Getting Nippy
December 18th, 2008 by Esther Inglis-Arkell | Tags: DC comicsIn New York it is legal for women to go topless in public. In 1992, a court ruled that if men were legally allowed to expose their chests, women should be able to do the same.
The ruling makes sense. Men and women have the same biological structures; mammary glands, fatty tissue, and nipples. The structures even work the same way. Under the right hormonal or physical conditions, men can lactate and even breastfeed. The fact that, traditionally, men’s and women’s chests come in different configurations doesn’t make a difference.
Of course, after eighteen years of legality in one of the most liberal cities in the world, so few women go topless that even many police officers are unaware of the law, so clearly it makes a social difference.
However, I think it’s time that comics take the biological view, rather than the social one.
Why?
To avoid situations like this:
Kendra is about to answer, “I said, ‘My breasts and the all-concealing shadows seem to be trying to elope together.'”
While men can stay in the light, women tend to be bending, twisting, leaning and ducking enough so that their nipples can be covered by sudden, dramatic shadows. Or steam. Or flashes of light. Or parts of their own body. Bare-chested men can stand, but women tend to bob and weave their way through their own toplessness.
Of course, there are also situations like this:
Now this scene has the trifecta. Don’t laugh. I mean it has the three major artists’ tricks. There’s Creative Cropping, over on the left. There are the Gender-Sensing Sheets, which leave the man bare to the waist, but twist up to cover the woman. And on the far right, you see the unfortunate result of an artist trying to get away with too much: De-Nipplage. This woman gave her left nipple for the cause! Won’t you help her? Won’t you help them all?
But most of all I’m tired of situations like this:
I feel that the world would be a better place if Star Sapphire nuded up for this. Alternately, I feel that the world would be a better place if she wore an oversized t-shirt with the slogan ‘Baby Or Bust.’ Or a full suit of armor.
Mostly I’d like to stop having to make-believe that we’re not seeing naked boob on the cover of Green Lantern, because trust me, we are. Pretending that we aren’t seeing nakedness here would be like me taking off everything except my jeans, and then slapping a post-it note on my cleavage and pretending that I’m wearing a shirt.
I realize that there would be a backlash if women’s breasts were drawn in comics, for any number of reasons. Comics are seen as a medium for children. People might see the loss of another layer of clothing as exploitation of female characters. However, I don’t think that that many children read superhero comics any more. Those that do read the special class of comics like Tiny Titans, or Superfriends, that are reserved for young kids. Even if there were a youngster looking through Green Lantern, peeking into an adult comic and seeing a woman’s breast couldn’t be that much more traumatic than peeking into an adult comics and seeing someone’s legs getting ripped off. As for exploitation, I don’t want more nudity in comics. I just want the nudity that is already there to be acknowledged.
We’ve all got the same stuff up top. Strip the girls as bare as you strip the guys. Clothe the girls as fully as you clothe the guys. But please, no more peek-a-boo.
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I think the world would be a better place if most mainstream comics artists (and some writers) grew up stopped sexualizing women. I honestly think it holds the whole medium back due to preconcieved notions. I can’t pick up any superhero comic past the 80s because of this (that and they’re mostly terrible from the 90s to the early 00s) because it’s embarrising to be seen reading or just owning them. I know that it may sell and that makes me sad but why should these artists keep getting work when hundreds of aspiring artists with unique styles get shunned. Oh and have any of these people seen real breasts or at the very least a concept of gravity, I doubt Themyscira or Oa has a working plastic surgeon.
Have you seen Tarot? Or any of Jim Balent’s Broadsword Comics? Now there’s an artist who believes in setting things free.
What’s the second panel from?
Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas?
Was this a tits or gtfo post?
burt: naw, that’s not Adi Granov’s style. That’s from early on in the Iron Man: Director of Shield run.
The real question is what is a Marvel comic doing in an Esther post?
@Josh: tv and movies never stopped sexualizing women, so it’s not likely comics ever will
The trick if making sure the creative team involved (and particularly the artist) make sure the depiction matches the tone of the story. For example, Ed Benes should probably only draw the JLA if the story is about Vixen, Black Canary, Wonder Woman, and Hawkgirl playing 2v2 beach volleyball.
I like your reasoning here, and this bothers me too in comics. I’m sure it’s something that got hung over from the “comics are for kids” days when they decided a few decades ago that wasn’t true anymore.
