Superhuman women and normal women

[Steve]

Given that superhuman women tend to have bodies that would make most supermodels envious, how would a world with superhumans affect culture in this area?

 

Would teenage girls be even more body conscious when comparing themselves to such beings in the media? In Champions, it talks about superhumans having bodies that don't get fat. Imagine a world with women with perfect physiques who don't have to live on water and lemon juice or take dieting to extremes to maintain their figures.

 

Would superhuman women take advantage of their physiques to do modeling or otherwise take advantage of their heightened appearances? Sell cosmetics? Would any do adult movies or pose in Playboy to make money?

 

How would feminists treat superhuman women? As role models?

 

What impact would superhuman women have on the lives of normal women?

[Blue]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I don't know how girls could be MORE self-consicous unless news reports just started coming out and saying that outright. ("And to you, tiny children, I say grow up big and busty or you'll get no respect! And that's the way it was, April 3rd, 2007.")

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I think the answers to all of your questions are, "It depends."

 

There ARE many women who don't need extreme dieting and exercise to have nice bodies. Not PERFECT bodies, in most cases, but there are women who don't have to spend most of their lives looking good. Genetics make quite the lottery.

 

I'm sure that some superhuman women would take advantage of their superhuman bodies to make money off their looks. Why the heck not? It's their right, in a culture which reveres beauty, to gain an income stream off a marketable attribute. And considering that Playboy can be far more tasteful than, ahem, other such magazines, I see that as quite a viable line of income for an attractive female.

 

The feminist response depends on the superhuman female, really. There's likely going to be some feminist backlash against Kitchen Maid and Lysol Lass if they tee-hee their way through press conferences, insist all wide-eyed that the big, strong men leading them is the only reason they're heroes at all and tell young women that the best thing they can aspire to is to be a housewife. Whereas I can see a lot of feminists supporting women who give a positive message for young women, emphasizing their abilities over their looks and empowering them to do what they want. I can see many feminist organizations hiring on superwomen as spokespersons.

 

On the lives of normal women? Who can say? It depends on their reception in the public eye, really. If the media is constantly harping on the female superheroes' "shrill admonitions" as they do with many female politicians today, how could their message possibly be received positively? If they're treated as, "Oh, isn't that cute; the pretty little lady wants to play with the big boys," there's likely not going to be much of a change. But held up as equally important and just as much of a role model for young people? That's pretty empowering, and the cultural zeitgeist would have no choice but to follow.

[wylodmayer]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I don't know how girls could be MORE self-consicous unless news reports just started coming out and saying that outright. ("And to you' date=' tiny children, I say grow up big and busty or you'll get no respect! And that's the way it was, April 3rd, 2007.")[/quote']

 

There's no way to say this without sounding offensive, so you'll have to take my word for it that no offense is meant when I say, that's a pretty naive way of looking at the effects of media, especially on women, for whom physical attractiveness is culturally considered a major determiner of "worth," as it were (for better or worse).

 

As discussed in another thread, Western culture makes beauty a major commendable trait for women, while considering it secondary at best for men (to bravery, strength, etc). Beautiful women are fawned over, pursued, etc. Beautiful women in the media are paid millions of dollars as models just to... you know, stand there and look pretty. The covert message is far more important than the overt message - claim all you want that intellect is more important than appearance, when a society is willing to pay millions to a brainless nitwit who's hot and still only pays teachers thirty grand a year, the message is pretty clear.

 

Not to mention our own psychological tendencies - it's a very robust experimental result that we wind up attributing all kinds of moral characteristics like trustworthiness, niceness and so on to prettier people (unconsciously, but that only makes it more powerful). Bottom line, the young girl who sees her more attractive peers getting more attention and more power, who sees the women on TV getting millions of dollars and the (ostensibly) desirable mates, who sees just how much this culture revolves around the structuring of women as beautiful objects of desire - she gets the message loud and clear, too. If she's not pretty, she's not worth anything. I could go on in this vein, but since the tie between aesthetic and moral characteristics, especially in terms of female beauty, is part of my thesis work, you really don't want me to.

