Reliability

Hello! Let's take a second and look back at the previous blog posts about the female superhero and their body image- in most of them I included sources, such as articles from the web, scholarly articles, scholarly research and others to help me support my arguments regarding the influence of the physiques of superheroines over society. Today we will look at the reliability of sources. For this purpose, I am evaluating three new sources:

1) "The body unbound: Empowered, heroism and body image" by Ruth J. Beerman: A scholarly article.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21504857.2012.703959

In this article Ruth J. Beerman talks about the transformation of "disempowered" female characters who over time fight to become empowered, which leads to the emergence of a new female "vulnerable, human superheroine". She also mentions that the femininity and sexuality of that new character are key components to that character's empowerment along with the vulnerability.
This article is a reliable source that can support our group's blog topic of superhero body image and its influences on society (especially when it comes to my personal focus on the female side of this issue) because it is scholarly, and the author has done research that includes other sources like "Adam Warren's graphic novels Empowered", as stated in the article's abstract.

2) "The Objectification of Women in Comic Books" by JEHANZEB: A magazine article.
http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/non-fiction/articles/the-objectification-of-women-in-graphic-novels/

The author of this article focuses on the fact that females, whether it be the victims or heroines, were portrayed as rather subordinate in comic books, whereas males were more dominant. The article is divided into sections with subtitles, such as "The Damsel in Distress", "Women as Sex Objects", "Exploitation And Sexism", and so on, which helps the reader view different aspects and perspectives that cover the female body image and superheroine sexuality topic. All such perspectives are united within this topic, and show that females in comics can be either “powerful super-heroines like DC’s Wonder Woman or Marvel’s She-Hulk may easily overcome the most overwhelming threats and obstacles, but they are invariably depicted as alluring objects of desire, wearing the scantiest of costumes"  or "subordinate figures in the background".
This article is a magazine article, which can mean that strong personal opinion could be expressed, making its reliability questionable. However, the author "Jehanzeb is a film student who writes about Islam, Feminism, Politics, and Media. This piece was originally published on his blog" and this article in particular uses its length to explore universal issues like sexism and feminism, which could potentially have personal bias.

3) "Comic Book Women With Realistic Bodies Are The Heroines We Need" by Cavan Sieczkowski: A web source.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/26/comic-book-women-realistic-bodies_n_6761320.html

This article's main focus is on the unrealistic, unproportioned and supremely sexualized bodies of female superheroes. It is short source and most of its content are images of the existing superheroines compared with images of what more realistically proportioned superheroines should look like. The article comes from HUFF POST and expresses personal opinion with not enough scientific research and facts to back its point up. However, the author uses resources, such as Bulimia.com, " a website dedicated to providing information and support systems to those struggling with eating disorders, decided to transform covers of comic books depicting popular female -- and male -- characters". Even though the article's purpose is well-minded in the sense that it strives to portray a healthier body image of a female heroine that will therefore influence its readers in a more positive way and evoke a positive sense of self and body, the source is not necessarily reliable.