Tits and ass, tits and ass — this seems to be the focal point of the superheroine Starfire in DC’s recently-released reboot comic series, Red Hood and the Outlaws. Issue one started a bit of a controversy in the comics community when Starfire, mostly known as one of the beloved main characters in the show Teen Titans on Cartoon Network, suddenly became a creepy blow-up-doll sex pot.
Tell me, how did this:
Courtesy of Teen Titans Wiki
Become this?
The T&A shot: an image where both a woman’s tits and ass are visible at the same time, in the same panel, from the same angle (see Kate Beaton’s “Hark a Vagrant” for her brilliant “Strong Female Characters” parody). Go out and try this stance if you want (guys too) — go up to a full-length mirror and see if you can contort your torso so that your butt and your upper chest are both visible. Not easy. Kind of painful. And it so happens that Starfire poses in a T&A shot in just about every panel in which she appears in Red Hood #1, from swimming at the beach to casually standing next to a male main character.
After trying out the T&A pose, you’ll probably agree that the stance is completely unnatural (and something I’ve never seen occur in the real world). You’ve got to wonder here: Who is she standing like that for? Not for herself, obviously (as you would probably not contort yourself T&A style unless you were following the instructions in an Autostraddle article) — but instead for the invisible gaze of the male reader as it hovers ubiquitously over the comic book pages.
What’s uncomfortable is that this completely unnatural contortion of women’s bodies is being used frequently and unironically in DC Comics’s new reboot that’s aimed primarily at teenage boys (given the teen rating on the comic, the boobs flying out of bikinis made out of fabric the size of tea sandwiches and the way Starfire absently propositions every guy she meets for sex — but I’ll get to that in a bit). It’s scary because this is a demographic that’s least likely to know about the reality of relationships and women and most likely to believe that women can look and act like blow-up dolls.
Tits and ass abound!
Worst of all, kids who used to watch Teen Titans in their preteen and early high school years (such as myself) have to see the continuation of a beloved character appearing as a silicone-breasted sex doll, and little girls everywhere are facepalming and sadly moaning at this new incarnation of a strong, familiar character. Michelle Lee wrote an article for io9.com where she interviewed her Teen-Titans-loving, 7-year-old daughter about the new Starfire, which drew out some revealing responses:
Lee: “What about this Starfire? What do you think about her?” [Refers to the image of Starfire in a bikini.]
Daughter: “I can see almost all of her boobs … But, she’s not relaxing or swimming. She’s just posing a lot.” *my daughter appears uncomfortable*
Lee: “Do you think this [new DC] Starfire is a good hero?”
Daughter: “Not really.”
Lee: “Do you think the Starfire from the Teen Titans cartoon is a good role model?”
Daughter: *immediately* “Oh yes. She’s a great role model. She tells people they can be good friends and super powerful and fight for good.”
Lee: “Is this new Starfire someone you’d want to be when you grow up?”
Daughter: *she gets uncomfortable again*”Not really. I mean, grown ups can wear what they want, but … she’s not doing anything but wearing a tiny bikini to get attention.”
The premise for DC’s new Starfire is immediately noticed by a 7-year-old: Boobs. Posing. Revealing clothes. Very little characterization of and plot development for Starfire in the first issue. The problem here is something that Lee’s daughter was definitely sensing, judging from her responses — that DC’s Starfire is essentially an object rather than a character.
And the comic does very little to hide the fact that Starfire is little more than a sex object — the issue goes as far as to write in a nameless young boy voyeur (who looks barely ten years old) who watches Starfire and records a video of her. He whispers “There is a god” to himself as she arches her back orgasmically and splashes around on the beach in her purple finger sandwich bikini. Even a small child can see that Starfire is a sex object, the comic tells us — hella creepy.
While the boy’s actions do have plot consequences (the boy uploads the video of Starfire to his Facebook analog and it alerts people to her existence on earth), the impression I get is that all men, even small children, want to objectify Starfire, who seems unaware that her contorted T&A poses are being witnessed by every random guy within a mile radius.