 

Back to gaming - I ran an Aberrant game where this came up big time. Aberrant actually has superhuman levels of appearance and charisma that have game-mechanical parity with superhuman strength and agility and so on, and thus, once the world got over the shock of superhumans emerging suddenly, the "super pretty" people became the new standard of beauty. I mean, really, if Madonna, who has only human-possible levels of charisma could start a sweeping fashion trend in the 80s (albeit with the help of MTV, but don't tell me the media won't be complicit with superwomen, either), then people with actual SUPER beauty and charisma can do much more. When one of these super-pretty-people changed her hair, the world responded in days. When one of the super-charismatic guys declared he thought baggy shorts were stupid, the industry nosedived. The effects of genuine superhuman levels of charisma and appearance would be amazing, and more than a little disturbing.

 

A lot of the superwomen, though, would actually be "healthier" looking than the average supermodel. Supermodels routinely carry less body fat than athletes. Weirdly enough, it would take one or more super-fit and literally super attractive female superheroes, I think, to turn the tide of beauty to "fit" rather than "freakishly thin." Otherwise, they're basically hot athletes, and even though there are some of those, they haven't yet made it cool or trendy for a girl to be toned and muscular rather than emaciated. It would take a real cluster of really attractive, really fit superheroines, or a couple of really fit ones with superhuman appearance, to overcome the cultural inertia, I think.

[wylodmayer]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

Whereas I can see a lot of feminists supporting women who give a positive message for young women' date=' emphasizing their abilities over their looks and empowering them to do what they want. I can see many feminist organizations hiring on superwomen as spokespersons.[/quote']

 

Not to take this thread on a tangent, but this reminds me of a consideration about superheroes. Although they are, especially if attractive, likely to receive a lot of public attention, they are not really like politicians or celebrities like actors, who make up the bulk of our media-personality pantheon. Those people are more or less intentionally entering the public life; the ones that make it big are often - though not always - the ones who either don't have any (or at least, many) really embarassing personal quirks or are good at hiding it (things come out eventually, of course).

 

Superheroes are closer to athletes, but even professional sports heroes, by the time they reach the bigs, have had years of experience with living under scrutiny. If you don't think that college and even high school athletes live under a microscope, you don't really know sports. But superheroes are completely different, most of them anyway. Not only are they selected for their highly visible careers on the basis of things which do not usually (I'm not thinking of skilled normals here) have anything to do with personality, but they often believe they are well shielded by secret identities.

 

So, barring some general considerations that would make someone more likely to be a villain than a hero, a superhero can be really eccentric, which is a nice way of saying "bent." Doesn't mean he or she doesn't mean well, mind you. What happens when an organization hires some superhero as a spokesperson only to find out that hero has some bizarre personal views or habits? What happens when the feminist organization invites Lady Justice to speak at some events, and she does to great applause, and then, eventually at some function, she starts talking about, I dunno, her theories on how AIDS is a "state of mind"? (this is an actual quote from an actual actress - a Scientologist, natch)

 

If superheroes are new to the world, they might not have PR people as a matter of course. A group might hire one to speak like it might invite anyone else to. A hero might not realize he's got foot-in-mouth disease and not have "image consultants" to keep him from saying dumb crap in public. Stars have those people, and look how often they embarass themselves *anyway*.

 

To bring this back a little closer to the thread topic, though, would the public regard these people as rolemodels? Stars and athletes are often decried as rolemodels, and they do a lot of dumb crap, but they are at least generally conscious of their status in the public sphere and, as noted, have professionals to manage their appearance and image. But heroes might, in general, be in the unique position of being thrust into the public consciousness without caring to be there, wanting to be there, or paying a lot of attention to how they look while they're there. I'd imagine most heroes wouldn't be role models; at least, most moms and dads would hope they aren't.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

Once again, "it depends."

