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morchades/Newsarama's Lisa Fortuner weighs in with her thoughts on the subject, gathering some intelligent comments in addition to those people gave to the Pink Raygun article.My chief emotion on viewing the picture at first was disgust--"Oh, give me a break"--and then I hit the nipples. On the cover. That's OKAY now? It's okay to show this on covers? When did this happen?
That sight bumped me clean from seeing this picture as even an attempt to show Wonder Woman to seeing it as porn. Porn is So Not Wonder Woman to me. Don't start on the Wonder Woman bondage thing. I didn't sense it when I was a kid, and even now, when I've heard about it constantly, I still don't think of it, so the Master Plan didn't work in my case. It's MY thoughts I'm talking here. I don't even see crotchless WW costumes as having any reference to the real thing. They don't exist in the same universe, they are so antithetical. Such is the strength of this icon, and I think that is so for a great many readers.
I also question Fallon's self respect. How desperate for attention do you have to be, at her supposed level of "celebrity", to allow this picture to be trotted out? I feel sorry for her, rather than offended. No one should parade their Freudian slips out like this, to be fingered by droolers. From the very fact of this set of photos you can read the rest of her career, and it's just sad. I want to look away.
As for the copy that so concerns Lisa: It is purely puerile, the kind of breathless gossip column gush that fills airwaves and kills trees with empty noise. It is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. In this media-savvy age, it will be remembered as nothing. It will be forgotten in the orgasmic shudders over Britney's next meltdown or Paris's next shopping spree or Pam's next near-divorce. Even five-minute pundits, airing between the weather and the sports news, decry the brevity of entertainment media's great revelations.
Playboy is a joke. The magazine lost its relevance in the 80s. Any reader with a brain knows it, particularly younger ones who grew up weighing and discarding the media deluge of modern times. Playboy lost its nerve with the advent of AIDS and bolder publications. Its editors and writers have been pathetically scrambling for meaning and standing ever since.
Wonder Woman, as an icon, as a symbol of something powerful for women and girls, is far more powerful than these cheap hucksters. She is not a pair of briefs, a rope, and a bustier, or she would have faded into second-class hero standing ages ago. She has survived bad artists, bad writers, and misogynist snark. Her fans have clung to her for decades, because she feeds their dreams. It will take more than fading, desperate Playboy to put so much as a smutch on her bracelets.
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Comments
Suffice it to say that my perspective differs slightly from yours. :)
I don't think this touches Wonder Woman as far as her comics character goes. Wonder Woman porn has been done before, by raunchier magazines that are still relevant at pornography, and it hasn't made one whit of difference to the icon's power as a symbol of female strength.
And I should be clearer as to what I was saying about Playboy--I'm not sure the magazine really qualifies as pornography, unless it's cartoon pornography. By the time they're done doctoring the photos with airbrushes and the girls with silicone and tape, is there a natural element left? The last time I read Playboy, it reeked of STD fear and relevance loss. Even its real cartoons aren't funny anymore. Hustler still has the power to anger and outrage me; other porn makes me know it's, well, pornographic. Playboy isn't even real any longer.
As for the outrageous write-up comparing Tiffany Fallon to Lynda Carter or Wonder Woman--it was three seconds ago when it was written. It's as meaningless as last week's episodes of "Entertainment Tonight."
Wonder Woman has been around for 80 years, despite a whackadoodle creator (entitled to his own fantasies, by God, and she's strong enough to transcend those), despite bad writers, despite all past pornologizing. I don't see why folks are getting outraged.
So we differ how?
The nipple thing--I was just surprised to see it on a cover. I don't pay much attention to magazines, so I didn't know this had become part of the images.
Edited at 2008-01-14 08:39 pm (UTC)
I suppose I was responding to what I perceived as your implication that pornography is inherently anti-feminist.
Don't get me wrong, this example certainly isn't "empowering," or whatever other kind of self-serving bullshit Playboy wants to ascribe to it, but neither do I see it as all that demeaning, either. If anything, I'd say it's neutral.
Yes, you've expressed your confidence that Wonder Woman can "weather this storm" (please correct me if I'm attributing an inappropriate metaphor to what you were trying to say), but even that sentiment seems to suggest that sexualized portrayals of female icons can only be negative (and I realize that probably wasn't your intended message, either).
Personally, I don't see why Wonder Woman can't be an admirable superhero AND teh hawt secks, but then again, I'm apparently one of the few heterosexual males who wouldn't mind seeing Superman portrayed the same way.
I wrote this post after my response to the Wonder Woman photo, and it might explain the rest of my position better than I'm able to do right now.
Oh, no! I don't know that I implied it, but that's certainly not what I think! I believe women always get to choose what they do with their bodies, and if they want to do this, well, that's their right. It's not what I would do, but then, I never had the nerve to undo that second button on my blouse, so there you go!
Don't get me wrong, this example certainly isn't "empowering," or whatever other kind of self-serving bullshit Playboy wants to ascribe to it,
I dunno--if Fallon really likes WW, and is proud of how she looks in the nude, and doesn't mind a whole lot of people seeing her that way, then I'll be she felt empowered. I doubt many other people felt empowered by it, because it's hard to imagine yourself strong when clothed solely in paint.
but neither do I see it as all that demeaning, either. If anything, I'd say it's neutral.
After Heroes for Hentai, I can't dismiss the women who feel their childhood icons have been dirtied by this or any other representation of WW as porn. It doesn't get me as that cover did, but I do know the hurt, and I won't hurt them by dismissing their feelings as mine were dismissed by some.