And another problem in Red Hood #1 is the way Starfire is introduced in the comic — her first physical appearance is heralded by a bro-joke between the two main male characters, Red Hood and Arsenal. “I hope you have at least one good backup,” Red Hood says. “38 of them,” Arsenal replies, and then Red Hood thinks, “Who do we know who carries a pair of 38s?”
The next page cuts to a dramatic full-page spread of Starfire floating aloft in a pile of rubble. She strikes a T&A pose and her whole torso is naked save for two purple band-aids over her erect nipples.
Get it? Who carries a pair of 38s? Starfire — a pair of 38DDDs you mean! Hurr Hurr. “Sophisticated” teenage bra joke.
Her first appearance in the comic is a boob joke, her first line is an uncomfortably subservient “Is there anything else I can do?” Before we can even get to that gem, there’s a gratuitous ass shot of Starfire — the two male main characters sound like frat boys as they banter with each other: “Is she with you?” “With us, yeah. But yeah, she’s been ‘with’ me.” Quotation marks and all. Starfire is another tapped-ass notch on Arsenal’s belt of sexual double standards. The two characters basically chest-bump about it.
And it gets worse — Starfire becomes complicit in this chest bumping, as she propositions Red Hood once they arrive on some beach paradise not too far away: “Do you want to have sex with me?” she asks. No joke — there’s some class-A dialogue writing there.
When Red Hood hesitates and asks if she’s actually Arsenal’s girlfriend, she responds “I am free to do what I want when I want. If you are not interested, I can probably—” to which Red Hood immediately interrupts and says that, no, no, he’s “Happy to oblige” — he totally wants to have sex with her. And then he does.
The argument in favor of this creepy, sexually promiscuous, blank-eyed Starfire is that she’s “sexually liberated” — that she’s in charge of her sexuality, knows what she wants and if she wants to sleep with 50 guys (and not remember their names — in her words: “I can’t recall … you are boring me”) she can totally do that. It’s like the comic writer is rooting “Girl power!” as he put together Red Hood #1, but there’s some odd Stepford Wives business going on behind the scenes.
The supposed “sexual liberation” exhibited by Starfire implies that the sexual objectification of her body is somehow okay if she initiates it herself — that a female character putting her own body on display somehow absolves men from the responsibility for exploiting her.
The problem is that in the new Red Hood series, Starfire is a female character who treats her body the way men treat women’s bodies. Which makes sense, considering that she’s not actually a woman — she’s a female character who was written and drawn by men for other men. And the evidence of this male gaze is all over the pages of the first issue of Red Hood, from the awkward contortions of Starfire’s body to the way she is introduced in the comic and the way she approaches and propositions men for sex.
So what do you think of the new Starfire? What do you think of the T&A pose, and where else have you seen it in mainstream media? (Also feel free to post pix or comments of your attempts at the T&A pose in the discussion!)
To be fair, Starfire has ALWAYS been drawn like a blow-up doll, and due to her background, presented as very naive and subservient. This characterization long predates the Teen Titans series on CN, which toned down the T&A greatly due to the show’s intended audience.
HOWEVER, in light of her depiction in the animated series, and the greater presence of female comic book readers, you’d think that comic book writers would reboot the character. It’s so unfortunate.
Having a conventionally sexy body does not make her a blow-up doll. Neither does liking sex. She’s been naive and gullible before, and she’s had bouts of bad writing (like every other comic book character ever) but there was a general consensus that she had a personality, and a largely cheerful one at that.
They HAVE rebooted the character. That this is the result is the real travesty.
You’re right re: Starfire’s personality reboot. I didn’t articulate my thoughts properly. I’m well aware that she was a more fleshed-out character in her previous incarnation. But she HAS always worn minimal clothing, and had massive boobs.
But what my quibble is with the post–and I may be way off here! I’m not trying to sound like a bitch, I swear!–is that the poster seems to be under the impression that the Starfire presented in the TT cartoon is the “authentic” Starfire, that DC went from cartoon Starfire to the new Starfire. But the television Starfire was a pretty far cry from the comic book character she was based on. She was de-sexed quite a bit for the cartoon. My apologies if I’m wrong Whitney, but that’s what comes across in the text and opening images.
