What's Wrong With Being Sexy?

One of my favourite pastimes (which I do when I have a spare moment or two) is browsing writer’s forums and talking with other writers. Prior to blogging this was the way I tried to get feedback for my work, using the relevant sections to post sample chapters of my work for feedback. Along with this, I also posted some sample images (once people started asking for them of course) to go along with the written text. Feedback was pretty positive for the most part and the artwork did get a lot of the praise.

 

However, there was one forum poster (who shall remain nameless), who sent me a rather scathing email in response to this. Basically, the core of the email (which I will not be posting on here) was that he was extremely offended by the way some of the female characters were portrayed – as in physically. In particular, the character of Zarracka – he thought that the fact she wore a dress that barely contained her breasts was offensive to his feminist sensibilities and “sexist”. He then went onto some long tirade about how male writers “can’t write female characters without them being scantily clad whores” or words to that effect.

 

Well, to answer that question in the old fashioned manner of Spinal Tap...

Ok, in all seriousness, he’s entitled to his opinion and I will always respect that people will have different views to yourself. However, at the same time I do believe that any author should have the right to defend their work, so I politely replied back to him with answers to his questions. But he just would not leave it and came back with loads of other things that he had problems with – and this whole experience inspired me to write this blog. I will point out now that this is NOT a personal attack, but rather my view on some of the points that he raised.

 

As I’ve stated on previous blog posts, I love and have respect for women and believe that I write stronger female roles than male ones (in my personal opinion). But that being said – well, I am a man and I have the same urges that they all do. I personally don’t think that there is anything wrong with a female character being portrayed as a little bit sexy, any more than it is a male character being portrayed as hunky and muscular. We as humans are obsessed with beauty after all! It’s been a part of our culture since humans walked the earth. However, I do NOT agree with characters being portrayed in a derogatory manner and I would never create a character that was like that.

 

At the same time, I also believe that it’s important to create a character to type. For example, if a character is a succubus, vampire, or maybe a female assassin then it makes sense that the character would be alluring and attractive as they use seduction to snare their pray. By the same token, if it was a film or TV show set in the Amazon jungle, then you’d expect the tribes living there to wear little clothing given that the jungles have intense heat and they have little knowledge of modern clothing.  However, if you are just having a character that wore a skimpy swimsuit and her only contribution would be to get kidnapped and burst out of her clothing every five minutes – then that IS wrong, unless you’re writing erotic fiction. But that’s another story.

 

Here’s the thing though, I don’t necessarily think having a sexy character does anything to detract from their personality (assuming they have one). Indeed, many superheroines/action heroes are usually portrayed as pretty, but they also are strong confident women that can take action when the time is needed – that way we can respect them as characters as much as we can sexy symbols.

A good example is the superheroine Power Girl (see above pic), who is sometimes used as a kind of parody of the “sex symbol” ideal. She’s often portrayed as having a rather large *ahem* bust – which is often both a gift and a curse for her. Whilst this is usually distracting enough for her enemies (allowing her to beat them up), she sometimes gets a little bit annoyed about the way men view her. There’s a really comical scene I remember reading where she saves this man from a burning building, but he’s too distracted by her chest to thank her. Power Girl gets so annoyed that she chucks the man back into the burning building! (Don’t worry though, she goes back to save him). That adds a lot of humour to the scene in my opinion and this is why I like Power Girl out of a lot of DC characters – the writers don’t always take her adventures too seriously and like to throw in a little fun now and then.

 

Next point I wanted to raise was the subject of men not being able to write good female leads. This I personally think is totally ignorant – especially when you think that some of the most iconic female characters were created by men. Wonder Woman – created by a man (although his wife helped with her creation), Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Created by Joss Whedon (who is also a feminist I might add). Even Xena Warrior Princess had a male creator. Sure these characters are worshipped as “sex symbols” in their own right and are quite pretty – but that doesn’t detract from the fact that they aren’t damsels in distress and can look after themselves – which I feel makes them empowering.

 

In my view, saying that male writers can’t write good female leads is as ignorant as saying that female writers can’t write good male leads (I could use J.K Rowling as an example here with Harry Potter, but to be honest I never really was into Harry Potter. Although I know that any fan of H.P will agree on this point). Any writer is capable of creating equally good roles, regardless of gender.

 

Now, last but by no means least, I want to address the point he made about my character Zarracka being portrayed as too sexist. Well, for the purpose of this blog, here is a character design for her so that you can decide yourself.

I agree that her image is a little bit towards the alluring side - but let me clarify something. The artist that did this – and other artwork in the book – is female and a feminist. All the character designs were done by her and I gave her complete freedom to design these characters – given her only basic design descriptions and a copy of the book for reference. She drew these characters as she saw them with little direction from me and this is how she saw Zarracka. Indeed, Zarracka is a somewhat sexual character that is extremely vain and cruel, so it makes sense that she would try and look this way (I refer back to my “creating to type” argument). She drew the character based on how she saw them and not once did she ever draw in a derogatory manner. Just for further example, here are some of her other female character designs of characters in my book.

As a side note, I think having a female artist work for me has helped me as a writer – because whilst she is pretty open to the stuff I write about (including darker elements), she has some standards of what she will not draw and she will always tell me if she isn’t happy to draw something. This I think has help build a mutual respect between us and I always think it’s great to get a female perspective on a piece of work.


 


Anyway, that’s my feeling on the subject. Again I’d like to remind you all that this is not an attack against that guy that emailed me – I just disagree with a lot of the points he put across. My overall feeling is that there is no problem with making a character look sexy (whether male or female), as long as it isn’t derogatory and as long as it fits in with their character. And as long as they have a strong personality to make them stand out.


 


Agree or disagree? Or is there a point that I missed completely/should have raised? Please leave a comment below.


 


Thanks for reading!

 

 

Pandragon

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All images copyright of their repsective owners.

With the exception of the images of characters within Trapped on Draconica, I claim no ownership of any of these images.