 

I know I've never played a super I'd want speaking for a feminist organization. Not because she's not a good role model, but for the very reason you refer to; she'd say something weird at SOME point, and then there would have to be a big ol' PR scramble.

 

But then, I quite happily play characters who are just a little . . . off.

[Steve]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

Back to gaming - I ran an Aberrant game where this came up big time. Aberrant actually has superhuman levels of appearance and charisma that have game-mechanical parity with superhuman strength and agility and so on, and thus, once the world got over the shock of superhumans emerging suddenly, the "super pretty" people became the new standard of beauty. I mean, really, if Madonna, who has only human-possible levels of charisma could start a sweeping fashion trend in the 80s (albeit with the help of MTV, but don't tell me the media won't be complicit with superwomen, either), then people with actual SUPER beauty and charisma can do much more. When one of these super-pretty-people changed her hair, the world responded in days. When one of the super-charismatic guys declared he thought baggy shorts were stupid, the industry nosedived. The effects of genuine superhuman levels of charisma and appearance would be amazing, and more than a little disturbing.

 

A lot of the superwomen, though, would actually be "healthier" looking than the average supermodel. Supermodels routinely carry less body fat than athletes. Weirdly enough, it would take one or more super-fit and literally super attractive female superheroes, I think, to turn the tide of beauty to "fit" rather than "freakishly thin." Otherwise, they're basically hot athletes, and even though there are some of those, they haven't yet made it cool or trendy for a girl to be toned and muscular rather than emaciated. It would take a real cluster of really attractive, really fit superheroines, or a couple of really fit ones with superhuman appearance, to overcome the cultural inertia, I think.

 

Well said. Repped!

 

This is the sort of thing I was curious about, if it had entered into anyone's campaigns to explore such issues.

 

EDIT: Well, I tried to rep, but I've apparently hit him once already recently. As soon as I can though.

[Blue]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

There's no way to say this without sounding offensive' date=' so you'll have to take my word for it that no offense is meant when I say, that's a pretty naive way of looking at the effects of media, especially on women, for whom physical attractiveness is culturally considered a major determiner of "worth," as it were (for better or worse).(snip)[/quote']I don't think so at all. I think they've cranked up the "you suck because you aren't skinny as a nail" media machine to max. There might be some ways they can make young women feel worse but those would actually be overtly and intentionally cruel.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

Zl'f, my primary Champions character, already is an idol to millions of young women and it's not because she has a body to die for (Her figure is like a typical 13-year-old's, not Wonder Woman's). While she certainly has an athletic physique (virtually unchanged from her non-superhuman Olympic athlete days) and is pretty in a "really cute" sort of way, she's also assertive, determined, brave, and unafraid to speak her mind. The fact she leads Earth's most respected superhero team is just one more plus for the female supers. We've always assumed she has fan clubs, unauthorized biographies, and tacky tabloid "exposes" about her supposed secrets. In other words, not much different than what most celebrities endure.

 

I've never assumed supermodels or superheroines needed gravity-resistant D-cups to have a positive impact on women and women's issues. In a world with supers, I suspect that supers would gain much of the fanfare and attention that society gives to performers and supermodels in the real world. Humans seem to have an almost hardwired need to worship something (anything!); in a secular world it simply becomes celebrities instead of deities.

[Balabanto]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

The problem here that I'm seeing is that a message of empowering women need not necessarily be a feminist one. That leads us into a tricky trap, because many of us are men, and do tend to perceive all forms of feminism as one, when in fact, there are several different dimensions to feminism.

 

Many versions of feminism have a tendancy to break down when applied to women who break steel with their bare hands, teleport, etc.

 

Is it empowering to have super-powered female role models in a super powered world? More than likely, yes. Is it essentialist? No. If a guy want to grow up to be just like "Americana," and she's the symbol of America in your game (And let me tell you, there's a sheet I'm looking forward to publishing in Legacies), it's not a bad choice either, unless he wants the operation too, in which case she might look askance at him herself, because SHE grew up in the 1920s.