When I suggested a reboot of the character, I meant a reboot in which “sexually liberated” does not necessarily mean “wears next to nothing”. Having a great body is fine (how many male superheroes with beer bellies are there, right?), but WHY is it that the majority of male superheroes are entirely covered, but female superheroes have to wear as little clothing as possible? I mean, we all KNOW why (teenage boys are the target audience), but like…WHY?
As much as this particular reboot repulses me, her hair flip in the 4th image is pretty epic. I wish my hair could do that.
I think I see what you mean, and it makes sense. Let’s see if I can get my thoughts out okay.
The thing about the reboot is that is was SUPPOSED to draw in more new fans by simplifying stuff and making it accessible to a new, mostly-younger audience. Comics have a TINY readership. There are histories and backstories that have been going on for decades, and it’s really, really hard to gain new readers when most mainstream comics are geared towards older audiences who have been engaged with their respective universes since the age of nine.
When I got into comics, it was because of curiosity about the stories behind the X-Men movie and a vague memory of watching the old X-Men Evolution cartoon. I had to prepare by binging on Wiki articles about roughly every Marvel character ever (I’m conversant in DC but I never got into it properly). Right now your average person only knows about comics stuff from movies and the cartoons they watched as kids (Justice League, Spider-Man and his Amazing Firends, Batman Beyond, and Teen Titans). The Teen Titans Starfire pic used above is the main reference point for mainstream new-to-comics audience that DC is supposedly trying to reach. If they were really trying to bring in a wider audience, a balance between the comics-Starfire and the cartoon-Starfire (who as a young kid in a children’s show obviously had the sexuality toned waaaay down) would have made much more sense than this out-of-left-field descent into robosexy Starfire.
As for the uniforms: I’ve been complaining about them for YEARS. Sometimes artists get smart and do the right thing and give their people costumes that work, but there’s a pervasive school of thought in the industry that since the superpowers and the storylines are unreal, the clothes they plaster to their heroines’ bodies don’t have to be realistic either.
Unfortunately, that approach to uniforms on superheroines results in many things I wish I could un-see at comic conventions…
I mean, I’m all for being proud of your body, and not letting society dictate what size is sexy, but Emma Frost does not have stretchmarks!
This costume is even more revealing than Kory’s old costume, though, which is an achievement. And although Kory was definitely the source of a lot of T&A, over the past 10 years (the period in which I’ve been reading comics) she wasn’t subservient and she wasn’t an object. She liked sex and didn’t have cultural baggage around admitting it, but she was also a really loving person. While the wears-hardly-anything-likes-physical-affection characterisation definitely says something about the people who wrote her, I think the key word there is affection. Kory had a personality. She was honest and could be challenging about sexual ideology and relationships. And she was a person. When she had sex with people, it was a meaningful expression of affection – the exact opposite of the way sex with her is presented in Angry Red Heads Who Don’t Like Their Mentors.
what I think is the real travesty is not the (ridiculous, way OTT) way she’s been drawn (which is a change from how she’s been drawn in Teen Titans the comic recently, but not HUGE MASSIVE WORLD-ENDING). It’s the change in her characterisation.
What I can’t get past is that the writer – Scott Lobell – is SO unconcerned about the massive outcry from women saying “We love comic books, but we hate it when women are drawn this way in them” that he blows it off. Like alienating 50% of your potential audience is a GOOD idea.
There’s a great webcomic by David Willis that talks about DC’s Red Hood and the Outlaws alienating the female fan base it garnered with Starfire in Teen Titans:
http://www.shortpacked.com/2011/comic/book-13/04-remedial-adulthood/math/
This is just gross. I can’t even believe it’s a real comic. Yeah, I can see some loser undergrad art student making a fan comic like this, but that DC Comics published it (thus implicitly condoning it)?? Absurd.
I don’t have as much problem with the way she’s drawn so much as the way she’s being written. Seems like she basically just exists to be a fuck toy for the males in the series, with no real motivations other than that.
I don’t know, I have a problem with the art too. You can be sexy without having planet-sized boobs which bulge out from miniscule purple triangles.
yeah it kind of seems that way to me too….
It is possible to draw a woman being consciously overtly sexy and still let them have a personality. Her face is frozen in the same android-like expression the whole time and her body language is completely devoid of personality. The artist CAN draw facial expressions and characterizing gestures/stances, it’s just that he seems to assume women don’t need them because they have sexy poseable bodies.
