Elin's Journal

Yeah, I can't get into the Twilight series, and I am not going to see New Moon. I do love this Buffy vs. Edward remix though.

Why can't I get into it? Mainly because the main female protagonist is utterly useless, passive and reinforces strictly coded gender stereotypes. And? A guy who stalks you and who wants to control you is not sexy; it's hella creepy. I also like plot in my books.

I've got nothing against romance, drama, angst and fantasy- I love those things, actually. But I want characters with three dimensions and complexity, and I want plots that go somewhere. And, I want strong female characters who maybe sometimes make good decisions, maybe sometimes make bad ones, because that's what life is like sometimes. But at least they MAKE decisions and DO THINGS, instead of being passive and defined by their male love interests. That this series is so incredibly popular with teenage girls worries and disturbs me a little, because I think Bella is a horrible role model.

Again, if you need to be reminded, The Sparkledammerung by Stoney breaks down all four books, so you don't have to read them. Don't drink something while reading that, it's not safe.

Now on to work, where we are receiving lots of calls about Twilight merch that isn't out yet.

My fellow editrix, the delightful tiredfairy, has written an excellent set of quick guidelines for surviving San Diego Comic Con. You can read it here.

This was done in response to the L.A. Times' absolutely pathetic "Girl's Guide to Comic-Con" article, which basically imparts no useful information, unless you are hoping to stalk male celebrities. Because, you know, that's the only reason women go to Comic-Con. It's not to get comics, toys, art books, anime goods, trading cards, autographs, video game premiums or free geek swag from all the major producers of such. They also don't go to the con to work booths, do the portfolio rounds, or network to find jobs in the industries. Oh, heck no. Women only go to Comic-Con if they are DRAGGED THERE by the men in their lives, DUH! But hooray! Now they can ogle hotties while they wait for their bearded compatriots to get out of the Hasbro Exclusives line, instead of having to stand there all bored and stuff.

But go. Read the real Geek Girl's Guide. Important info in there! She ain't kidding about the shoes. Or the bananas.

This is a horrible thing to read first thing in the morning.

Connecticut university student fights off one sexual assault, only to be assaulted by a drunken mob as punishment for her actions.

I know I generally steer clear of anything too political in this journal, but this is something I can't ignore. This is absolutely horrible.

Every scrap of rape-prevention advice and information I've ever seen tells women that we should fight back, be loud, learn self-defense, attack our attackers with everything we've got, because that will save us from rape or sexual assault. (And yes, being stripped of clothes in public, dry-humped or groped against your will is a sexual assault and is twenty different kinds of wrong.) Melissa Bruen's horrible experience shows that fighting back doesn't always work. This leaves me wondering what women can do to prevent sexual assault and rape from happening, and it isn't a cheery thought as it seems like nothing will help. And of course, she's already being called a liar and a drama queen which just makes my head explode.

I am so mad now I can't even think straight. It also is very upsetting, because I like men. Most of my friends are men. I'm marrying one. But reading shit like this is irritating, because it makes me fearful and makes me scared of what men are capable of. And I don't like feeling that way, not one bit. I am always aware that I am a tiny woman, and I already keep my head on a swivel all the time if I have to go anywhere alone. I don't like thinking that I am not safe unless I have a male companion/protector with me at all times. I also don't like thinking that women should have to hide themselves away and avoid public places in order to be safe. If we get into that kind of thinking, that men can't be trusted around women at all because it's just their male nature, we might as well get out the burqas and get the purdahs ready. Men are better than that. And women deserve better than that.

I think of all the advances we've had for women in this country and in the world, and then something like this happens, which makes me think that nothing has changed at all.

(Also: creepy aside, when doing a Google search for news stories on public rape cases? Most of the hits that come up are filesharing sites with rape videos, billed as "hot and sexy" pr0n. What the fucking hell?!)

EDIT: ldragoon has an excellent post about this as well. There's also a lively discussion going on in the comments.

ldragoon pointed out the most Sexist Toys of 2007, and she linked to the Rose Petal Cottage commercial on YouTube.