 

It was very important to me to have a woman be the symbol of America in my game world, because like America, Anna is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, but she will break your heart sometimes...

 

A lot of this stuff that we think of as "Feminist" is really "Historicist," which was the point here.

 

When we talk about a "feminist message," this is actually a loaded term. There's feminist historicism, essentialist feminism, and a half-other dozen types of feminisms, (And I don't use that term lightly) and all of them should, in various ways, inform us of the complex meaning of the "Superheroine."

 

The problem that we face here is that comic book superheroines are primarily written, informed, and explained in a genre written in and conceived of by men. How different Wonder Woman or Catwoman might look today if they had been written by a woman from the get-go, instead of Marston or Bob Kane.

 

Culture informs heroines as surely as heroines inform culture. How does a character like the aforementioned Americana reconcile her beliefs during a period of 1950's cult of domesticity when she was raised in the loose and liberal flapper era?

 

That's historicism talking.

 

But if we change the sentence to read:

 

How does a character like Americana reconcile her beliefs in herself as a woman during a period like the Cult of Domesticity of the 1950's?

 

Now it's essentialist feminism.

 

We're treading on VERY dangerous technical ground here, and we need to be a little more careful in how we think about this.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

In my particular dimension, superheroes don't have much influence on society at large, other than by their actions. Supers have been around since the late 1920's, but there are only about six thousand of them worldwide. People do want to be superheroes, but it is taught from an early age in public schools that superheroes and villains are not normal people. Thus, normal expectations for things like body image are maintained. Since my particular multiverse is the four-color idealistic sort (at least for superheroes) ordinary people may admire and even obsess about superheroes, and children may pretend to be their caped idols, there is no direct correlation between the world of supers and world of norms. Of course, in my world, the heroes don't wear spandex, either -- they are a little more functionally oriented, especially since they get a lot of their gear from the federal governments.

 

Matt "You-can't-tell-me-Victoria's-Secret-models-are-real-humans" Frisbee

[OddHat]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

Given that superhuman women tend to have bodies that would make most supermodels envious' date=' how would a world with superhumans affect culture in this area?[/quote']

 

Interesting question. I think I'd probably start from the effect I wanted to see in the game world ("Many women in their teens and twenties focus on and imitate Supers in the same way real world teens and twenty-somethings focus on and imitate pop stars; to get the body type right, they weight train, wear padded clothing, and even turn to drugs and plastic surgery") and work backwards from there to explain the choice.

Would teenage girls be even more body conscious when comparing themselves to such beings in the media? In Champions, it talks about superhumans having bodies that don't get fat. Imagine a world with women with perfect physiques who don't have to live on water and lemon juice or take dieting to extremes to maintain their figures.

 

Near perfect physiques aren't unknown in the real world. True, Supers don't have to work at them in the CU, but it has been my experience that people tend to underestimate the amount of real work that goes into maintaining a lean and muscular physique, especially for the over 35 crowd.

 

Years ago, when I was in the bodybuilding / powerlifting subculture and teaching at a Japanese women's junior college, I talked and worked with, taught and trained men and women with near-perfect bodies daily. After the first few months, I stopped noticing most of the time. I expect that those within the Supers subculture pretty quickly come to take perfect bodies in spandex as something of a given.

 

How many supers there are is also a question I'd ask here. A few dozen more perfect men and women on TV probably won't make more of an impact than the fitness boys and girls in movies and on TV today. Supers on every corner might cause women to start chasing after a waif body type Supers can't easily achieve.

 

Would superhuman women take advantage of their physiques to do modeling or otherwise take advantage of their heightened appearances? Sell cosmetics? Would any do adult movies or pose in Playboy to make money?

 

Assuming the same spread of values and personalities as is found in real humans, yes, some would.

 

How would feminists treat superhuman women? As role models?

 

The same way they tread female athletes and celebrities, imo.