Yeah – it is the writing as much as the drawing; I meant to say both, when I commented initially.
Damn…
That is some horrible writing.
That’s (at least partially) because it’s written in Starfire’s voice, since she’s an alien.
I think this is part of a pretty common trend with the DC revamp. I mean, has anyone read the new Catwoman?
Yes! Speaking of Catwoman, there’s a really great article by Laura Hudson for Comics Alliance that discusses the problems of gender and sexuality in both the new Catwoman comic and Red Hood. She does a really great job breaking down Catwoman, too.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/09/22/starfire-catwoman-sex-superheroine/
Yes! That article is the first thing that comes to mind/the first link I drop whenever this topic comes up.
Yes! Exactly! I was just going to mention the new Catwoman. It literally opens with 2-3 pages of T and A. Also the fact that she and Batman are having pretty explicitly rough stranger sex (multiple times, might I add).
DC must really be hurting for money. And by that I mean boners.
The redesigns of a lot of the female characters follow this trend, not just Starfire and Catwoman. Harley Quinn looks like a stripper and they even sexed up Amanda Waller!
(For those of you not familiar, here’s a link to Amanda Waller’s wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Waller)
Many of the big name female superheroes, though, are not over the top with the sexy, either in the writing or in the drawing. I love the Batwoman issues, and Batgirl, Birds of Prey has been pretty fun, and Wonder Woman is not bad, although I much preferred the pants from the Odyssey books. Supergirl has been okay so far, if a bit slow. Her costume is… well. Look that up. It’s not the best, but not terrible.
what have they DONE.
In the first two issues, Starfire might appear a handful of times, one of which she is in fact, fully clothed. On top of that, ever since 1982 (at least that is the comic I’m looking at) Starfire has worn a very revealing purple, bikini esque costume. Not much appears to have changed, unless you are ONLY comparing the new 52 comic series to the Teen Titans Animated Series (Which was HORRIBLE to begin with)
Just seems a little unfair to criticize a comic so intensely when it has had such a short run, especially when you’re comparing it to a cartoon network show, and not taking into account the way the character has always been written. She’s a terrible role model for girls, always has been, never should have been characterized as anything else. She’s dumb, hot, and sexually very open, and she’s a sidekick to a sidekick at best.
I’m a little more worried about they way they use Batwoman to portray lesbians, honestly.
Her costume’s always been varying levels of revealing, but combining ‘strapless’ with ‘barely big enough to cover the areolae’ is another story. Okay, the straplessness I could have lived with (although I wish I didn’t) but the other is just weird and distracting.
But it’s not even really the clothes. It’s the way she stands and acts like a puppet controlled by a lazy ten-year-old boy. Kori’andr/ Kory Anders/ Starfire, when she’s being written well, is a warm, cheerful person who finds delight in everything. She might be naive, but she has a good heart, she loves to play and she’s eager to learn.
It is possible to take conscious joy in sex and sexiness. She has before. This Starfire, though, is just unconsciously going through the motions. She’s not enthusiastic about sex, she just steps forward and offers up her body like a bored caterer at a bad party. It’s ‘consent’ in a way that is perfectly nonthreatening to men by removing any scary thought of the woman’s thoughts or feelings from the occasion.
Maybe she finds delight in sex. Maybe she has a serious sex drive. After all in Tamaran they love many people, all of them emotionally, and only some of them physically. How do we know that there isn’t some reason for her to want sex from more than one person? Oh yeah, we don’t because there have only been two issues (Neither dealing with Starfire’s personal storyline in depth) and she’s had a handful of appearances with even less dialogue. How can we argue about the way she has been written, when they’ve barely even written her. What I am trying to say is that I still think it’s too early to judge what they’ve done with the character. Nothing has changed from the old Starfire, except her personality and her backstory, with one strongly influencing the other. Oh sure, in this comic she’s not so much of a ditz. In this comic, she tells people exactly what she wants, instead of batting her eyelashes and flirting until meat-headed superhunk gives her exactly what she wants.
