fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4378 ]

[ SECRET POST #4378 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4378 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #627.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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06. https://i.imgur.com/TRogb3N.png

I feel exactly the same way! I assumed She-Ra was an adult back when I was watching this. I didn't care that her body looked different than mine because she was a grownup and I was a little kid, duh, and I was young enough that I wasn't much concerned with body image, anyway. By the time I hit puberty, enough time had passed that it never occurred to me to think "Why don't I look like She-Ra?" (Honestly, the people I most often compared myself to unfavorably as a teen were fellow real teens at school. They had less acne and boobs that could be seen without a microscope and were less awkward and had figured out how to make their hair look nice. None of those things were their fault, mind you.)

Oh man, I thought I was the only woman who felt this way! I might have wanted to be She-Ra because she was awesome, but I never looked at her as a kid and was like, "Wow, I hope I have tits and hair etc. like that when I grow up." Same with Barbie and basically everything that was supposed to have programmed me into wanting to be a hot woman or feeling inferior that I wasn't or whatever. When I was a kid, it was just... cool. That's all.

And when I hit puberty, it was wanking material.

(I'm not saying it's wrong or bad that anyone else feels the opposite way, just that I can't relate to it when people express frustration with it.)

I loved She-Ra as a kid. I never thought about what age she was and I had no idea what "sexualized" was. Those were more innocent times when little girls were put in dungarees, not Britney Spears outfits.

"Little girls were put in dungarees, not Britney Spears outfits."

There's something very important about this statement. One I don't know how to put into words.

LOL. I was one of those little girls in dungarees. Kids seemed... well, younger then, and treated as such. My mother would sooner swallow her own tongue than dress Kid!Me in "sexy" outfits, she was certain pedophiles lurked around every corner waiting to kidnap unattended children.

When I was in first grade, which is when She-Ra was airing, my favorite outfit was a pink sweatsuit with rose appliques all over it. I thought that outfit was the bee's knees, and it was just about the least sexy thing you could imagine. I loved watching She-Ra and I loved wearing my pink sweats.

My mom didn’t like dungarees and used to dress me up in these quasi-Victorian dresses with lots of lace and frills and tied huge bows in my hair.

Huh, I wore overalls as a kid, but I loved fancy dresses, and used to shove oranges down my shirt and then dance around and lip synch to Madonna and Paula Abdul. I remember once I took a black velvet skirt and turned it into a sheath dress, complete with fruit boobs, then did my damndest to make myself up like My Little Hooker—I was maybe 7.

I’ve spent pretty much my whole life since I was a preteen disappointed that no matter how much weight I lose I’ll never have a perfect hourglass figure or especially a tiny waist. My parents were old hippies and totally confused by their frilly girly daughter.

Absolutely. As a a kid I didn't recognise any of the sexualisation at all. She was cool for entirely different reasons.

As an adult I like her outfit.

TBH, as an individual show I think old She-Ra was probably just fine! The real problem with tropes like this is in aggregate - when every image you see of a girl who is allowed to be a hero is equally skinny/sexy/etc, over the course of years, that has an impact on both how people see themselves and how they see each other.

I hear this claim a lot, but I've yet to see any compelling proof.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-12-31 00:16 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-12-31 01:02 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-12-31 02:09 (UTC) - Expand

You mean, like 99% of media until recently?

ia in general, but I don't know that cartoons like She-Ra are really part of the problem. It's great when they aim for more diversity, like Steven Universe did, but if modern She-Ra looked just as idealized as the old one that wouldn't really be a problem. She-Ra is like Superman, she was meant to be ott, not realistic, and even then her figure is more "regular" than most cartoon characters.

Likewise, I suspect the multiple generations of girls who grew up with Barbies weren't adversely affected bc any kid who's ever held a Barbie and looked at a human knows they aren't the same thing. No kid is sitting around in their room thinking "wow I wish I looked like a rubbery plastic alien girl who can't move her arms or feet."

The damaging beauty standards come from media featuring real actors, from print ads and billboards, instagram and youtube, and so on. Even though teens and adults know logically that there's a lot of editing, it's hard to anyone to comprehend just how much of what they see online and on their insta/snapchat feeds and shit is edited.

This shit is the problem:
https://i.redd.it/mshkqi2p3h121.jpg
https://i.redd.it/a4z7fwu56a721.jpg

Not buff superladies with bitchin' swords:
https://i.imgur.com/gq6aruA.jpg

(no subject)

bio_obscura - 2018-12-31 22:51 (UTC) - Expand

Seconding this so hard.

And maybe it's not true for everyone, but it sure is true for me.

When Iwas six, I thought teenagers were practically grownups anyway. The Babysitter's Club seemed older to me, and they weren't remotely sexualized characters, it's just that 12 seemed like 16 to me at the time. Now I see the book covers and they look like the children they really were. So I join the group of people who had no understanding that She Ra wasn't an adult and it wouldn't have made any difference to me because I had a kid's perspective of who counted as a "grownup"

Same here. To kid me, she did things that grownups did, so in my mind she was a grownup.

Yep, absolutely

I don't want to downplay the negative impact of unrealistic body ideals on young audiences but I don't think it's quite as straightforward as people seem to think. It's definitely not straight up cause and effect - there are plenty of little girls who played with Barbies and didn't grow up feeling inadequate because they didn't have size 4 feet and size DD boobs with perfect hair and make up. Lots of kids understand that's not real.

And She-Ra had a magic sword and a Pegasus, so... yeah, that's your big clue right there that she's not real. I think what's more damaging is seeing real human beings who diet themselves to death or get photoshopped until they're unrealistically thin and beautiful and (most important of all) hearing this unrealistic standard enforced by the people you know in real life, i.e. your family, friends and romantic partners.

The argument is that it's a cumulative effect.

Children were and still are generally much more capable to tell fiction from reality when it comes to cartoons than they are given credit for.

It always reminds me of the fact that for the most part, the only people who think violence in video games turns people who play them violent and who can't tell apart fiction and reality are the alarmists who have never touched a game in their lives.

I was definitely more likely to fantasize about having a pet flying horse as a kid than to have She-Ra's body. Adulthood seemed so far off back then so I didn't think too much about it.

Agreed! Mind you, I was a tomboy, so He-man was more my thing, lol.

It's only adults that see things in kids cartoons and have a problem with them. We forget that we were innocent once and had no idea what 'sexualisation of minors' is. We only cared if characters had awesome super powers, or cool tiger mounts!

I can remember being frustrated by cartoons like original She Ra when I was a kid because of the unrealistic appearance of the characters. It was because of the art style, I think, they looked like they were trying to draw them realistic and failed. I was also frustrated by cute animal cartoons because I didn't understand why so many more of the characters were male than female. And by movies because the people were so weirdly prettier than in reality. As young as five I can remember those things being a grain of irritation and pushing me away from TV towards books and reading.

I feel like the whole controversy was less “OG She-Ra’s design is too sexy and adult for little kids” and more “It’s really creepy that you explicitly want the female protagonist of a show made for little kids to be sexy and adult, particularly when the character is ostensibly a teenager.”

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