 

What impact would superhuman women have on the lives of normal women?

 

They'd prevent the world from being destroyed by an endless list of monsters and lunatics; that seems like a pretty serious impact.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

It's also quite possible that most young men and women would look at the fact that supers have actual powers, and therefore aren't easily emulated physically (if at all), and decide to emulate someone a little more human. In the real world I see girls trying to emulate Brittany Spears and Lindsey Lohan, not Cindy Crawford and Vendella. In other words, it's a lot easier to copy someone whose look is derived from hip clothing and basic physical fitness than a demigoddess who weight trains daily, has had silicone or steroid enhancement, and eats lime wedges instead of real food.

 

Yes, there will be kids that attempt to emulate supermodels and bodybuilders but we already have that IRL anyway. (Besides, most supers in the comics don't look as pumped up as a world-class bodybuilder anyway.)

 

Afterthought: The underlying presumption here seems to be that young women would only want to emulate the physiques of superheroines - as if women are nothing more than boobs and butts. But why couldn't young women instead attempt to imitate the moral aspects of their favorite heroine just as much as the physical? They could fight for justice and oppose evil. Rather than starving/abusing themselves, why wouldn't they instead become a cop, a member of the military or UNTIL, or fight social injustices individually or in an organization?

[Karmakaze]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I usually file the perfect bodies on superheroines under the same category as the starving students in NYC dramas who nonetheless have huge loft apartments, or the fact that 90% of the mothers on sitcoms are "hot moms". It's the way the medium portrays them more than a function of the universe.

 

One of the cute finishing details of my latest power suit superhero was that, while she's normally feminine looking in person, she was originally mistaken for a teenaged boy because she thought it would be silly to sculpt falsies and high heels on the outside of power armor. So the press saw a slightly short, slender person with an mid-to-high pitched voice, and decided "boy". She didn't redesign the suit or correct people - she just let them figure it out. It did let me buy a contact with a local teen hero team, who tracked her down based on early press -- "That's really sweet kids, but I think I'm old enough to be your mother." Then they asked her to buy them beer.

[OddHat]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I usually file the perfect bodies on superheroines under the same category as the starving students in NYC dramas who nonetheless have huge loft apartments, or the fact that 90% of the mothers on sitcoms are "hot moms". It's the way the medium portrays them more than a function of the universe.

 

One of the cute finishing details of my latest power suit superhero was that, while she's normally feminine looking in person, she was originally mistaken for a teenaged boy because she thought it would be silly to sculpt falsies and high heels on the outside of power armor. So the press saw a slightly short, slender person with an mid-to-high pitched voice, and decided "boy". She didn't redesign the suit or correct people - she just let them figure it out. It did let me buy a contact with a local teen hero team, who tracked her down based on early press -- "That's really sweet kids, but I think I'm old enough to be your mother." Then they asked her to buy them beer.

 

I can't rep you now, but

[SKJAM!]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

Back in the day, my character Kira Midori was seen as a role model by teenage girls, advocating careers in law enforcement (as a uniformed NYPD officer, this was something of a no-brainer.)

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I think that in a world where the shiny bright people are shinier and brighter, the dull drab normal people look even duller and drabber.

 

But I think that at a certain point when a very small minority of people live in a fashion that is far removed from the masses long enough the social inequities of it all lead to a revolution by the masses and a casting down or backlash against the elite.

 

Its a cycle that history has seen before at any rate.

[Korvar]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I usually file the perfect bodies on superheroines under the same category as the starving students in NYC dramas who nonetheless have huge loft apartments' date=' or the fact that 90% of the mothers on sitcoms are "hot moms". It's the way the medium portrays them more than a function of the universe.[/quote']

 

I've already repped, but I'd like to emphasise this point; if you look at the "ordinary" folk in a Superhero comic, most of them are good looking with fairly perfect bodies too.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

It's easier to draw fit people in tight outfits. Fat people and loose clothing require more skill to make look right, especially from panel to panel...