We’ve barely even met this Starfire, and we’re already pre-judging her based on 3 pages of spread, just doesn’t seem fully considered yet.
My problem is with how they introduced her in those first few pages. I was expecting to see a panel or 2 or her kicking ass and getting a glimpse of how powerful she can be while the guys just manage to get out of danger. Instead I got a sexy pose and a brief bio that did not really give me reason to think she was an important character in this book. you don’t even get an idea of how powerful she is until issue #2 and even then it’s just a 1 liner about how she hides from humans but humans should be the ones hiding from her.
I don’t have a problem with her asking roy to have sex with her. I’d rather she just come right out with what she wants than play the helpless alien like before. She wanted a hookup and in a previous page it’s already established that she doesn’t really care to try and tell the humans apart.
I think the writing for starfire failed because he introduces her as someone’s boobilicious hookup and then backtracks and says hey it’s ok she’s powerful, comes from an alien race that has casual sexual encounters and she thinks humans are beneath her soreallyhumansarethesextoysnotherkthxbye.
if the new 52 is supposed to hook in a new audience, 1st impressions are important.
I agree with most of what you said here. The way she was introduced was not terribly flattering. I get what you’re saying, about how dispassionate she is about just about everything, including humans and sex. Lets just hope that we get a little more personality if/when DC decides to launch into her backstory, I mean surely we’ll get more than just the splash screen telling us she was sold into slavery by her sister…What I’m trying to say is that Comic story arcs can take a long ass time to get started/get finished. I am disappointed by the character development thus far, but never really expected to see anything earthshattering from the first two issues of a comic. I think they spent too long characterizing Jason Todd, so they ran out of time for Roy and Kori, I’m thinking once Red Hood’s background is established, we’ll get more time for Outlaws like Kori and Roy.
“Maybe she finds delight in sex.”
Yeah, but this Kory? Doesn’t find delight in anything. She hasn’t got a personality. She just doesn’t care. This is the OPPOSITE of her historical characterisation – and I’ve never seen the tv show, for the record. What I find so frustrating is that Kory already was a perfect candidate for cheesecake art, she could have had awesome sex with Jason or Roy OR BOTH. They could have achieved what they wanted without giving her a personalityectomy. Jason and Roy are both still recognisably Jason and Roy, even in the two issues. All you have to do in your first issue is establish characterisation, and theirs? Sucked.
“Teen Titans Animated Series (Which was HORRIBLE to begin with)”
wat
I jerk to it tbh
“The supposed “sexual liberation” exhibited by Starfire implies that the sexual objectification of her body is somehow okay if she initiates it herself — that a female character putting her own body on display somehow absolves men from the responsibility for exploiting her.”
Preach. I’ve gotten furious with friends who think initiating the chauvinistic objectification means they’re “liberated”.
It’s true that DC has gone further than ever with this new Starfire but it’s not too far from how her character was presented previously in the Teen Titan comics that were published long before Teen Titans was a TV show. It’s disgusting that she’s being presented in this way and I feel that DC should have taken into consideration the change in her character due to the Teen Titan TV series before they remade this character even skimpier and bustier than the last time they printed her in a comic.
Based on some debates I’ve had in the past, it seems that men are incapable of differentiating between women wanting to be attractive and wanting to be objectified. For example one guy said that women who wear makeup and sexy clothes want to be objectified, because why else would they bother?
I think that’s potentially the biggest problem. It’s not that the artist chose to completely objectify Starfire; he just seriously can’t tell the difference between making her sexy and making her an object.
Or he really is a chauvinistic ass and doesn’t care. Who knows.
But the way comic books depict women is getting so ridiculous that even sites like Cracked are commenting on it. I remember one article dealt explicitly with what they’ve done to Starfire, and another that just generally talked about the uselessness of superhero outfits. Here’s the latter, but it’s not as good as the other:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18591_the-5-most-impractical-aspects-superhero-costumes.html
* Some men. Not all of them can’t tell the difference.
They even refer to the T&A Shot in this article :)
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-most-ridiculously-sexist-superhero-costumes/
I’ve never seen the cartoon version, but I read the eighties Teen Titans original character way back when and she was defined by being kind of innocent, noble and a fierce friend – and had a genuine mongamous love affair with Nightwing. Yes, she always looked like a fan service sexpot, but part of the whole point was as a character she really didn’t act like that. This new version is pretty horrid.
