Superheroes are meant to help
society. But do they really? Maybe not all the time. While they help the
fictional society within the comics, the people in the real world may not always
encounter their influence positively. Let’s focus mainly on the female
audience, for example- little girls and teens have begun paying attention on
the body structure and image of the female superhero as oppose to focusing on
their actual powers. Here is why this is not healthy- the achievement of having
the sexualized body of Wonder woman is unrealistic! Setting that goal is doomed
to failure, which, of course, results in girls growing up with less self and
body-esteem.
In the
blog “The Problem With Female Superheroes”, Cindi May points out that the sex
appeal of female superheroes enhances women’s values of their body image, and
decreases the value of their intelligence, which as she puts it “[results] in less egalitarian gender role
beliefs and expectations”. May also explains that even the male superhero
always falls in love with the hot and beautiful girl who he ends up risking
everything in order to save her from the villain. I am glad she reminds us that
the “important” women in comics, whether they are the superheroines or the
human girls that win the superhero’s heart, have an effect on women’s value
system: Some comics, she explains, influence women’s and society’s beliefs
about gender roles -“Men are better
at taking on mental challenges than women” and “Men and women should share
household work equally”; other comics challenge women’s self-esteem about their
body image.
Female superheroes have possibly
a more negative influence on girls and women rather than positive, and the
potential cause of that is the heroines’ hypersexualized and “perfect” bodies. Woman of Steele or woman of sex appeal?
No comments:
Post a Comment