[lemming]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I expect for more tragic accidents involving radioactive insects, electricity and lab sets myself.

[Steve]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

I guess it depends on how integrated superhumans are into society? The more remote they are from normal humans, maybe they have less impact on popular culture.

[TheRealVector]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

There's no way to say this without sounding offensive, so you'll have to take my word for it that no offense is meant when I say, that's a pretty naive way of looking at the effects of media, especially on women, for whom physical attractiveness is culturally considered a major determiner of "worth," as it were (for better or worse).

 

As discussed in another thread, Western culture makes beauty a major commendable trait for women, while considering it secondary at best for men (to bravery, strength, etc). Beautiful women are fawned over, pursued, etc. Beautiful women in the media are paid millions of dollars as models just to... you know, stand there and look pretty. The covert message is far more important than the overt message - claim all you want that intellect is more important than appearance, when a society is willing to pay millions to a brainless nitwit who's hot and still only pays teachers thirty grand a year, the message is pretty clear.

 

Not to mention our own psychological tendencies - it's a very robust experimental result that we wind up attributing all kinds of moral characteristics like trustworthiness, niceness and so on to prettier people (unconsciously, but that only makes it more powerful). Bottom line, the young girl who sees her more attractive peers getting more attention and more power, who sees the women on TV getting millions of dollars and the (ostensibly) desirable mates, who sees just how much this culture revolves around the structuring of women as beautiful objects of desire - she gets the message loud and clear, too. If she's not pretty, she's not worth anything. I could go on in this vein, but since the tie between aesthetic and moral characteristics, especially in terms of female beauty, is part of my thesis work, you really don't want me to.

 

Back to gaming - I ran an Aberrant game where this came up big time. Aberrant actually has superhuman levels of appearance and charisma that have game-mechanical parity with superhuman strength and agility and so on, and thus, once the world got over the shock of superhumans emerging suddenly, the "super pretty" people became the new standard of beauty. I mean, really, if Madonna, who has only human-possible levels of charisma could start a sweeping fashion trend in the 80s (albeit with the help of MTV, but don't tell me the media won't be complicit with superwomen, either), then people with actual SUPER beauty and charisma can do much more. When one of these super-pretty-people changed her hair, the world responded in days. When one of the super-charismatic guys declared he thought baggy shorts were stupid, the industry nosedived. The effects of genuine superhuman levels of charisma and appearance would be amazing, and more than a little disturbing.

 

A lot of the superwomen, though, would actually be "healthier" looking than the average supermodel. Supermodels routinely carry less body fat than athletes. Weirdly enough, it would take one or more super-fit and literally super attractive female superheroes, I think, to turn the tide of beauty to "fit" rather than "freakishly thin." Otherwise, they're basically hot athletes, and even though there are some of those, they haven't yet made it cool or trendy for a girl to be toned and muscular rather than emaciated. It would take a real cluster of really attractive, really fit superheroines, or a couple of really fit ones with superhuman appearance, to overcome the cultural inertia, I think.

 

Great post, and it got me thinking. When you wrote "As discussed in another thread, "Western culture makes beauty a major commendable trait for women..." you inspired a question.

 

Is beauty not valued in Eastern cultures? For example, since I'm no sinologist I'm not sure, were Chinese men quite content with the ugliest mates until contact with Western culture? Or were the people of India just looking for mates with a good personality until the modern era?

 

As for the thread topic, the answer is all around us. We already live in a world with a minority of beautiful people swimming in a sea of the plain and hideous. If there were suddenly super attractive heroes it would just be a difference in degree, not in kind.

[wylodmayer]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

Dude, I tried to rep Matt, Trebuchet, AND OddHat... but I have to spread some around first. At least I could get Karmakaze.

 

I love you guys.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

How would feminists treat superhuman women? As role models?

Well, Gloria Steinam put Wonder Woman on the cover of "Ms" and she's just a fictional character written by a man. So I think real-life superheroines would be similarly embraced by many feminists... as long as they acted like role models. Those who didn't would be unceremouniously dumped.