Well, I just have to share: (in the cut)
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Gasp! A place of her own where she can dream, dream, dream... OF DOING LAUNDRY?! Are they fucking serious?! You have GOT to be shitting me. Because of course, a little girl only needs to dream about cleaning, baking, having babies and doing laundry. These commercials make me so mad, I want to punch every toy manufacturer in the world in the face.

Rose Petal Cottage... set your imagination FREE! (Provided you only imagine being a domestic...)

Commercials really influence kids a LOT, since they're so short they really catch the attention. Thank god there was a commercial out when I was a little girl that influenced me to think I could do anything and everything:



Okay, sure, that probably wasn't the ACTUAL intent of the commercial, but that's the message I got. Make your own money! Take care of yourself! And oh yeah, you can still be sexy, too. Much better than that whole "you can imagine doing laundry!" bullshit. Bleah!

PS I think the idea of a playhouse for little kids is great, all kids like to pretend to be grownups and do grownup stuff like housekeeping, working, etc. What I have a problem with are these ads, which are sending a horribly sexist message. I also have an issue with the playhouse stuff being marketed solely as "little girl toys"- it's all pink and flowery and frilly, and deeply gender coded. I much prefer the old Little Tykes playhouse, which is red, yellow and blue, and gender neutral... because trust me, kids will play with any toys that are handy. This whole "these are for girls only/boys only" thing irks me deeply.

Video game company UbiSoft making sexist games? For reals?

Tragically, yes. Only the game about baby care is called Imagine: Babyz, with a hip, with-it "Z" on the end so it can be extreme, no doubt.

I call bullshit on this today. Girls love video games, and they do not need "girly" games to enjoy them. When I worked at the video game store, I tried and tried to get sexist parents and grandparents to buy games girls would actually enjoy, like Mario games (Party, Sports, Cart, etc), Legend of Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, The Sims, Pokemon, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, Katamari Damacy and Final Fantasy. Invariably, they'd gravitate to anything with Disney Princesses, Hello Kitty or Bratz on the box. And nine times out of ten, those girls came back in later to trade in those games for the games I mentioned. Teenage girls constantly bought horror/survival games, dance games and first person shooters, when given the ability to make their own choices. There is no one type of girl gamer, and to make these craptastic "educational" games for girls is pathetic, like those are the only things girls want to do.

Bad form, UbiSoft, bad form.

Link ganked from trecomics, because she is awesome.

Click the cut tag for the picture worth 1000 words, though it's not quite safe for work if you work somewhere conservative.
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This is the cover to Heroes For Hire #13.

Marvel claims the rating of the book is appropriate for 12-year-olds.

I call bullshit.

Now, as we all know, I publish pornographic comics. Not just tease comics or pinup comics or sexy comics- hardcore pornography. Poles & holes, money shots, manga-style spurting penii, cartoon boobies bouncing, etc. I am not ashamed of the adult comics my company publishes. This is because I try to be a responsible editor and I believe there should be adult comics out there with consensual sex, women enjoying themselves and not being treated as mere objects, couples in love who can't keep their hands off each other, and the radical idea that sex, in all its forms, should be fun and pleasant and positive. This means it's often difficult to find artists who understand these concepts, and we often have to reject stuff with very nice art that contains things like rape, snuff, extreme violence, and the like.

I looked at this cover for Heroes For Hire and realized that 1) it looks like it belongs on the cover of a porn comic, like Milk and 2) it's a cover I wouldn't even run on Milk, because the women are all obviously in an abused position. That was my initial reaction.

My second reaction was something along the lines of "holy shit, is that Misty Knight?!"

And then I got really mad. Misty Knight was one of those characters that you just sort of encountered in comics when you grew up in the 1970's. She was a butt-kicking powerful black woman, like Pam Grier in Coffy, and she was really cool. Her friend, Colleen Wing, was also a butt-kicking strong woman, though not as cool as Misty, of course. As I recall, Misty and Colleen don't really even have any kind of superpowers, they just kick ass.