However, the next logical question would be what about genitals? I’m not talking pornographic sex, just regular nudity. Those same techniques you mentioned are used for a person’s penis or vagina. Are these things held to a different standard, because we’re not basically the same down low?
@Jessie: It’s from Ultimate Power, I think. It’s the transition book between Ultimates 2 and Ultimates 3.
@A.o.D.: Eh. More like, “If there are going to be tits, LET THERE BE TITS. If there aren’t going to be tits, CITFU. (Cover It The Fuck Up).”
@Gavok: I’m moving in on your territory. Be afraid.
2000AD has been showing tits for a while now (it decided that the kids were gone and weren’t coming back, so they might as well cater to the older audience they had), and while it hasn’t stopped them sexualising women in all cases, I think it has helped a bit. You may well be on to something Esther.
It’s actually from a short C.B. Cebulski/Travis Charest story in “Ultimates Saga”, which was to bridge Ultimate Power #9 and Ultimates 3 #1.
@Dane: Both the same down low? I’m not sure I agree with you a hunnert percent on your police work, there.
My main point, though, is that they’re already showing nipples on men. That’s no big deal. They’re showing women nakend, and in some cases, having sex. Covering up their nipples seems like a needless technicality that adds some awkwardness to the art.
The only time this phenomenon really bothers me is when it occurs in creator-owned stuff that’s already targeting an adult audience. It’s perfectly understandable that Marvel and DC/Time-Warner don’t want to tarnish their kid-friendly icons by putting full-frontal nudity or over-the-top violence in some of their comics. Though shit like Identity Crisis and Terror Titans would seem to indicate they really don’t care all that much to maintain a kid-friendly facade.
No, what bothers me is when, in Invincible, you can see the hero punch someone’s jaw off, a dude get hit so hard his brain pops out of his skull, and a pile of multiplying women get pulped into cherry pie filling, but showing Atom Eve’s nipples is taboo. Or in Brit, where the hero does horrible, brutal things to various people and monsters, but all the girls in the strip club he owns are always positioned in just such a way as not to expose anything objectionable, and the hero himself always has his bait and tackle covered by a convenient plume of smoke or shadow. I think the worst offender is Adam Warren’s Empowered, where, despite showing or alluding to all manners of sex acts, up to and including skull-fucking, no one in the comic possesses nipples. It seems really juvenile to create a comic that is filled with mature/R-rated content, and then chicken out when it comes to showing someone naked.
The only way I can rationalize it is that, from my understanding, a lot of comics shops are pretty reticent to order comics that have a big adults-only label on the cover, which is usually only earned by nudity/sexual content, and not violence.
@Munch: in Empowered’s defense, I can remember WAR saying he keeps the quasi-censoring for comedic purposes
@Esther Inglis-Arkell: There may have been a misunderstanding, here. I asked if genitals to you are held to a different standard here because they are NOT the same, and do not carry the same purposes. Full nudity is something I’ve debated about in my own scripts, but I use the same reasoning as you do about people being shirtless.
@Dane: Ah. Sorry.
Full nudity – I’m not sure if it would be distracting in a comic, or if it would be a goad for artists to include more of it than they need to. I don’t particularly want more nudity in comics, I just want a more honest and less awkward version of the nudity they already have.
I don’t hold nipples to a different standard because they are the same for men and women. I hold them to a different standard because they are the same for men and women and it’s considered no big deal if men show them. Since there aren’t a lot of men in comics showing their genitals, I don’t look for the same standard for women.
Esther, maybe the corresponding male-representational thing would be the near-ubiquitous gelding of clothed male charas? We can optimistically say they’re wearing a gaff and/or taping, but it actually hurts to look at some of these guys who are drawn concave in the pubic region – a man shouldn’t be flatter than I am down there! Not just gelded, but also some pelvic bone-removal surgery on some of them. (And this is aside from the cover-up-the-crotch with shading, like was done to that Alec Ross cover a couple years ago.) In fact, many of them are drawn flatter than danseurs who *are* wearing gaffs to minimize flopping during jumps, as a quick perusal of ballet sites shows. And if we consider that it’s often assumed that superheroes are wearing some sort of cup for protection, then there ought to be *more*, not less projection.
