Some of you may have seen Escher Girls, which is a tumblr collecting examples of the ridiculous poses female characters are put into in comics. There seem to be certain recurring themes. Here are a few examples.
- Boob socks - for some reason female characters are often drawn with clothing that appears to vacuum seal their boobs. Ignoring the fact that material does not act that way. So no basis in reality, it's entirely there to objectify the women.
- Boob flounder - where the boobs appear to have shifted around the torso, because the artist just couldn't bear to draw the women without visible boobs. Defying anatomy, again there only to objectify.
- Boobs and butt pose - where both the boobs and butt are drawn visible. Ignoring that pesky idea of a spine. Again anatomy fail, done for only one reason.
- Centaur women - where the spine is bent into a terrifying curve. Yet another anatomy fail, guess why?
- Attack of the clones - because all women look exactly the same.
- Collar boobs - Boobs which appear to originate from the collar bone. What's this anatomy you speak of?
- Dislocated hips - When the legs seem to be attached to anything except where hips would be.
- Organless torsos - Because they have to be thinner and thinner and thinner. Either that or the artist thinks the organs are stored in the breasts?
- Porn face - it seems no matter what the female character is thinking/feeling whether it's pain, anger or joy, her default face is this one.
- Ineffective fighting styles - when the artist has sacrificed making the character look like a good fighter/strong/dangerous in order to show off their, you guessed it, boobs and/or butt.
And of course clothing - notice the men's armour in that picture.
As a reaction to all of these, someone set up the Hawkeye Initiative. With the idea of putting a male character into these kind of poses, as a lot of people have become kind of desensitised to female characters in those positions.
So here we have boobs and butt, organless torsos, ineffective fighting, more boobs and butt, centaur and clothes.
The Hawkeye Iniative does have to be read with this and this in mind. Some of the submissions miss the point a little and end up treating femininity as something to be mocked, rather than sexism.
However, to bring it back to sexism in comics, this article about the difference between in context and out of context sexuality is very accurate.