I’ve read some of the comics Starfire has appeared in prior to the Teen Titans cartoon (like the ’80s Teen Titans comic), and what bothers me most is that when you have a base character that’s been characterized as “innocent” (which turns into “ditzy”) somehow people think that this justifies interpreting the character to its sexual extreme (thirty years later). Yes, the ’80s Starfire has been drawn as a sexy lady who enjoys love, romance and sex. The problem that’s happening now has a lot to do with how Scott Lobell decided to interpret her in such a two-dimensional way — even after knowing that there is a very big young female audience who has had exposure to this character through the Teen Titans cartoon. But yes, I agree with you!
My only exposure to Starfire was watching the cartoon network Teen Titans show. She wasn’t my favorite character, but I was excited when I heard about the comic. This makes me rage, though. She used to have emotions- she cared deeply and that was the source of her power. She was a female character whose emotions were seen as a source of power instead of a hindrance (generally. Not always, the show wasn’t perfect). Now, not so much. :c
**sigh** I was planning to read this until I heard all these bad reviews. I still has a tinge of hope though. Then I saw the actual frames for it. **shudders** I feel sick.
So…that new comic looks depressingly terrible and sexist.
Side note: am I the only one that totally wanted Starfire and Raven to become more than just, um, Teen Titans together when they got older?
You are definitely not the only one. >_<
Word.
I liked Raven/Terra more, but she works well with Starfire too.
But TBH, I like Raven with just about any girl on that show haha
Yeah. Raven + anyone = win. Honestly, they could all go live together in awesome lesbian paradise and I would die of happiness.
Her back looks broken…
Her (Starfire’s) race evolved from cat like creatures, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s flexible enough to lick her own junk. They even showed Starfire bathing her pet Silkie like a cat, using her tongue, on that gawd awful childrens show Teen Titans on CN. Also, I’d like to see anyone defy gravity by flying without wings or propulsion, and keep their “standing on solid ground pose”. Try swimming without arching your back, nearly impossible, zero-g flying is probably very similiar.
I used to really love Teen Titans when it was on Cartoon Network, but haven’t read the comics since then, and I’m really appalled at what they did to Starfire. Raven was always my favorite character, but it’s really disgusting what they did to her. I wouldn’t say she was much more of a role model on the CN show, just because she was kind of ditzy, but she had soul at least.
HOW COULD THEY DO THAT TO STARFIRE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! DISRESPECTFUL!!!!!!!
Yep, another case of projecting your inadequacies onto comics, just like Michelle Lee did in her article for io9.com
I did post the question to her: “What are you doing giving a 7 year old material that is rated TEEN and up?”
I’m still waiting her response, to see if we have to call child services on her or not (JOKING, I really don’t care beyond the argument)
At least your article doesn’t bring up comparisons with Starfire from the cartoon show, as Michelle Lee did. That is plain insulting to the origins of the character, the way George Perez intended her.
I will state that I COMPLETELY agree with the horrible writing on the book, albeit you seem to focus on the character Starfire. I think the whole book is deplorable, but that is another matter altogether.
As an adult who prides himself in having lived an interesting live, I have encountered people who offered sex as recreation.
This character is an Alien, with different values than us, etc etc, so that already makes an argument valid onto itself.
The part that seems to be absent from your complaint is that this comic is a commercial product.
You are aware of that, right?
And sex sells.
You are also aware of that, right? If you are not I can point you to maybe 100 commercials that you can watch that appear in prime time that have sexual connotations.
This comic did not come to me as a piece of moralistic tale, or as a didactic tool for toddlers. When I bought it, I expected to see something edgy and something good, exciting.
It failed on the edgy, and the good, so it did deliver in the excitement to a degree.
No one should be reading this book, and closing it, and then looking at women differently. If they do, they have a different problem, and this book may serve as a diagnostic tool, to make them take notice of their problem.
This book doesn’t make me go into the living room and yell at my wife “Go and make me a sandwich, bitch!”
This book shouldn’t be given to children, and shouldn’t be read by immature people, no matter what their age.
