Hello all
Any contemporary woman struggling to strike a balance between being a strong individual and being sexy ought to try drawing herself that way. Through the years different media has labored with these contradictory ideas as well. Comics are no exception. Power Girl, published by DC comics, is a good example. The comic is about a female superhero in New York who is a cousin of Superman. In the earlier years of comics, women were often portrayed as the damsel in distress, or the dumb blond hero that wasn’t very powerful and was there as a love interest for the male lead characters. As comics have grown with the times, women’s roles have changed as well. Power Girl, who was first published in the 1990’s, has many progressive qualities. Female characters in comics are growing up and becoming more like real women in the writing, but the art is still stuck in a male fantasy.
Power Girl has strength, independence, intelligence and compassion. She is equally physically strong as her male counterparts since she has the same powers as Superman. She stops a space ship from colliding with Earth. She’s independent; she doesn’t rely on a male figure to keep her safe, or to love her. Unlike most male superhero comics, Power Girl has no love interest. She is also a power to be reckoned with in the professional world as the CEO of a new company. Through her company she recognizes that she can’t solve all the world’s problems by beating up the villain; instead she tries to help humanity address the energy crisis by investing in researching new sources of energy. Superman, however, is still focused on defeating Lex Luthor (his arch enemy) when he could also be promoting green energy or showing new research in his articles as a journalist. She is overcoming the male fantasy of individual accountability; for example, we’re hunting down Osama bin Laben when we should be trying to work with Middle Eastern countries to discourage terrorism. She also breaks the old stereotype of the “dumb blond” by working her way through tough situations with her brains, not just her brawn. When a villain called Ultra-Humanite has her completely trapped physically she uses her smarts to get out. She uses her freezing breath to escape, something Ultra-Humanite forgot. Power Girl also has some of the best female qualities. She is caring and compassionate with those she’s fighting and defending. When Ultra-Humanite is burned almost completely in a fight, her first thought is to get him to a hospital, not leave him behind. She has also taken in a young hero Terra and is raising her to reach her full potential. People look up to Power Girl; as she fights off robots one male onlooker shouts, “Kick their butts PG!” She’s not cocky with her powers like many male superheroes can be at times. When she’s injured and a firefighter helps her walk he calls her a hero and she replies “I can say the same thing about you.”
All of Power Girl’s good qualities can be over shadowed as you look at the art of the comic. She has been drawn with the “perfect” body; wears revealing clothes, and is often shown in erotic positions during fight scenes. Her proportions remind a reader more of Barbie; oversized breasts, perfect hourglass figure, and long fit legs. Her costume shows as much skin as possible. She has boots, but lacks pants; her figure-fitting white spandex has a one piece bathing suit style bottom. She has long sleeves and a high neckline, but a large hole is cut over her chest. One wonders how her breasts keep from falling out. She is also constantly illustrated as a sex object and she’s not much better than a pin-up girl when the images often show her undressing from her regular clothes into her costume. When Superman changes into his costume, he’s shown opening his shirt just enough to see his insignia for one or two panels. As Power Girl sheds her clothing she’s posed suggestively in at least two panels, one for the shirt, then the pants. In one panel a drunken homeless man is seen in the background celebrating as her clothing falls at his feet. In many of the fight scenes, where her physical strength is emphasized, she is often posed in an erotic manner. The angles look more like something out of a fashion shoot than a fight. In one panel she has been pushed to the ground by her opponent and as she rises, kneeling on the ground, he is reaching over her almost as if he was mounting her. There are moments in the dialogue too where villains hint at her sexual appeal. Utlra-Humanite who wants to put his brain in her body (which is erotic enough on its own) jokes that many men have wanted her body, “but I’m the one who’s going to get it.”Power Girl seems used to comments like this, and also to the fact that many of her rescued male citizens and readers tend to look at her chest rather than her face. “Ahem…eyes up here. How ‘bout a ‘thanks for saving my life,’ or at least a little smile?” she says with a resigned look on her face. If it bothers her so much, then why wear the costume? Of course, none of that is really her decision; it’s her creators and the editors of the comic. They seem to be focused more on sales rather than portraying real women, and sex sells. Though females in comics are slowly getting their clothes put back on since the “babe years” of the 1990’s, there’s still a long way to go. The unfortunate truth is that more men than women read comics, especially in the superhero genre, and comics with female leads don’t sell as well if they aren’t sexy. Perhaps more women would read comics if the characters and the art were more appealing to them.
