It starts with body type-- you can say wide-hipped women can be charmingly flawed too, etc, but it's sort of like how you don't see a lot of wide-hipped women in sports-- to some degree, your activity type correlates with your body type. So Cass has a lot more realism built-in just with her body-type. The construction of the character was clearly trying to reflect her life.
It's like you were saying about stripping-- you don't get to be empowered by being a fantasy only applicable to the Other (the sexual object). I mean, I want to correct that-- you can be empowered *as* a sexual object, within that context. You've already accepted (in that case) that you like the object/subject dynamic, and you're simply improving your lot in life. That's the sense in which Kory seems empowered (visually). It's like, no matter how high she goes, her body/outfit/presentation is a glass ceiling, marking her as object to a male subject, which renders her 'safe'. It's similar to how no matter how 'different' a yaoi character is, it's still drawn like a yaoi and not a bara (gay male comic) or a seinen (general male comic) character. The design is the marker/ceiling, and so is safe for fantasy.
Of course, there's a whole lot of variation in yaoi in terms of personality types/behavior even if the guys are feminized/idealized visually, just as Kory has a kick-ass/male-fied personality (to be crude), so as to increase her identification level for the intended male audience. But the pattern of divergence/convergence is the same. The idealized sex object diverges (in a consistent way) in appearance, and converges with the subject in personality, making them 'badass' and 'cool' (a desirable female for mating would be both fertile & cool/admirable!).
Anyway. I've been taking too much lit-crit, clearly, but I'm just playing around. :> I do think that there's a qualitative difference between that Batgirl & Cory, though, in that Batgirl is constructed on a different 'axis', as if it's in a whole different genre of story. I'd say both are superhero comics (clearly), but one is like a yaoi character & one is more like a seinen character. I mean, you can have more or less realism within the same overall subject matter (say, dystopia, sci-fi and/or superhero comics). It's not that Batgirl is necessarily more *logical*, but just that her whole aesthetic is bent in a different direction. My guess is she's also aimed at an older audience.
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Date: 2011-02-03 09:00 pm (UTC)It's like you were saying about stripping-- you don't get to be empowered by being a fantasy only applicable to the Other (the sexual object). I mean, I want to correct that-- you can be empowered *as* a sexual object, within that context. You've already accepted (in that case) that you like the object/subject dynamic, and you're simply improving your lot in life. That's the sense in which Kory seems empowered (visually). It's like, no matter how high she goes, her body/outfit/presentation is a glass ceiling, marking her as object to a male subject, which renders her 'safe'. It's similar to how no matter how 'different' a yaoi character is, it's still drawn like a yaoi and not a bara (gay male comic) or a seinen (general male comic) character. The design is the marker/ceiling, and so is safe for fantasy.
Of course, there's a whole lot of variation in yaoi in terms of personality types/behavior even if the guys are feminized/idealized visually, just as Kory has a kick-ass/male-fied personality (to be crude), so as to increase her identification level for the intended male audience. But the pattern of divergence/convergence is the same. The idealized sex object diverges (in a consistent way) in appearance, and converges with the subject in personality, making them 'badass' and 'cool' (a desirable female for mating would be both fertile & cool/admirable!).
Anyway. I've been taking too much lit-crit, clearly, but I'm just playing around. :> I do think that there's a qualitative difference between that Batgirl & Cory, though, in that Batgirl is constructed on a different 'axis', as if it's in a whole different genre of story. I'd say both are superhero comics (clearly), but one is like a yaoi character & one is more like a seinen character. I mean, you can have more or less realism within the same overall subject matter (say, dystopia, sci-fi and/or superhero comics). It's not that Batgirl is necessarily more *logical*, but just that her whole aesthetic is bent in a different direction. My guess is she's also aimed at an older audience.