{"id":8252,"date":"2009-07-21T12:49:12","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T19:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8252"},"modified":"2009-07-21T12:49:12","modified_gmt":"2009-07-21T19:49:12","slug":"sharing-some-links-about-women-in-fantasy-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8252","title":{"rendered":"Sharing Some Links About Women in Fantasy Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of people are discussing<\/a> the art<\/a> on the covers<\/a> of one of (if not the) most successful remaining genre magazines, Realms of Fantasy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

K. Tempest Bradford contends that the covers show “plenty of boobs. Fish-girl boobs and nipple-less boobs and snake-woman boobs and boobs and more boobs.” Jim Hines adds that he’s “tired of my genre worshipping at the Altar of the Big Breasts.”<\/p>\n

As often happens, this controversy gelled at a particular instant over a particular image, and there are a lot of behind-the-scenes politics about changes in the management at RoF. Without getting into all of that, I wanted to share some links to some websites that this discussion reminded me of. They provide some pretty compelling evidence about how men and women are portrayed differently in fantasy art.<\/p>\n

First off, we start with some pages from a book about how to draw women and men in comics.<\/a> There’s a lot of traditional sexism here. Check it out, just because some of it’s pretty facially ludicrous.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the turn-around where an intelligent artist took the same images and showed how sexist they are by switching the sexes of the figures.<\/a> It’s all pretty strange looking, since we don’t often see confidently over-muscled women, and arched-back pouting men. But it gets more remarkable toward the end, in the section on how to draw sexy poses. We’re so used to seeing women in those sexualized poses that they seem almost unremarkable and generic — but when we put a man in the same poses, it becomes really clear that no one ever really stands like that.<\/p>\n

Finally, there are a bunch of scattered illustrations<\/a> of male superheroes<\/a> in poses<\/a> that female superheroes are shown in all the time. These really show how silly the poses are in the first place.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I thought all these links were really neat when I saw them in the first place. I was happy to be reminded of them, and I wanted to share. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

P.S. I said that I didn’t want to get into all the controversy about the specific RoF cover that has been the flashpoint for all this, but I do want to say — while the image is sexualized, there are some really nice things about it, including some very palpable textures, and an interesting color palette. I’m sure it must suck for the artist who painted that image to have it being discussed as the nadir of fantasy art and I really don’t think it is. The female is in a pose I find sexualized, and her breasts are large and gravity-defying, but compared to a lot of fantasy art and even past Realms of Fantasy covers, it’s a pretty unremarkable piece on the objectification front. That doesn’t mean that the piece can’t or shouldn’t be considered in the context of a large number of illustrations of naked women that contributes to a broader context of how women are represented in fantasy art, fantasy fiction, and art in general — but I do think it’s unfortunate (if inevitable) that this piece bears the brunt of the frustration just because of the particular moment when it was published. Despite the fact that I can criticize the art (hell, I can criticize anything), I would probably be pleased if that picture were an illustration of one of my stories, particularly if the story itself had sexual undertones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of people are discussing the art on the covers of one of (if not the) most successful remaining genre magazines, Realms of Fantasy. K. Tempest Bradford contends that the covers show “plenty of boobs. Fish-girl boobs and nipple-less … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}