But I’ve found that if I draw – as someone who did quite a few years of figure drawing from live models in school – a *realistic* male torso, clothed, I get accusations from male viewers that I’ve made the chara look like a Tom of Finland drawing. Um, no, guys, you really do stick out that much, normally, even if we’re not supposed to be *looking*! The simultaneous fetishizing/fear of the codpiece is as neurotic as the nipple business – which drives me nuts, too. I realized that I automatically assume that teatless humanoid females are *supposed* to be humanoid, not human, and am waiting for the “reveal” that she is actually an alien or a robot. (Or, as you note, tragically mutilated.)
What’s even funnier to me is that I was raised in a very conservative and prudish household when it came to sex-ed – but we also went to lots of museums and watched lots of ballet and opera on TV when I was a kid, so I never understood what the fuss about female nipples or appropriately 3-D groins on males was – after all, “men in tights” represents a fair amount of the Renaissance – and earlier, and later fashions, too! (Cue evil laughter at fanboy freakouts over Jareth in Labyrinth in his Regency breeches…)
@bellatrys: Ahhh. A discussion about the relative visibility of female breasts and how they are portrayed in a medium vs the the relative visibility of male genitalia and how they are portrayed in a medium.
Seems they do everything possible to expose one while hiding the other.
I agree about the concavity, although I don’t think that, for most heroes, you be drawing a penis. I would imagine that mostly you’d be drawing a jock strap. Of course Clark and the other superpowered people wouldn’t need it, but I think Bruce and the rest of the normals would want a good sturdy belfry around their bats.
I would imagine that mostly you’d be drawing a jock strap. Of course Clark and the other superpowered people wouldn’t need it, but I think Bruce and the rest of the normals would want a good sturdy belfry around their bats.
LOL! I like that euphemism. No, I agree, Esther, you wouldn’t likely be seeing the distinct anatomical outlines, Speedo-style, if you were trying for plausibility – for the same reason that women who fence wear a steel breast cup under their vests (and even if you’re from Krypton you still have extra nerve endings where humans have them, right? So why not minimize the potential pain/loss of efficiency in a fight?)
But even *that* isn’t going to be okay with those susceptible to masculinity angst: I drew a number of genderswapped cover remixes a while back, and it was very funny to see how putting the exact same male body into a skimpy costume – OR posting in the same lumbago-inducing T&A twist – made people see it as “feminine”, though the coding of “skimpy” was also interesting (Conan’s and Tarzan’s loincloths aren’t read as “feminine” *until* you pose them like Sonja or Sheena.) And Wolverine sketched in tight jeans or Angelus’ leather pants – well, that’s what got me the “Tom of Finland” charge. Apparently the level of body-conscious embarrassment that you have to get over in a freshman Drawing 101 class, drawing *clothed* models (Eek! I have my pencils on his – his – his virtual crotch! I’m drawing the – um – outlines of her sweatshirt!:blush:) is nothing compared to the consternation that hits a stereotypical fanboy confronted with a well-covered but distinguishable package. I can’t *imagine* how they deal watching football games…
relative visibility of female breasts and how they are portrayed in a medium vs the the relative visibility of male genitalia and how they are portrayed in a medium.
BTW, I keep threatening to do the genderswap of the “breasts-bigger-than-head” thing, although a combination of health issues, time/job issues and yes, some remaining shame has kept me from carrying out my threat so far. But one of these days I will, and maybe the insecure guys will understand why we wince and talk about “bouncing” and mobility issues, when they’re confronted with family jewels the size of eggplants on their heroes featuring so prominently on nearly every panel…
Grr! Stupid HTML code[r]…
I forgot, I’ve also noticed that there is a HUGE difference in the way “ass-shots” are handled, when you have the legs-framing device in a scene or on a cover: with a female character the gluteal curves are the star of the show, while with a male character they will be reduced as far as possible, often by putting his body in silhouette, and the goal is to focus on the figure *through* the arch of his legs, and the implicit aggression to come in the “showdown” stance. Um, if her clothes are going to be painted on with shiny high-gloss Testor’s, then so should his!
@bellatrys: Oh, you drew some of those? Which ones? I saw a few different male/female drawings circling around the internet a while ago. I’d be interested to see which ones you did.
The ass thing – well, there are a few cases of Well Defined Male Ass. Booster Gold titles, I think. Any of the guys in shiny costumes tend to have to have some curve.
