[ SECRET POST #2171 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2171 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #310.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[tenlittlebullets]

On the one hand: this is a mildly disturbing and very effective reminder of how easily images, and particularly the objectification of certain people in images, affect how we view the world. Women in sultry anatomy-defying poses fly completely under our subconscious radar because we see that shit all the time. If only a few days of the Hawkeye Initiative suffice to place a particular dude in the "okay to objectify; doesn't even look weird anymore" category, that in and of itself is a pretty damning indication of why ridiculous objectified depictions of women aren't a trivial matter.

On the other: if, once the shock factor wears off, the takeaway result is "lol Hawkeye is a woman" rather than "whoa, the ways these pictures are gendered are really fucked up," I'm sure enterprising nerds will move on to other male superheroes.

On the mutant third hand, after sifting through the comments here: yes, there is a lot of meme dilution and a lot of questionably-relevant art being produced, but why should the Hawkeye Initiative be restricted to egregious anatomy-defying abominations? Stuff like Escher Girls and the various attempts by real people to replicate torso-dislocating T&A poses is there for one specific purpose, yeah, but IIRC the picture that started it all wasn't about terrible anatomy, it was about who gets the willowy ballerina treatment and who gets the competent-badass stance.

I think the HI is actually a really interesting opportunity to explore gendered depictions of body language and posing in a way that's wider than just skewering bad anatomy: stick a dude in a wide range of girls' poses and see what happens. What makes people uncomfortable? Why? What makes guys uncomfortable but causes girls to go "ooh, I'd like to see more of that"? Can we untangle the discomfort caused by images of degradation or powerlessness, or by having one's personality/awesomeness/basic physical integrity downplayed for the sake of showing off body parts, from the discomfort caused by men being unexpectedly thrust under the female gaze or posed in body language that's not degrading, just coded feminine? That's how the original HI image reads to me--hey, guys, let's stick Clint in the feminine pose originally assigned to Natasha and Natasha in the masculine one meant for Clint. Is it shocking? Why is it shocking?

(These ruminations brought to you by that one time I tried to figure out why I had a raging dyke-boner for David Tennant, and then I started sifting through photoshoots and BBC promo photos and realized how much of his body language is stuff you normally only see on girls. Dammit, media, if your Strong Female Characters are no less empowered for carrying their talents underneath a finely-tuned air of innocent, come-hither vulnerability, why can't we get more Strong Male Characters who do the same?)

On the fourth hand growing out of the mutant third hand, the occasional undertones of "lol, guys associated with feminine things, so funny/grotesque/pathetic" are pretty unfortunate.