But you really fail to point out that even though starfire is used as a sex object (in your opinion) there is a guy who goes to bed with her when she offers.
That’s a metaphor for the comic and the market.
The story sucks, but throw some T&A and it will sell.
I had to write a long article explaining the mechanics of this on my blog, so if you or anyone want to tackle it in detail,
http://comicwatcher.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/comments-on-the-industry-selling-sex-in-comics/
But your article gets reduced to “Ugh! Too many boobies in a comic! I feel offended! The Horror! The Objectification of women!!”
While neglecting to take into account that while starfire is showing herself off, there is an audience eagerly watching and welcoming her advances.
And if they continue on these line of art, the story can continue to suck, but it will take a long time before they cancel it.
And that is the problem.
Actually, I think the problem is sexism? The problem we’re talking about, anyway. And explanations are not excuses; “sex sells” doesn’t make sexism some kind of valid, excusable thing.
Preach brother, preach. Can I get an Amen?
As a male who likes comic book characters, this whole thing has been embarassing. I don’t know what audience they’re aiming at with this thing, but I like characters with something resembling a personality.
This Starfire is essentially part of the scenery. It’s an object to be looked at and commented on by the characters, but not a character in itself.
Wow this is pretty depressing! Especially reading what the daughter had to say :( I never liked how they portrayed most female superheroes in artwork or video games my lifetime. Any of you play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter? It’s kind of pathetic.
I recently got into a facebook discussion about how female video/comic book characters are portrayed and somebody posted this awesome link from pennyarcade.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/true-female-characters
I like it because it comprehensively covers all the bases of what makes an effective female video game/comic book character without being biased or being “jargony” with too much academic language.
I really love the logic of letting a 7 year old child, who literally has a 2nd grade reading comprehension, dictate what is and isn’t acceptable as far as sex goes in a comic meant for teens. Maybe I should let my 6 year old nephew tell you how Superman’s pecs and abs set an unrealistic standard of male beauty and body types? Does that 7 year old even know the dictionary definition of a role model? And who the hell says EVERY character has to be a “positive role model”? Who the hell said sex was a bad thing? If a female character sleeps with a bunch of men casually, without disrespecting them, then she is NOT a sexual object, but a fully realized sexual BEING. Just because a guy creates a female character that enjoys casual sex as much as any guy, DOESN’T mean she’s an “object” or “blow up doll”, it just means that she has her own sexual desires, that she is a sexual being capable of having orgasms, and isn’t going to let others slut-shame her for liking what she likes. The problem isn’t sexism, the problem is all the slut-shaming women do to other women because of backwards, religious, conservative, views on sex that date back to the 17th century, you remember the Salem witch trials, right? Same backwards mentality, “ewww, naked bodies are shameful, and recreational sex is the work of the DEVIL!”. In conclusion, quit yer bitchin’, act a little promiscuous, get laid, and quit slut-shaming those of us who don’t share your backwards views on sex and human sexuality.
This is just generally disappointing to me. I’d been a huge fan of the CN version of Teen Titans and had wanted to get into reading comics for a long time. I’d refrained because I felt massively intimidated by the decades’ worth of back-story that I’d have to catch up on, so when I learned that DC was relaunching the entire universe, I was pretty excited. Unfortunately, I’ve read that most of their new series follows this pattern of hypersexualized, objectified heroines, and I’m not sure now that I even want to bother reading them at all. Maybe I’ll join in when they give me a strong, independent, nonsexualized heroine that I can actually look up to or want to know.
I was originally going to write entries on character consistency and integrity for the three protagonists of “Red Hood and the Outlaws”, but considering how completely off the mark Scott Lobdell was with his portrayal of Starfire, it instead turned into a laundry list of everything he managed to get completely wrong:
http://theragingfanboy.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/deconstructing-red-hood-and-the-outlaws-part-2-starfire/
For you to know how “sexist” I am Im letting you know that I liked Batman: Year One, Infinite Crisis and that Babs got shot, without mentioning I find the original woman in refrigerator awsomelly disturbing.