What bothers me about female posteriors is the heroines who are outfitted, basically, in swimsuits tend to have extreme panty-creep, where half of their cheeks are hanging out of their suit. Again – that’s naked ass, as much as a breast covered by only a pastie is a naked breast. That’s not ALL of the naked ass, but come on. Thong bikinis went out during the eighties, and were considered tacky even then. If you drew Batman like that, he’d look like someone gave him a wedgie.
Well, I did several sets and one-offs; I think these are all the links to them:
Sexay Ebol, as applied to a *male* chara – my rx to the ubiquitous “heroine goes bad, shows this by stripping” phenom.
If Greg Horn can do it, so can I! Of course, I did take years of figure drawing classes, so I have problems with distorting human anatomy *too* much…
What goes with “blade” in ritual magic? WitchCup, I and II. I make no apologies for this; however, the Bleepka is on the house.
What started it all – the “Broken Wings” series.
Any of the guys in shiny costumes tend to have to have some curve.
That’s why they tend to put them in shadow or silhouette – ye olde double standard…
What bothers me about female posteriors is the heroines who are outfitted, basically, in swimsuits tend to have extreme panty-creep, where half of their cheeks are hanging out of their suit. Again – that’s naked ass, as much as a breast covered by only a pastie is a naked breast. That’s not ALL of the naked ass, but come on. Thong bikinis went out during the eighties, and were considered tacky even then. If you drew Batman like that, he’d look like someone gave him a wedgie.
One project I aspire to this coming year is to do some pictures of popular fantasy art, Boris Vallejo style, with wizards and swordsmen wearing the same outfits that sorceresses and swordswomen are always shown in. I think that if the resolutely-in-denial guys have to *see* themselves in the buttfloss and chainmail-thongs that they insist are natural to our sex, they may begin to understand why a “warrior woman” in boots without leggings and belly-baring “armour”, surrounded by guys in full plate or hauberk, or a “superheroine” whose outerwear collection comes from Fredrick’s of Hollywood or Victoria’s Secret going up against guys in full body suits or even more coverage, tends to invoke teeth-grinding and face-palming.
Let alone the scoliosis-plus-lordosis poses!
O….kay, I’ve found something worse than SmoothBoobs.
I’m diverting myself from various woes by catching up on your Ultimates Remix series (So wrong! So right!) and I just hit this.
Apparently, after you have your nipples surgically removed in ComicsLand to conform to the mores of ComicsLand society, you can get prosthetic, stick-on ones to wear under clothing.
Which slip, after active, athletic behavior has made your skin sweaty enough to loosen the glue…
(Did he trace porn? I mean, okay, he *obviously* traced porn. But…don’t porn “stars” usually get high-quality breast enhancement surgery? This looks like it was done by someone’s BIL who dropped out of med school…oh featherless gods, I’m out of booze again…)
@bellatrys: The goggles, as they say, do nothing.
Heh, yeah, up till then I thought that the Frank Quitely Emma-is-really-made-of-Silly-Putty cover for X-Men was just about tops for bleargh anatomy-fail, but — I mean, is it just me, or is there not something really weird about these guys who supposedly spend SOOOOO much drooling over (to use a polite euphemism) Sexay Hott Chix!!! … apparently having so little visual acquaintance with actual images of women who conform to their tastes?
It’s as if I did nothing but talk about how much I love horses and wish I had one*, and my fave breed is, oh, the Andalusian because they have the most gorgeous conformation – and all the pictures and models I’ve collected of Andalusians are actually badly-rendered, seriously-deformed – not just stylized, we’re talking bendy canon-bones and oversize heads, like you see on way too many phototraced covers of fantasy novels featuring knights in armor etc – and far from being Andalusians are actually mostly Shetland ponies.
You might be forgiven for wondering how real my interest in Andalusians’ beauty, and in the bodies of horses at all, actually was, I should think. Or say I talked all the time about how I loved tall ships and was an expert on them due to my enthusiastic obsession, and yet all my books were on motor boats, and I couldn’t actually tell a clipper from a galleon and regularly mixed features from completely incompatible hull types and so on in my renderings…
I remember an anecdote of Frazetta being astonished to discover that real women did not, and could not, look like his mental image of the Platonic Ideal of Woman, when he was rotoscoping for some bizarre fantasy movie back when. Up till then he had, he said, been convinced that some women really did look like that – which argues that he was very bad at observation IRL!
*I never actually grew out of this 9-year-old-wanting-a-horse stage, but realized it was never going to happen.
**Though I don’t claim to be an expert on tall ships. I just squee over them.