More on Buffy and comics

I think my actual point in this post was hidden a little deep, so I thought I'd explain it a bit.

I objected to the image of Buffy in the comic, of course I did. I object to 95% of the images of women that are presented in our society. But I objected, particularly, to that being an image of Buffy, and I don't think I was particularly clear why.

As a medium television is aimed at women, more than men. A television show is trying to sell an audience, not sell itself. In particular it is trying to sell consumers, which means women.

Super-hero comics are only trying to sell themselves, and like beer, they seem to have decided they get the biggest audience by creating (it is clear that most beer advertisers believe that men evaluate their beer buying choices on which beer is the least likely to give them girl germs). The biggest way these comic books create the homosocial world, is by creating their female characters as male fantasies.

My objection to the comic book image of Buffy, isn't that it is any more or less real than the image of Buffy on TV. It's that the shape of her body is created for men. The shape of Buffy on television was created for women - in the most negative way possible. There's no way you'd see women like that on television - television's job is to convice us that it's not OK to have thighs that big.

I don't think it's any worse to create images to make women feel bad, than it is to creates images to fulfill men's fantasies.* But images of women as skinny as Sarah Michelle Gellar, are aimed at me. Images of women who look like they've had several ribs removed, worn a corset, and still managed to develop rock hard abs are not.

I'd rather have a Buffy who was supposed to make me feel bad about myself, than a Buffy who was supposed to be nothing to do with me.

* Is that what they're supposed to do? I don't really know. I find it hard to believe that anyone would find breasts of steel arousing. I suspect the actual role of women drawn like that is much more complicated, some combination of power and helplessness, as well as creating a particular image of what a sexually attractive women looks like.