Growing up, many girls look to their favorite comic book role models such as the amazing Wonder Woman, Starfire, Batgirl and so many others for inspiration and strength. However, seeing their outfits is nothing but ridiculous fanservice.
Women in comics are now portrayed as strong figures that can fight for themselves; however, many fans are disappointed in the outfits they have to see their favorite characters wear. They see it as a joke- women don’t need to be dressed that way to be a respected hero.
With the lack of clothing as the standing issue in the comics, the lack of women in the industry altogether is overwhelming.
Recently a new reboot has started called The New 52, involving many of DC’s well known characters. During this time, the percentage of female staff dropped. Comics Bulletin calculated that from the 12% of editors and other staff, only 1% of creators are female. On Comic Book Resources, they have estimated about 250 workers listed currently. That means out of 250, only 3 of them are female writers and artists.
Sophomore Caitlyn Rassa is a huge comic book fan. She reads comics every day and mostly purchases DC comics for her favorite series is the Green Lantern.
“I don’t assume many women write or read comics, because it’s mostly for male appeal,” Rassa said when asked how she feels about the 1% of women.
DC comics is also planning to relocate to California from their base, New York. They plan to let off a lot of their workers to restart the business.
Gail Simone, lead writer for Batgirl, has been fired by email for going against the sexism norm. She was the one who created the phrase ‘Women in Refrigerators,’ a term now currently used for a woman who is killed to aid the plot of a male hero. Simone continued to create an online movement against women in comics who are depowered, tortured, and murdered, listing each character and what happened to them. Simone had gotten the phrase from Green Lantern #54, where the phrase actually happened. The list adds up to be 60 plus so far.
Rassa also finds female characters difficult to look up to because of how they are portrayed.
“They’re really used for sex appeal and it’s really annoying to me- they seem overly flirtatious.”
Further on Rassa explained that if she was given the chance to speak to companies, she would say “Why are the men so fully clothed and the women are not? There should be male appeal too if they have the women dressed like that.”
In modern comics, women still don’t have the power they should. They are always made to ‘need’ the help of a male and exist to merely entertain the male audience. Due to this, it’s hard for females to become fans of the comic industry for they only see their heroes, if they are female, beaten and degraded.