 

claim all you want that intellect is more important than appearance' date=' when a society is willing to pay millions to a brainless nitwit who's hot and still only pays teachers thirty grand a year, the message is pretty clear.[/quote']

Tho to be fair, this isn't just a gender issue: there are plenty of male overpaid brainless nimwits out there.

 

When one of these super-pretty-people changed her hair' date=' the world responded in days. When one of the super-charismatic guys declared he thought baggy shorts were stupid, the industry nosedived. [/quote']

I think it was "Marvels" that showed women imitating Sue Storm's hairstyle, the way women in our world did Jackie Kennedy's. So no major difference here; they're just another category of celebrity.

 

A lot of the superwomen' date=' though, would actually be "healthier" looking than the average supermodel. Supermodels routinely carry less body fat than athletes. Weirdly enough, it would take one or more super-fit and literally super attractive female superheroes, I think, to turn the tide of beauty to "fit" rather than "freakishly thin." Otherwise, they're basically hot athletes, and even though there are some of those, they haven't yet made it cool or trendy for a girl to be toned and muscular rather than emaciated. It would take a real cluster of really attractive, really fit superheroines, or a couple of really fit ones with superhuman appearance, to overcome the cultural inertia, I think.[/quote']

I think this is where you'd likely see the biggest effect: "Fit Is Sexy" suddenly becomes much more widely accepted. (FWIW, I do think this tide is changing a bit. Remember Brandi Chastain? An attractive woman rips off her shirt on international television, and the uppermost thought on the minds of most men is "Wow, look at those abs!" )

 

To bring this back a little closer to the thread topic' date=' though, would the public regard these people as rolemodels? Stars and athletes are often decried as rolemodels, and they do a lot of dumb crap, but they are at least generally conscious of their status in the public sphere and, as noted, have professionals to manage their appearance and image. But heroes might, in general, be in the unique position of being thrust into the public consciousness without caring to be there, wanting to be there, or paying a lot of attention to how they look while they're there. I'd imagine most heroes [i']wouldn't[/i] be role models; at least, most moms and dads would hope they aren't.

Good point. Although those superheroes who want to avoid the limelight -- or find out they suck at it -- would probably have an easier time avoiding the press than celebrities and athletes do.

 

Matt "You-can't-tell-me-Victoria's-Secret-models-are-real-humans" Frisbee

Also to the point, most of them don't look nearly that good in person.

 

I usually file the perfect bodies on superheroines under the same category as the starving students in NYC dramas who nonetheless have huge loft apartments' date=' or the fact that 90% of the mothers on sitcoms are "hot moms". It's the way the medium portrays them more than a function of the universe. [/quote']

Exactly. It's not like all superheroines have 20 COMs -- "they're just drawn that way."

 

I can't rep you now' date=' but [/quote']

Got him for ya!

[ghost-angel]

Re: Superhuman women and normal women

 

Great post, and it got me thinking. When you wrote "As discussed in another thread, "Western culture makes beauty a major commendable trait for women..." you inspired a question.

 

Is beauty not valued in Eastern cultures? For example, since I'm no sinologist I'm not sure, were Chinese men quite content with the ugliest mates until contact with Western culture? Or were the people of India just looking for mates with a good personality until the modern era?

 

As for the thread topic, the answer is all around us. We already live in a world with a minority of beautiful people swimming in a sea of the plain and hideous. If there were suddenly super attractive heroes it would just be a difference in degree, not in kind.

 

I was reading an article recently on Beauty as perceived around the world and through history. Apparently one trait did manage to be more or less universal: A waist thinner than the hips. It was pointed out that it wasn't ness. a 'thing waist' but that there was a definitet and defined curve from waist to hips.

 

Everything else was kind of all over the map.

 

And I know for a fact Eastern cultures have marks for beautiful women - they may not match Western cultures, but they are just as prevelent socially around the world.