For my own feelings alone, I was shocked by the sight of nipples on the cover (I'm so out of touch), but otherwise? It was another Playboy cover. I get just as mad at the Cosmo covers which show the woman with her mouth open. (It makes me wonder who Cosmo markets to.)
but even that sentiment seems to suggest that sexualized portrayals of female icons can only be negative (and I realize that probably wasn't your intended message, either).
I actually meant the storm of negativity over her being portrayed in paint by yet another celebrity of the moment. As far as sexualized female icons, they are already to a certain extent teh hawt sex, as are the men, and that's part of their lasting power. Wonder-Woman-the-sex-toy has as much to do with what the real Wonder Woman stands for in terms of pride in one's body and choices as the blow-up doll has to do with a real woman. The naked female superhero calendar has as much to do with real female superheroes and their sexuality as that same blow-up doll and real women. The former is a cartoon (so to speak), two dimensional and irrelevant. The latter have assumed three dimensions in the minds of their fans. They've taken on their own lives and meanings and power that no amount of sniggering playground jokes and naughty magazines can touch. That's the point to real sex, and it's part of the reason these characters endure and fuel all kinds of imaginings. It's the reason pagan religions included sex, because they understood the real stuff lives in our minds and drives not just randiness, but our dreams and imaginations, and our lust for creation and life. Good pornography touches on that, but it doesn't have to be porn to carry sexual power, and positive sexual power is the fuel that can move the world. The true Wonder Woman icon--any superhero icon--has that sexual power. Tiffany Fallon in paint doesn't.
Ahem. End of touching-on-paganism rant.
Without good sex, the world don't go `round.
P.S. And so, having read the post you referred to, I really don't see where we differ! ;-)
Edited at 2008-01-21 05:12 pm (UTC)
It's true :\ The perfect female form isn't even a natural one, it has us standing on our tiptoes to length our legs and arc our body. And while I have nothing AGAINST high heels or stilettos, it's very disturbing for the costume to be painted on, but not the boots, b/c her legs just aren't perfect enuf for the readers :(
The next great frontier in plastic surgery?
On one hand...it's Playboy. Which is raunchy, made by men for men to fantasize about women. Ick. Yuck. Puke. The mag is a rag.
On the other hand, I don't mind the images quite so much. I'm all for women taking charge of their sexuality and seizing that power that has so long been taken from us. This country is so prudish that breastfeeding in public is made out to be a huge deal. Images like this are seen as dirty and 'sinful'. Over across the pond, the human body is just...the human body. Nothing scandalous.
If we had that attitude, mags like PB would be out of business. I don't mind the photos, just the use of them.
Playboy is more like the ToyFair catalog than it is raunch! It's pathetic! It clings to its sanitized hipness, parading itself as cool, as it loses relevance on a per-minute basis.
They folks over the Pond have the body with all its imperfections. Playboy is selling cotton candy and a masking of class and reeking of fail and fear as it does.
They just make a natural thing so ....seedy, and it's rather disgusting, innnit?
I just think it's sad. They make it into a thing only stupid people who were weaned too soon do.
I don't think Playboy really markets to genuinely confident men. They market to men who think they can acquire the seeming of confidence with the right accessories, clothes, manners, and decor--and of course, the right magazines.
As for the rest of this...I've really got to file this under >SHRUG<. Chuck Austen did an entire comic book of what amounted to Wondy porn, and as you yourself note, Playboy isn't all that relevant these days.
I'm sure we'll see some juicy fanwank out of this, though.
Sometimes I build up weird mental images of famous people no one knows much about (like a lot of writers, for example) that aren't very realistic. It's probably my own fault for being so surprised. n_n; Heheheh. My bad.
Whether that means a thing under the circumstances, of course, is a subject for argument. Not being a reader myself...*shrug*
I kinda see it as bunch of topless tough girls (or maybe creatively posed lesbians, whatever) as opposed to spread-eagled shit or penetrative scenes...
As far as the nipples issue, I presume they are sliding by on the fact that they are painted. Covering them in paint is just enough to pass for the news stand. As for tastefulness for a cover? Personally, I think it's pretty tacky.
I tend to lean toward Ragnell's concerns more so than the concern about porning up Wonder Woman. Both she and Cheryl Lynn address that well. There has been a sexual aspect to the character throughout history, but there is more to her than that, and she represents many things to many different people. And yeah, thanks to Lynda Carter, Wonder Woman was both a cool super-hero and an person of desire in my youth(though that "desire" aspect was probably more Carter).
In the end, I found the article more problematic for putting Carter and Fallon in the same category-as if merely both being attractive brunettes made them equals. Playboy is largely irrelevant now, so while I find the cover in poor taste, it's not something I think will truly damage and tarnish Wonder Woman in the long run.
Well, the cover is big money, and it does lead to other, useful contracts for the woman who does it. I wouldn't do it, but I do know why there are women who do. If you don't mind nude photos, Playboy is the crème de la crème of the market.
As far as the nipples issue, I presume they are sliding by on the fact that they are painted. Covering them in paint is just enough to pass for the news stand.
Things have changed since even the 80s. I'm just plain out of touch.
Playboy is largely irrelevant now, so while I find the cover in poor taste, it's not something I think will truly damage and tarnish Wonder Woman in the long run.
That's what I think. This isn't about WW; it's about Playboy.
Anyway, I was actually posting because discussions of Wonder Woman often turn my thoughts to a woman I know. My boyfriend does custom corset design and one of his most famous designs (in circles where he's famous) is the Wonder Woman costume he did for her:
picture (Worksafe)
I guess I'm not sure what commentary to attach to it, except to say that I think Julia, the model, is an embodiment of the Wonder Woman spirit that you may find more to your tastes.