So, now even the women without superpowers have to be made powerless and weak? Is that how it is, Marvel? I'm still pissed off that they made Felicia Hardy, the Black Cat, a rape survivor. (Because you know, women can't be actualized into doing anything unless they're raped first- hell, before I have to undertake any major task, I have to wander down to the local pool hall in a micro-mini-skirt, in the hopes I'll get raped-into-actualization. Getting the taxes done this year was a nightmare...) I'm still mad they made Storm into some kind of Stepford wife for Black Panther. (Hello, she was worshiped as a goddess in Africa, lead the X-Men and the Morlocks and generally kicked ass, and now she's just a background character for Black Panther?) This is a trend I've been sick of for years, and this cover is just the newest showcase for this kind of crap.

And yeah, that appears to be jizz on the Black Cat's boobs on that cover. The cover aimed at twelve-year-olds. Nicely done, Marvel. We're not allowed to show jizz or genitals on the covers of our porn comics according to Diamond, but Marvel can put a money shot on the cover of a superhero book? Excuse me?!

This is the thing that really bugs me- I saw it at Image, I saw it with the Bad Girl books, now I'm seeing it at Marvel. If they want to do porn comics, they should come right out and do them. This softcore stuff is bullshit, and to my eyes, somehow worse than actually coming right out and doing a full-on adults only title.

Anyway, I have honest porn comics to work on to turn in to the printers, so that's enough ranting outta me.

Oh and PS, I have not spent money on a Marvel comic for years now. I refuse to give them money for anything, since I don't believe in supporting their content or their business decisions. I might only be one person refusing to give them money anymore, but I just can't bring myself to pay for comics I won't enjoy.

Posted for dustmeat, who often seems skeptical when I tell her that celebrities and fashion models look ragged out in Real Life, just like us. They just have the magic of Photoshop for all their print work!

Check out the Before picture of my homegirl Gwen here, on this photographer's Flickr account! Then, click through the other pictures, to see how Sharon Stone and Janet Jackson magically lose their wrinkles when hit with the Photoshop stick!

Anyone can be gorgeous if you have the right lighting, a professional makeup artist to spackle you up, and a photographer who is willing to Photoshop the fuck out of your face! It's all so simple! There's a reason regular women like us can't look just like the women in magazines, and that's because Photoshop filters don't work in the real world. ^_^

(And Gwen, I totally love you again for seeing you look real, with tired bags under your eyes. I completely forgive you for sampling "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music for your latest single (YouTube link). I'm sorry, but that shit was wack, lady!)

leborcham posted a link to a blog with photos from the Grammy Awards. Going by the batch of Scarlett Johanssen pictures there (scroll down), it looks like Scarlett lost a bunch of weight. I am fairly bummed out about this, because hey, I liked her as-is, and every time I see a female celebrity start losing weight, it upsets me. Why? Well, because usually, they're not even remotely fat to begin with, but they get obsessed with being skinny. (Witness: Christina Ricci, who was 5 feet tall and 100 pounds and a size 2, and she still worked hard on becoming a skeleton. Or Brittany Murphy, who was so cute and curvy in Clueless, and who now looks emaciated in her current movies, like the one suarez refers to as My Nanny the Skeleton, which I think is actually called Uptown Girls...)

I know Scarlett was blonde to begin with, but the strange blonding effect that is sweeping Hollywood is getting old as well. What happened to celebrities trying to have their own look? The current thing of "I'll dress slutty and have a lot of blonde hair, regardless of my original ethnic background!" is really boring. It makes everyone look the same. And if I was more awake, I could probably make some pithy remarks about how punching everyone out of the same scrawny, trampy, blonde mold is commodifying women as products, but I can't get more coherent about it yet.

I want girls in Hollywood to stop losing weight like fiends. I want them to eat food and stop emulating fashion models, who live on a diet of cigarettes, methamphetamines and vodka. In old Hollywood, there was room for Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Jean Seberg right next to Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Jane Russell. Why can't celebrities have more than one shape?

In other things, work continues. Yay.

Wal-Mart sued over refusing to carry Plan B.