And despise of that (or maybe because of that) I find Red Hood & the Outlaws sexist as the definition of the word. I mean I defended the whole Pink Lantern all woman corp thing, because It served the story (and in the most darwinist way love was suposed to come from procreation and men dont have wombs), But this “thing” dont have story.
If you want a more rational analisis look here
http://theragingfanboy.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/deconstructing-red-hood-and-the-outlaws-part-2-starfire/
There you have a whole corpus of analisis that point to the same thing, the destruction of a character.
Oh and one more thing, Star Saphire outfit (the sadest and lowest part of the war of light) looks like Nun´s clothes compared with Starfire costume here. I mean even Geoff Jhonnes admit that went horribly bad (That thing made hard to take serious the pink color as the love emotion and the pink lanterns being all woman), So How they make the same mistake twice? And How they made the mistake worst?!
Dude who wrote this piece of tripe. Starfire/Koriand’r has always been a visual sexpot for the male eyes since before the damned cartoon.
The cartoon is interesting and funny but it was based off the original comics which were a lot more…how to say it…oh I don’t know. Let’s see… she gets raped…OH! wow! Yes, those kind of stories were in the original comics of starfire so the assumption that the cartoon is some ungodly starter is a terrible assumption.
The show toned her down considerably by also making her naively stupid where Kory was only naive in certain earthly customs. Her skin is meant to suck in the sun’s energy which is why her kind of people like to wear next to nothing.
The show was and is NOT the original Koriand’r, but frankly the original is hardly all that good. To me she was a load of spoiled princess who was born gifted and all that balarcky showing up her powerless sister without a care. The comic tried way too hard to make her ‘kind’ and ‘oh why would my sister ever do this’ sort of attitude. How the hell does one not realize she and her parents and her friends and her citizens were treating her sister like shit? Of COURSE she’s going to retaliate and make sure you burn and get tortured. So while I like cartoon Koriand’r, do not make the assumption that the comics made her worse. She was always like that. The cartoons just made her infinitely more likable.
Yeah before complaining about something, maybe you should RESEARCH it. Starfires first appearance in the comic industry was 1980. Where strangely enough she is not drawn like a kids cartoon character but like a sexy woman in a bikini with orange skin and 80’s hair.
IF ANYTHING… the teen titan design is the departure and NOT THE NORM when it comes to this character design. So maybe the question should be….
And as always… if you dont like it… don’t buy it.
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I love how the OP of the article bitches about the “sexual objectification of women via male sexual fantasies”, but then later replies positively to other women commenting on how they fantasize about Starfire and Raven becoming lesbian lovers. What…The…Actual…FUCK!!! This fugly bitch complains about us guys having sexual fantasies about Starfire, and meanwhile these women are fantasizing about THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING! Starfire has sex with a guy – Sexual objectification. Starfire has sex with a girl – All my feminist, lgbtq, women’s empowerment, gynocracy, women’s rights dreams have come true, Yay! Do you see the hypocrisy there? How about the anti-male sexism, thinly veiled as women pretending to be angry at the well known fact that people enjoy having casual sex. Women like these always bitch about how they don’t like the sexual attention that men give them, and yet when they go months without any sexual attention at all, they cry themselves to sleep while eating a tub of ice cream calling themselves “ugly” and “Who would ever want to sleep with someone as hideous as I am! Boo-hoo sob. They bitch about us guys blatantly lusting after Starfire, and yet they have ZERO problems sexually fantasizing about male characters with equally unrealistic bodies. Don’t complain about Star’s tits and ass, and us guys won’t complain about the bodybuilder muscles on a zero bodyfat male godlike body, ok? Oh, wait, I almost forgot, most men aren’t crazy enough to treat a comic book like it’s real life. Men might think their dicks are too small by comparison to other real life dicks, but you would think a guy is legit crazy if he compared his dick to something in a comic or hentai, wouldn’t you? Comics are fantasies that exist in the realm of fiction, treat them as such. A final counterpoint, what about all the curvy women with big tits and a nice ass that like strong, powerful, independent female comic characters that look like them? Just because you’re stacked like a pornstar doesn’t mean sex is the only thing you’re good for, you too can be a doctor or firefighter, while showing off your magnificent j cup tits. It’s not sex appeal OR respect, you can have both.