deathlyillandalwaysbusy:

deathlyillandalwaysbusy:

So I've started reading Gail Simone's run on Birds of Prey and enjoying it greatly. And you know what, if you want to draw butts in taking up 3/4ths of every panel, okay, I can actually handle that pretty well. But JESUS FUCK, ED BENES. WHAT THE HELL.
I'll give you…

Oh
oh my gosh.
This really blew up. I think this requires an explanation now (now being now that Gail Simone has seen it and I'm all flustered and don't know what to say).

I think the first thing is that I actually did not expect anyone to see this. I'm a tumblr nobody and never aspired to anything greater than that. (My blog is made up of reblogs of cats and other cute things.) This is why I pretty much went off without giving an even-stevens argument. It was just a complaint! But now that this seems to have sparked a discussion:

I wasn't commenting so much on the overt oversexualization of these characters so much as I was commenting on why this particular oversexualizing wasn't working. (eg, the costumes being stuck up girls' butts in an impossible way, the sewn-on basketball breasts)
Mostly because to me, that isn't sexy.
(And I come from a California beach town, so I'm no stranger to booty-shorts. Girls in high school wear them all the time—the difference between ours and Bene's is that while our beach girls got them high enough to have their fannies hanging out, there was no possible way that they could have comfortably jammed them so far up as to show off over half of their buttcheeks.)

I concede that I was pretty hard on Ed Benes. I can't imagine how he thought those costumes fit up there, but the art in general is usually pretty solid. And I like how he draws Savant's face. And I realize the main Black Hole Booty picture I used as an example isn't from the book. I used that because I put in about 7 minutes to look for a picture that exemplified what I was complaining about, and that one was just perfect. I mean, the focal point was her butt. How could I resist? I wasn't trying to create a real argument, just a heat-of-the-moment rant that I thought would make my non-comics friends laugh. (It was hasty and hurtful though, and for that I sincerely apologize. A person is a person, no matter how far removed I am from him, and I wasn't being fair to him in the slightest.)

I'm glad Ms.Simone told Bene's story though. He's certainly talented, even if I have problems with his art. And I'm happy that he got an opportunity like this.

And then we (being some other people over the course of the morning who are not me, since I was in math class) got into an argument about oversexualization. I have this to say: ridiculously sexy characters have their place. It is hard to break habits of drawing oversexualized women. And while these are professional artists, they draw the way they draw. It can be good and bad at the same time. (Like Joe Bennet: I showed off his cringe-worthy drawing of the Birds up there, but just the page before, he drew some phenomenal little girls. The were chubby and cute and actually looked like small children playing with chalk. I was impressed.)

It happens. I don't think that means we should stop pointing it out, but let's try not to get outraged the way I did. Personally attacking somebody never inspires positive change, and I'm pretty ashamed of myself now that I've been called out on it. (But hey, at least it was funny. I'll wear that as a badge of honor.) 

Objectorbit says, "Perhaps that just how some women like to draw their women?" Which I think is nice. (I can't seem to find where the initial argument about needing more female artists to balance out the fanservice came from.) I really like drawing sexy women. I love drawing pin-up style women. And I actually like looking at them too, and I'm not even a lesbian. I'm sex-positive (which means I HATE it when people demonize sex, because I think it's a perfectly natural part of life, whether you choose to have it or not)— I'm from a French background too. So sexuality in comics doesn't offend me. It's really about the way its portrayed.

So, uh, I don't think women are the problem or the solution.
I got a little lost in what I was trying to say here, but I just wanted to kinda put my actual thought process out there so that people don't think that I'm the raging dickwad that my original post kind of makes me out to be.

Also that I am pretty much IN LOVE with Birds of Prey right now, and I can't wait till November so that I can finally read the rest of the trades that I accidentally shipped to my house instead of my dorm.

No, no, no, really, you DO NOT have to defend yourself or what you wrote, I thought it was really funny and there's some obvious truth in it.  I admit I have a higher tolerance for cheesecake IF it's done well than a lot of female readers do.

One thing I loved about Ed was, if I asked for a guy to be sexy, or posed in a sexy manner, damn if he didn't do that with the same kind of intensity and dedication he used with female characters. That made a lot of difference…a lot of people followed the book during Ed's run primarily for Creote and Savant, for example.

But I seriously only reblogged because I admired the way you threw the words around. I thought it was really funny and well done. NO apologies or defenses necessary at all!