The only person I had attacked in my original post was Tom, Sideshow's Art Director, who is in fairness the person directly responsible party for approving this design on Willow. And speaking of 'difference' my very concern is that Tom is promoting what I perceive as a monoculture of over-sexed representations of women, which is now affecting licences like Buffy where it is inappropriate and offensive to female fans. I explicitly noted that that art style has a place, welcome or not, in comicbook properties.
Without firm criticism nothing would ever change. Women did not get the right to vote be being all respectful and meek towards the misogynists who felt women were innately inferior. Racial minorities in Western societies have not won legal equality by 'appreciating the difference' between those who think they are equal human beings and those who do not.
Bottom line: I find the near constant (key word) objectification of women to be offensive and serious issue that needs to be called out without apology.
I do not believe that sexual objectification equals sexism. The character is made more sexually or physically pleasing in a female way to be more appealing and marketable, because it is a female character. It seems to me that the new Marvel Cyclops PF is extra muscular, significantly what he has traditionally been portrayed as, considering Wolverine has frequently called him "slim" in the past, and this PF is anything but slim. He looks like Schwarzenegger. A more muscular male is perceived as more desirable or physically or sexually appealing than a slim bodied one, so is the more muscular Cyclops sculpt a form of sexual objectification, and therefore, sexism? I don't think so.
from Wikipedia: "Sexism, a term coined in the mid-20th century,[1] is the belief or attitude that one gender or sex is inferior to, less competent, or less valuable than the other. It can also refer to hatred of, or prejudice towards, either sex as a whole (see misogyny and misandry), or the application of stereotypes of masculinity in relation to men, or of femininity in relation to women.[2] It is also called male and female chauvinism."
from the free online dictionary: "sex·ism (skszm)
n.
1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender."
I see no discrimination in a sexy representation of a man or a woman, unless of course one of them has a leash on or is chained up by the other, in which case it would certainly apply.
I don't even see a stereotype being perpetuated here. Men have a look that women find sexy and women have a look that men find sexy. To a large degree, sexual objectification is critical to human survival, because it ensures procreation. Sexual objectification is nothing more than tapping into the psychological motivations for procreation, in which there is no inherent inequity, or discrimination involved, and if there IS, take it up with God, or mother nature, because that's the way human life IS.
Just because either gender is portrayed in a sexual way does not indicate that there is any sort of discrimination against the particular gender that is portrayed.
The REAL issue is, should HUMAN BEINGS in GENERAL be portrayed in a hyper sexual manner, according to women having bigger ****s and wider hips, and men having broader shoulders and bigger muscles? Is it wrong to promote the idea of the survival of the fittest, or the sexiest in art or the media or advertising? It seems to me that to object to what is classically perceived as most sexy in either gender is to object to the design of nature itself.
To be clear, I think that the build of this statue is perhaps a bit more voluptuous than the actress is, which was done primarily to make the statue more appealing, to increase the sales of a less popular character. Marketing wise, I think it's a sound move. I do understand how a purist would object to a less than faithful representation of the character, and I respect that, because I think that authenticity is very important. However, I will be buying this because it is such a cute sculpt (which would include the fact that it is more sexy) even though I have never seen a full episode of Buffy, but I did see the movie, because I find the actress so appealing.
