Body Dimorphism, part 2

Originally published November 26, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1358

We were talking last week about the subject of body dimorphism. (At least I was. I dunno, you may have been talking about something else entirely. It’s a free country. Talk about whatever you wish, and smoke ’em if you got ’em. Not that that should be taken as an endorsement of tobacco products. Good heavens, one has to watch oneself in the era of political correctness, doesn’t one?)

Anyway, much has been written on the message being sent today’s young girls in regards to the message being sent by wasp-waisted Barbies or heroines with hydraulic busts. But not a lot has been written about what young boys are being taught by what is becoming the standard of male musculature. This is represented by the broad-chested, pumped up male comic book heroes (as opposed to the fairly normally proportioned lads from the Golden and early Silver Age of comics) and the newer lines of action figure toys.

The body dimorphism poster boy is probably the Luke Skywalker action figure who, when he came out back in the 1970s, looked pretty normal… as opposed to the rippling pecs he sports nowadays. So we were talking to Mark Hamill to get his thoughts on the matter because… well… why not?

Interestingly, being a comic book fan of long-standing himself, Hamill’s impulse is to try and come up with a way that his character’s visual transformation actually makes sense from a continuity point of view. “The thing is,” he said, “in the larger scheme of things, it’s like the actual six and a half hours (of the original three Star Wars movies) is minuscule compared to the ancillary market of novels and games and comic books and card games. It’s gone on so long that they’ve had to come up with more storyline for my character than was in the three movies.

“I get the sense that it’s like supply and demand at its finest… or at its worst, depending on how you look at these kinds of things. It’s become such a voracious, pulsing franchise in America, like cowboys and Indians or Davy Crockett, that it’s pedal to the medal on all levels. Star Wars is in the food stores, the toy aisles, the clothing stores… it’s everywhere. It’s remarkable. They will exploit anything that makes money and push it to the limit so that you can’t even keep up with all the adventures. So who am I to criticize how he looks, because for all I know he’s gone out and buffed himself up so that he looks like that. It’s so funny because I was so immersed in it, but it ended for me just before Return of the Jedi came and went. There’s probably 95 percent of ‘my’ adventures that I have no knowledge of.

“In terms of George’s vast universe here, it’s transmogrified so far beyond what I thought of it when I was associated with it, that when you try to put it into perspective in your own life and own reality, something like that is one of a myriad of things that strikes you even as a student of pop culture.” For instance, Hamill feels that part of the current obsession with pumped up heroes is related to another aspect of pop culture, namely “the whole emergence of wrestling. I so don’t understand that. I’ve heard the analysis of how it’s soap opera for men, but it’s never appealed to me on any level. Which is funny, because I do like superhero comics.”

Hamill makes a valid point, as far as I’m concerned, regarding the popularity of wrestling. Whatever influence comic books may have, they pale in comparison to the widespread impact sustained by modern day wrestling. When kids hear the name “Steve Austin,” they’re sure not thinking of the relatively normally proportioned Six Million-Dollar Man. They’re thinking of one of a hoard of wrestling types, beefed up by God-knows-what to unheard of physical proportions. They see these folks stalking around, and they become the new heroes (and villains) and set a standard for physical desirability.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be in top physical condition, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being concerned about having a well-shaped frame. But these guys can mightily blur the line between what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy.

Still, it’s not as if Hulk… sorry, Hollywood… Hogan… is the first of the sculpted media figures. Although, speaking of Hulk, go look at the first issue of The Incredible Hulk if you want to see what I’m talking about. What was incredible then would be pretty modest now. See how he’s built. He doesn’t look that physically imposing compared to what is now the standard for “normal” human superheroes. Yet in those days, proportionately, he towered over the Thing and dwarfed Spider-Man. Over the years, the Hulk has become more and more mammoth. Ron Garney’s current work on the Hulk is hailed for the way he manages to give the Hulk such remarkable mass, to the point where the reason Hulk has to smash is because he couldn’t possibly fit through a normal doorway.

That’s not meant as a slam on Garney’s view of the Hulk… he’s simply rendering what has become the industry standard for a character who, in the early days, looked not much different than the average wrestler does now. And fans are happy to see it, because that sort of gargantuan aspect is now what is expected of the Hulk. Probably one of the least popular incarnations of the Hulk, purely from a physical point of view, was when he was “Mr. Fixit” in Las Vegas. Although the gray Hulk was returned under Al Milgrom’s watch (a fact most people seem to forget), it was Vegas artist Jeff Purves who restored him to the more modest proportions of his earliest days. And a lot of fans complained he didn’t look… well… Hulkish enough. Years of increased mass have demanded a new standard for the character.

In any event, Mark Hamill remembers “how Hercules movies were big, so I think people are fascinated by bodies of great strength, be it Samson or Goliath or Hercules. So maybe it’s always been part of the culture, that sort of physical perfection, both males and female.”

What sort of conclusions can be drawn from this? What can, or should, be done about it? I’m not entirely sure what to suggest.

Or perhaps comic book publishers and artists can be asked to scale back the visualization of the characters so that they look more normally proportioned. After all, if Marvel can order a sweeping internal edict involving non-smoking among its characters, it can issue another that says that heroes who once had reasonable proportions should be restored to their earlier incarnations. John Byrne did that to a certain degree when he took over FF years ago, for instance. For the first time in years, Reed Richards looked like a skinny scientist rather than a body builder. Likewise his visualization of Spider-Man likewise looks more down to earth… uhm… ceiling.

Or perhaps wrestlers and wrestling magazines can go on a media blitz, explaining that kids should not be trying to emulate these body types, and talk extensively about the dangers of steroids and such.

Or perhaps manufacturers of action figures should roll back the physical models of the toys being manufactured so that, at the very least, toys based on actual people wind up have musculature emulating the actual people.

Or perhaps we should simply form a boy’s band. For I ask you, friends, how can any action figure hope to compete with a slide trombone?

Really, the only practical approach is the one Hamill suggests: “Just stay in touch with your kids and talk to them about those kinds of issues. As long as you talk to your kids about these things, you can sort of circumvent it as an issue. I think media is so pervasive in children’s lives, you just have to control it. Sometimes I think we made a horrible mistake giving them so much access to video tape recorders and such. Turn it off, go to the beach, play a board game, do a jigsaw puzzle.”

Then again, Hamill does have a unique problem. It was quite startling to his kids, growing up, to learn that not everyone’s father had an action figure of him.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. The foregoing notwithstanding, if there’s ever a Peter David action figure, you can count on it being pretty damned ripped. And it’s going to have hair.)