"We sell overly sexualised covers for our female heroes because it's what people want to buy." Really? That's your conceit? Because that's the same thing drug dealers and gun stores use. "People want to buy it, let's sell it." Sometimes, Tom, you have to sit and think about what you're releasing. Decency over money? That too difficult for you?
I think that there’s a world of difference between producing art and selling drugs or guns.
And you don’t have to like all art. That’s kinda the buy-in. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have validity or shouldn’t be made.
I think anybody who doesn’t like that particular cover is completely entitled to their opinion. And they’re under no obligation to purchase or support it.
Everything else, though, starts to sound like a slippery slope of censorship to me, and so I recoil from it on principle.
Saying that sexism sells is not a good excuse for that cover. It’s actually more offensive than the cover itself. Because it shows a lack of understanding of how serious sexism is, and how it impacts women in real life. So far we women have been told that Captain America isn’t for us, and now Spider-woman isn’t for us. What books are?
unless I was mistaken, I thought that the push for more titles led by women was to appeal to the growing female demographic of comic readers.
I guess I was mistaken after all.
I just love how the Business 101-level idea of ‘not repulsing the demographic your product is aimed at’ is automatically seen as the SLIPPERY SLOPE OF CENSORSHIP!!!
you know, there comes a point when every single complaint from the female readership is met with the accusations of CENSORSHIP!!!!!, when you have to wonder if Marvel is doing this on purpose. Because it seems pretty disingenuous to claim to want to expand the demographic and ask for feedback, while simultaneously rejecting that same feedback, and specifically rejecting that feedback in such a way that paints the entire demographic as hysterical and beyond the pale.
"because it’s what people want to buy"
what further evidence do i need that these assholes just, at a basic and fundamental level, dont consider women a) people and b) customers worth keeping? if you’re limiting your understanding of your only viable fanbase (and primary consumers) to horny misogynists, then i have to believe you’re doing it willfully. and that willful ignorance comes from deeply, at your core, believing that we—women who are being objectified, sexualized, and silenced—don’t matter.
it’s not censorship to demand you and your writers and artists do better by a customer demographic that is, contrary to your apparent belief, substantial. it’s not censorship to push your writers and artists to be more imaginative, to be more creative, to view women as more than just window dressing or figures meant for the masturbatory pleasure of mouth breather perverts. “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it,” is such a massive cop out and indicator of your own innate biases and childishness that i can’t even fathom how you can, in good conscience, use it as an argument here.
there’s a reason my pull list has dwindled to a few titles that don’t treat females as decoration or canon fodder. smh.
I’d actually like some numbers about how well comic book covers with sexualized women actually sell, because everyone throws it around like it’s common knowledge but I’ve yet to ever see statistics on this. Especially since I know for sure they’re alienating a substantial number of their readers.
