic roles that are primarily driven by the male fantasy.
No matter how compelling and thoughtful the stories may be, publishers have proven they’re more interested in the exploitation of male fetishism.
Since the first mainstream comics, sexism has shaped the creation and development of mainstream comic book characters. Because the majority of both publishers and readers are male, unsurprisingly this has posed a problem to female characters.
The docile damsel-in-distress archetype that even Wonder Woman was not immune to among her Super Friends led to sex-driven villainesses purring to Spider-Man, Batman and various X-Men decades later.
That’s not to say male characters aren’t drawn realistically either; for example, readers usually expect the coveted bulging muscles and powerful punches for male superheroes. The issue is male characters are drawn based on heterosexual male fantasies while female characters are also drawn based on heterosexual male fantasies. This means the writers exaggerate the female characters more and male readers have more difficulty separating the idealizations from reality.
Defenders of these types of characters justify them by pointing out most of the industry’s standard superhero characters were originally created during the Golden Age of comic books in the 1930s and ‘40s, when these sexist assumptions were more socially acceptable.
But here’s the kicker. Even characters like Power Girl and Emma Frost were created decades later and between them and the supporting female characters in male superhero comics, few of them have been excused from the male-centric fantasy.
Today’s mainstream comic books are still incorporating the same sexist and misguided character patterns publishers have used for more than a half century.
Detective Comics (D.C.), the publishing juggernaut behind the world’s most recognizable superheroes, had an opportunity to shake up these archaic and problematic depictions of women with this fall’s reboot (which means abandoning continuity in the series’ canons and creating new origin stories).
Instead, they caved to the comfort of old formulas by making sexually motivated female characters even more sex-crazed and drawing them in skimpier costumes, inefficiently fighting crime with a hip suggestively thrust to the side and tottering over unnecessary stilettos.
This is pandering to the male market. D.C. thought they would make more money appealing to a heterosexual male audience rather than an all-inclusive one. D.C., like most other mainstream comics, proved they were more desperate to sell comics than be socially conscious.
So the next time you hear complaints of low female readership, know that they’re not probably coming from the comic book publishers themselves.