Yet another reason to dislike Wal-Mart. In some areas, it's the only store people have access to, for either groceries, a pharmacy, or what have you. I am disgusted that they refuse to carry Plan B in their pharmacy, and annoyed yet again that the over-the-counter version of Plan B keeps getting stonewalled by the government (though the FDA has said it is safer than aspirin, and approved it several times...) It's *not* an abortion pill (it does not cause an actual abortion), any more than the standard every-day birth control pills are abortion pills. Honestly, the people opposed to Plan B and birth control pills and teaching birth control methods to teenagers keep saying it's "for the chillllldrunnnnn", but really, I think it's just that they hate the idea of uppity women who can control their own reproductive systems. It's a crazy concept, I know. But then the people who believe that Plan B and the pill are abortion-causers also seem to believe that if abortion is kept legal, women will just have them constantly so they can screw some other guy immediately afterwards. I can't help but think that it's a fear of women's sexuality that causes this. Fear of women's sexuality has caused a lot of crap over the years, little annoyances like being burned at the stake or stoned to death. Apparently, the uterus and the vagina are intensely scary to some people and need to be *controlled*. Lord knows if you don't, they'll suck up the whole world, like thousands of little black holes! Eeek!

I made the mistake of reading a couple of comics I picked up for one of our Japanese artists. He likes Terry Dodson's art and Frank Cho's, so I've been getting him New Avengers and Spider-Man & Black Cat (this despite the fact that I stopped buying Marvel books a few years ago because I didn't like their business practices... you do what you gotta to keep your artists happy...). Well, I read the SM&BC final issue, and what a pile of crap. Felicia Hardy used to be a cool character, she was this sexy cat-burglar girl and when I was growing up, I always thought she was way cooler than boring old Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacy. Black Cat was neat, she was kind of like the Julie Newmar Catwoman, all sex appeal and mischief. Plus, she was pretty smart and capable, in that she planned and executed all her own capers. But now it's all because she got date-raped? What the hell? Why is it that every strong woman in mainstream comics has to have had some violent act perpetrated against them in order to make them go into being a costumed heroine/villain? Why do they all have to be victims? Is it that this is the only trick male writers can come up with? Oh wait, no, I am wrong, the other trick they have is the classic "Madonna/Whore Switcheroo", when a nice, sweet-as-pie heroine turns "evil" and instantly becomes a slutty dominatrix. (And you know, what the hell does that say about the guys writing this stuff? See my previous paragraph about fear of women's sexuality...) Is it any wonder I stopped reading superhero comics? I read then as a kid because there were lots of cool girl characters, characters I looked up to. When Storm became a punk, I was so there, she was rad. When her boyfriend took away her powers, well, I wasn't too thrilled with that. (And what the hell kind of boyfriend takes away his woman's superpowers? A fucking insecure one, that's what...) There's a reason I read manga and independent comics, because the women in those are complicated, complex, well-rounded, and interesting. They aren't cardboard cutouts in fetish wear, designed to make woman-fearing nerds feel safe. Although in the case of some manga, they specifically *are* designed for that, but when even *harem anime and manga* have better defined, more complex female characters than superhero comics, Something is Wrong.

I would like to see some superheroines that aren't "less than" their male counterparts. I would like to see some superheroines that aren't destroyed or driven crazy by their superpowers (read: vaginas). I would like to see some superheroines who have actual, messy, complicated personal lives, like the girls on Sex & the City or the girls in Love & Rockets. I would like to see some superheroines who are more than just "the nice girl" or "the slutty girl" or "the mean girl", because women's personalities are more than just one note. I would like to see some superheroines who aren't actualized by rape or molestation. Some heroines that would actually be HEROIC would be nice, please and thank you.

In other non-feminist-ire-causing stuff, I seem to be developing a sore throat. Right when I have to go to work at VGSX. Yay!

This is so fucked I had to quote Will Smith. I know, can you believe it?

http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2005/10/3/223530/406

Yes, read the article. Apparently, in Indiana, the senators don't believe that women should control their own uteruses. And ladies, you had best be married to a man if you want a baby and want to live in Indiana. Toss out all those shoes now, gals, and get into them kitchens!

EDIT TO ADD: I have to say, this isn't about protecting "the children" or about preventing abortions or anything like that. This is totally about the government wanting to control a private and extremely personal aspect of a person's life.

EDIT #2: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051005/NEWS01/51005006/1006 Thankfully, it's been dropped. But jeez, this means we can't let our guard down for a second! People out there want to control *everything*, which is just *nuts*.