Never changes

[eye_of_a_cat]

With thanks to rivendellrose for linking to this: Total Sci-Fi's list of The 25 Women Who Shook Sci-Fi. Where by 'shook', we mean: 'Some are striking for their leadership and bravery, others for their incredible sexiness, many for both.' The list itself is a bit weird (Rose Tyler at 7? No Firefly characters at all? Barbarella what now? Pfft, whatever), but leaving that aside for a second, let's see if we can spot any general trend in the descriptions:

• "An appealing combination of toughness, self-reliance, vulnerability and sexiness, Ripley is far from a conventional damsel in distress."
• "... and, of course, there’s the slave girl Leia that fanboys will never forget."
• "The image of Leeloo, clad in white strips and boasting flame-red hair, hanging off of a ledge above 23rd Century LA remains one of science fiction cinema’s most arresting moments. Jovovich’s character holds the key to saving Earth no less, and combines an alluring sense of mystery with an unbeatable sexiness." [You're missing a comma there, friend. Try typing with both hands.]
• "She can pull boiling eggs out of a saucepan with her bare hands! She can crush a man’s head with her thighs! Could this robot woman be any more sexy?"
• "Fans will always debate whether the Julie Newmar or Michelle Pfeiffer incarnation of Catwoman is the sexiest..."
• "Posters of the scantily-clad space heroine still adorn bedrooms and living rooms everywhere..."
• "But thanks to images like the much-reproduced one above, movie fans everywhere can’t wait to get another glimpse..."
• "After that she appears as Baltar’s sexy, advice-spewing vision..."

Jesus Christ, fanboys.

To head off the inevitable "what, so men aren't allowed to find women attractive in your feminist utopia?" grumbling that always follows this kind of complaint, I have a reasonable suggestion: TV/film sci-fi fandom magazines can either stop describing female characters predominantly in terms of their sexiness, or start describing male characters the same way. This seems fair. And anyone who would like to protest this on the grounds that women don't find visual stimuli attractive in the same way that men do etc. etc. is kindly invited to think about whether we're all watching Supernatural for the plot.

Comments

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

awww And here I was working myself up to start watching Supernatural. For the plot, of course.

:-)

To get a little more serious, I have some faith in the market system - at least to solve this type of problem. I would have thought that female response to eye candy would have been noticed. And perhaps it has been - on TV, as you (and others on my FL) testify. So why hasn't it been noticed as much on the big screen? (recalls various muscular torso scenes) It hasn't been completely ignored.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

With a list title like that, I would expect the list to consist almost entirely of...well, y'know...authors. The kind of people who actually changed Sci-Fi over the course of the years.

I'm just sayin'

Strangely enough I think I would be in trouble no matter who came up with this list.

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

I confess I was expecting Ursula le Guin, Andre Norton, etc.

The (partial) answer is to start your own list of great women SF characters, and I'd put Linda Hamilton in her pumped T2 incarnation high on the list. Assorted Joss Wheldon women characters follow close behind.

[jennyanydots21.livejournal.com]

You'd think the editor might have wanted to do something about the overuse of variations on the word "sexy" for stylistic reasons, at the very least...

anyone who would like to protest this on the grounds that women don't find visual stimuli attractive in the same way that men do etc. etc. is kindly invited to think about whether we're all watching Supernatural for the plot

I'm strongly suspecting the producers of Star Trek did their casting with the same issue in mind... or at least the reactions among my female friends, non-nerds included, would make you think so. Maybe what we need is a sci-fi magazine aimed at women. *muses*

[bhadrika.livejournal.com]

Whew, when I first read your post, I thought by "Rose Tyler at 7" they had listed a 7-year-old incarnation of her... on their sexy babilicious list. Eww.

I also found the copy for Willow amusing: "The character went through some interesting developments over the course of the show, including studying witchcraft and eventually coming out as a lesbian." Makes it sound like one led inevitably to the other, no?

What annoyed me the most were the comments for those like Scully, which seem to boil down to, "well, she wasn't sexy like the others, but at least she was smart." Thanks for the clear either-or, with the handy ranking of importance.

Agreement that last of Farscape is ridiculous. And who decided Alias is Sci Fi?

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

I was expecting the likes of Mary Shelly, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), Kate Wilhelm, Olivia Butler, and C. J. Cherryh.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I spent a loooong time poring over that list (and the captions) trying to figure out what possible criteria they could be using other than "sexy" to pick people. I really wanted to believe that wasn't the entire focus of that stupid list. But in the end? Yeah. *Grumbles*

Jackasses. I kind of feel like writing them, but experience tells me the idiots will not either a) understand why this sort of shit upsets us, or b) accept it as valid.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Amen.