Needs More Glitter

(I had this posted over on my PPD blog but it's also appropriate for my fashion hero breif)

I found this great article while researching for my dissertation. My dissertation is focused upon how women are portrayed and stereotyped in comics books. Other media is also pending. (I have a bone to pick with Bayonetta.)

While my dissertation is focused on the actual portrayal of characters and how they fit into a media mostly dominated (I mean that in a literal term) by guys, I also want to focus on actual women consumers. This article deals with Marvel fashion and what was written to promote rather (in my own opinion) stereotypical and unflattering clothing. (Then again, how flattering can you be in a t-shirt proclaiming you went to the Xavier Institute....not that I didn't have one of those at 13)

From WWD Fashion Market News: "Consumer products team at Marvel is thinking big when it comes to females." Article: Link

"This one always gets me. Referring to women as “females” is dehumanizing, particularly when it’s contrasted with the use of terms like “men” or “guys”, rather than “males”. Both female and male are fine as adjectives, in moderation. However, when you want to use a noun to refer to female humans, “women” is better, both stylistically and politically, as a recognition of that very humanity. If you want a description for both women and girls, then “women and girls” is the way to go.

The fashion industry magazine in which this article runs was, by the way, originally titled Women’s Wear Daily.

The words “female” or “females” appear five times in the article, three as an adjective (twice as “female product”), and twice as a noun. Women turns up once, as “women’s apparel”. When men turn up, they are not “males”, but “guys”, in this truly wonderful quote:

“Since our core customer has always been guys, we need to be very careful when we introduce female product so that we don’t alienate our core,” said Paul Gitter, president of consumer products, North America, for Marvel Entertainment Inc. “What we have found through testing is that we haven’t alienated them, which gives us the OK to move forward with female product.”


Basically, when promoting products for women we must not forget who the true customers are: The men. That women are merely a bi-product in a media that is dominated by males and that as girls we should feel privileged that we're being included at all.

Or maybe that's just me.

Also, the use of the phrase "female products". This doesn't make me think of t-shirts and cute little heart pendants. It makes me think of bathrooms and pain.

So, just what are these "products"

"Also, anything that we can relate to current music trends does well. For instance, we have a T-shirt where all the superheroes were assembled into a band with a saying like, ‘I heart boys that rock.”

Hmm. I can really see me flaunting that in the studio. Can you? Because I'm 'female' surely that means I like cute girly things and want to date superheroes, not aspire to be them (Note: When I was 8 all I wanted to be was Franklin Richards of the fantastic 4). That's the subtext that I'm reading here. Do they think putting Captain America on a baby-tee will scare men away from the character?

As an 8 year old girl I was reading this:

(Pretty unerving. Couldn't find an image of this on the internet and had to drag out my older collection to scan it in.)

I also wanted to aspire to be Jay Guthrie and have my own robot:

(I bought this at a flea market in whitby when I was ten.)

The problems I see with fashion for women is treating them too much like a separate species. We're all the same nerds. Treat us as such.