New Favorite Thing: The Hawkeye Initiative

hawkeye initiative 1

Oversexualization of females in pop culture, particularly comic books, is nothing new unfortunately. It’s happened for years, and often times, has reached levels that reach past sexy and simply go to silly.

The idea of the Hawkeye Initiative is to point out that absurdity. I can’t be sure, but I believe it was inspired by this picture, which imagines what the Avengers would look like if they all craned their spines into T&A  poses like Black Widow. In the blog, readers are asked to find comic panels where female heroes are ridiculously posed, and then to redraw Hawkeye in the same position.

This obviously makes for some hilarious results, but it also plays into a point I made with a post earlier when these sort of issues were cropping up in regards to video games. I argued that while an exaggerated female form was looked at as overly sexual by outsiders, a male posed the same way would simply be thought of as goofy. Therefore, it’s much, much harder to “sexualize” male character the same way that females are, without it coming across as comedy. Hawkeye proves that point here.

I guess the lesson is that just because females and males both have idealized bodies in comic books, that doesn’t mean the poses have to be overtly sexual for the ladies to the degree at that they are. I mean, often times these artists are literally defying biology and physics to ensure that somehow crotches, boobs and asses can all be prominently on display in a singular pose. Check out the gallery below to see what I mean.

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Middle click on each picture to open in a new tab.

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8 Comments

  1. Paul,

    I think this really demonstrates exactly what your Forbes article is discussing, men and women are simply different. It is pretty difficult, nigh impossible, to sexualize men in the same way. Part of this may be cultural, I think part is biological, men just tend to be more visually-oriented then women (thus why men are the primary consumers of porn). That doesn’t mean that sexualizing women is ok, but I think it is an important part of the conversation that people miss. You can’t treat men and women exactly the same, because, well, they’re not.

  2. Sexualizing women is fine so long as the woman consents. I thought this was agreed upon. Fictional womens’ rights….yeah, is that where feminism is now? Look on Facebook and the like and see how many women are taking sexy shots of themselves, in swimwear and skimpy clothing and posting them online. Go to a club and see how it is in there. In our culture men mostly want to be big, strong, handsome, smart, and cool and women mostly want to be sexy, stylish, and all that. I’d say strong and independent as well, but Twilight pretty much proved that to be a myth. So here’s my idea, aspiring artists: the Frost Initiative. In the name of equality you take famous badass poses of manly man characters like Hulk, Hellboy, and the like and you replace them in the picture with comic sex-kitten Emma Frost complete with ass-kicking facial expression.
    Examples to use:

    http://cdn1.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Planet-Hulk-2010-1-570×320.jpg

    http://marvelitesxmen.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/20100810034128thor_vol_1_600_dellotto_variant_textless.jpg

    http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs6/i/2005/078/a/3/Hellboy_by_misterbitter.jpg

    Oh my god, I am so offended by the overt aggressiveness of male comic book characters! If I see that, I’m totally going to go punch random strangers because it will warp my brain and stuff! Oh wait, it’s just a story about make believe people. I guess it’s kind of stupid to make that a political thing. Never mind.

  3. @trashcanman
    “. Fictional womens’ rights….yeah, is that where feminism is now? Look on Facebook and the like and see how many women are taking sexy shots of themselves, in swimwear and skimpy clothing and posting them online.”

    Feminism can worry about comics books too, and ‘it’ can still worry about other issues as well – People worry about more than one thing all the time!.
    Getting on with your comments though, you’re assuminig we’ll make the same mistake you do and we’ll just pretend all woman act exactly like women on facebook all the time….Absurd. I don’t want to ruin the surprise but just like with men, women are diverse and have varying opinions on things, and participate in different behaviors…I mean I can find some vain dude taking pictures of themselves on facebook, in skimpy outfits even. I’d be an idiot to pretend that all men are like that, and then hold that up as an example of how men actually wanted to be treated as sex objects. Not even all women on facebook engage in this behavior so it is of course a flawed premise.

    “Go to a club and see how it is in there. In our culture men mostly want to be big, strong, handsome, smart, and cool and women mostly want to be sexy, stylish, and all that.”

    Yes, all men and women want to be seen as attractive – what a silly assertion. If we used the club as an example of a rflection of culture I think we’d all be in pretty dire straights. Again this is cherrypicking demoraphics to try and prove a point, and requires us to ignore the thousands of other people who aren’t engaged in this behavior for us to accept it. I find it hilarious that you tried pointing out that women want different things and the way you described that contrast was with synonyms. Oh except for women it was all about looks, only with men were you concerned with their character/disposition – how telling!

    “I’d say strong and independent as well, but Twilight pretty much proved that to be a myth.”

    Again, you’re pigeonhiling and ignoring thousands of examples that prove the contrary.

    “So here’s my idea, aspiring artists: the Frost Initiative. In the name of equality you take famous badass poses of manly man characters like Hulk, Hellboy, and the like and you replace them in the picture with comic sex-kitten Emma Frost complete with ass-kicking facial expression.”

    So essentially, your asking them to do a similar thing the picture has already done, which is to highlight the absurdity. I mean shit, when you describe emma frost you voluntarily use the words “sex-kitten” I mean if your post doesn’t speak to the very issue that is being discussed I don’t know what would. You might as well have said I went to the strip club the other day and there were female strippers there, ergo all women want to be strippers.”

    Every time this conversation comes up someone comes along who needs to pretend that a male power fantasy is the same as the some sexual fantasy of a female. That’s a false equivalency. this picture highlights how absurd that notion is.

  4. STOP IT! Stop making men feel bad for our natural instinct, to indulge in sexually stimulating imagery. It is a natural part of masculinity. Seriously people, not everything male oriented is bad, and not everything feminine is right.

  5. trashcanman and carmelo hit the nail on the head.

    I am a guy, I like comic books, I like women, I like sexually stimulation images of women, ( and realise they’re not real). does that mean I think women are beneath me? no. do I think women are somehow weaker, dumber or less capable then men? not really. am I somehow a horrible female hating mysogynist who wants to rape every woman I see, or send them all back to the kitchen? hardly.
    I just happen to think women look better then men is all.

    the hawkeye initiative is hilarious, if you stop pushing feminist politics on it, Hawkeye looks goofy in those poses because he’s a guy, it’s not being sexist, it’s stating a fact, men and women do have different body types , what looks sexual on one can look silly on another, except duck face, that looks ridiculous on everybody

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