theSoulciologist
35345
1179
119
Source and credit in video
Fp edit: as a sociologist, I can confirm with below commenters that imgur has a complicated (see: problematic) relationship with gender and feminism.
To the other large crop of comments attempting to false equivalance men and women obejctification in media, 1) horny male artists demean and distort everyone and 2) one of these groups suffers real world harm while the other does not.
Cheers
spontaneous9
ShadeMeadowsArt
FANSERVICE!!
thebonesofmyancestors
Is it sexist? Of course. Is it the diet cola of sexist? You could make an argument. No more so than the covers of every single book in the romance section at the bookstore. The funny thing is, that you can make an argument that when living, breathing women do it, it's less sexist. Because we support women using their body in a way that they are comfortable with and choose to do. No different from men in that they have every right to show the goods to get the clicks if that makes them happy.
ilikehornets
It is pretty obvious that when your target audience is teen boys you attract them by sexualizing women. Shonen manga is even worse at this, the depictions exist to serve male gaze.
wadatahmydamie
1:16 Wasn’t that Spider-Woman cover supposed to be a parody of an existing Spider-Man cover?
Cranbananarama
I get most of this, but at least with the She Hulk one, the view is set behind her. She relocates, we see what we're limited to. Frame to frame, the other characters stayed about the same, with only her turning or moving around. Is it fan a service-y angle? Maybe. But it doesn't feel like she's being overly sexualized, especially when it's a casual standing pose. After all, how many Spider-man butts have we seen on the regular?
QuanfaKibitzer
Cheesecake and beefcake. Mostly what I know of it is from grrlpowercomic.com
TyrCarter
gruntabulousbeans
Garbage. Garage. Garbage. Where Rocky bedroom?
Zalm
"I dont mind a little bit of male cheesecake, which is rare, but we always have nightwing."
fucking lol
cyno01
Suomijuusto89
DropDrop
I'm often interest in the tend of turning objects into women, and then using those objects that we've deemed women, as examples of women being objectified. Like a 2009 Princeton University study led by psychologist Susan Fiske found that when men see pictures of women in bikinis, their brains light up in regions associated with tool use and manipulation, rather than social cognition. The research indicates that scantily clad women are processed as objects or "things to act upon,". It makes me --
DropDrop
-uncomfortable. I'm not a picture, so why I'm I being told how a man's brain will react to me based on how he reacts to a picture. Like show a man a pictures of a lion, record that he doesn't show much sign of fear and then tell me that's how he'd respond to being face to face with an actual lion and call it science I guess. I get using real people is complicated in terms of replicability and consistency.
secularink
I like the vid and respect the point, but I don't agree on everything. I think the Manara Milo outrage was... odd and perhaps a needles outrage. I agree with the notion of objectivation, but I feel it can be at times victimization. Celebrating beauty and sexiness can be empowering too... I dunno... the frag I know anything... I'm off to get my coat, and a hat. I BELIEVE I HAD AN HAT!
Omicron416
Isn't "beefcake" the term for male cheesecake?
Xenarion
Beefcake is specifically about muscles, mainly pecs & broad shoulders.
Someshithead241
Probably but that hurts the point so we'll just ignore that or claim its different
emberfish
Not everything is a competition
Someshithead241
Didn't say it was.
TalkingSnake
If you want to see the impossible poses done with a male comic character, look up Hawkeye Initiative
TheGoodKevin
There were also some pretty zesty nightwing covers
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
"You like what you see, Bub?"
Someshithead241
Or just... any spider-man comic
levyathyn
To be fair, Spidey is definitely not supposed to move like a human anymore.
ALTEFFFOUR
The Kileen Joke, huh?
wadatahmydamie
Yay algorithms.
wobblecopterrrr
cheesecake was kindof the precursor to pinup, it was always sort of modest stylistically, Personally, I think it's pretty tame, as a genera.
emberfish
Pinups have been around a lot longer, cheesecake was just a term for them in the 40s
LtGenObvious
*genre
(Genera is the plural of genus.)
wobblecopterrrr
lol, my brain gets a bit too creative with words sometimes..
Someshithead241
The She-Hulk one is just some ridiculous reaching. Its fragmented because its multiple panels in one page. Did they use an angle to show ass? Absolutely. But only one person has a non fragmented body in that page and its the cheetah woman.
Even iron man is cut into bits, because its multiple panels. It's just showing the focus, not the entire picture every time.
Buttholeo
Crazy to see the majority of comments on this post are from dudes completely missing the point or just whining that it happens to male characters too
ShitIstoleFrom4chan
It is SO funny to me, that an hour ago, I got bombared in downvotes for calling out a commenter for misogynistic slutshaming, and now I see good feminist content on the front page. Seems like Imgur likes callouts of misogyny, as long as it's not THEIR misogyny.
Xenarion
Or more that Imgur isn't a hive mind and has different people with different opinions.
wadatahmydamie
I read it as them praising the video for not being sexualized, which is admittedly rare around here. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that there are a lot of shots to pick, and you chose poorly.
NaughtButOne
Imgur isn't a monolith. You can post at two different times, and have two completely separate groups of people reacting to it.
emberfish
Lmao I saw that thread. People are absolutely ridiculous, keep fighting the good fight
theSoulciologist
We try. As a sociologist, imgur is RIFE with structural racism and genderism. Much of these attitudes use the same minimization rhetoric of treating everyone the same. That was cool on posters in the 90s but is long outdated by science. Universalism does nothing to address recognition, rerestoration, reconstruction, or reparations. They think race and gender are taboo, mentioning is is inherently bad. Rest assured science backs up YOUR positionality
ShitIstoleFrom4chan
It's always shocking to me, because for example I often see imgur correctly call out racism from trump, ice and others. Then I see something like "Funny kahoot names!" on the front page that features the name "Nick gurr" and NOBODY in the comments says a peep??? A thousand upvotes?? Or a big meme dump and in the middle is some ca. 2016 anti-women meme. And again: nobody mentions it.
prosper020
There was (is) some asshole who would do meme dumps that were alright quality, but then would have a random sexist meme / intermeme comment in the middle of them. I called them out for a while, but it really felt like screaming into the wind. They’d argue back with me a little, I’d get out voiced, and seeming everyone would just move on. Just accepting shitty old “dumb blonde” and “women amiright?” Jokes as part of the fun. I fear the Nazi bots also upvote and promote sexist posts.
meme2zombie
I mean, the real answer is that we don't all see all the posts let alone that we're not a hive mind.
It's a case of different people having different reactions.
seenunseen
She's sexualizing herself while talking about comic characters being sexualized. I wouldn't call that good feminist content
Sibbykins
Agreed.
ruferto
her point is that there's nothing inherently wrong with sexualization of things, just that there should be a time and place for it. it is ironic, yes, but i assume that's intentional
wadatahmydamie
Ooooof.
ShitIstoleFrom4chan
Feminism is not to get rid of all sexuality, attractiveness, and raunchy content, even porn. The bad thing is to reduce women to nothing but their body parts. A woman dressing up in a "sexy" costume, to talk about, and draw attention to how costumed characters are used for male viewing pleasure, is feminist, as long as she wasn't pressured or forced to do this.
PigsWeGetWhatPigsDeserve
Agreed. But I’ve always thought that the visual aspects of superhero comics served as ‘material’ for 12 - 18 year olds. The men are also shown as extremely well built individuals in skin tight outfits, also oftentimes shown in close up.
PigsWeGetWhatPigsDeserve
Also: what is she wearing/showing making these points. Holy hypocrisy, Batman!
FoxPesdassi
Which gets especially ridiculous when super-characters with explicitly NON-physical powers, like Magneto, Green Lantern, Storm, Doctor Strange, etc., STILL have physiques that even most athletes & professional models would envy. They even draw Ghost Rider to look buff. A muscular . . . skeleton.
Astramancer
I read an article once about how superheros are modern day gods, and like greek marbles... are shown nude. Except you can't made them nude and still sell the comics, so the skin was colored and they called it a costume.
TheDirtySanchezBros
I hate the filters on this video so much.
DaisyfromDownunder
It's sexism to make me read sub-titties while trying to focus on cleavage.
levyathyn
Well fucking said
DarthBrooks64
The purpose of the Batgirl panel was to show the bullet hole that defined a large chunk of her history. Other than that "artist draws what would be nude human form but with a few lines to define costume" has been a thing since the beginning of comics. Including female characters as heroes means drawing what would otherwise be considered cheesecake. Like most things, it can be done in a subtle, character driven way or not.
pollox42
I remember many many years ago a letters page in Heavy Metal magazine asking why the covers always had scantily clad women. The (female) editor said the reason was simple; pin-up style cover art sold more books and they had the figures to prove it.
TheDaharMaster
MektaSatakOz
Well said. There's indeed a time and a place. I would also go further and say that there should be equal representation of male and female cheesecake. If you're going to do it to ladies, then do it to men the same amount.
NaughtButOne
I agree with basically everything said, but this is too perfect not to post:
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
"Of course it can come out the other end."
FussyZeus
I've done cheesecake/pinup art as a side hustle for a decade now (not pimping it here, not an ad) and I've always, always kept my poses extremely sexy, while trying my best to not go too wild with anatomy, simply because I find it less appealing. Women that look real to me are infinitely hotter than, and no offense intended to the person I'm replying, anime girls with 6 inch waists and 36JJ tits. Like... idk, that's never done it for me, I don't think it looks good and I never have. Course, 1/
FussyZeus
years on into making said art I've now come around to realizing I'm trans, so I'm not sure if that's a factor. I have learned over the years "I want to have sex with that girl" and "I want to look just like that girl" live shockingly, shockingly close together in one's brain. So yeah, maybe that was just another early sign lol. 2/2
FussyZeus
To be clear I don't mean to try and high-road any artist discussed in the OP or the creator herself, I have, at times, complicated feelings about what I make for this exact reason, because it's definitely appreciation of the female form, from a place of love for me, AND I can also make room for the fact that not everyone is going to see it that way. I'm openly trans on my patreon now, and I haven't lost any subscribers over coming out, so I hope they're by and large decent folks, but I don't 3/2
FussyZeus
and can't really know for sure what's in the hearts and minds of everyone who follows me and consumes my work. So yeah. It can feel complicated. 4/2
Roune
Interesting. I’ve honestly never heard to it referred to as “cheesecake”, just the shortened “cake”.
Nightcaste
It's like burgers, there are subtypes. Cheesecake is usually SFW art of women. Think sports illustrated swimsuit edition if they still do that. Or nose art on WWII bomber planes. Beefcake is men. Think sexy firefighter calendars. Sleazecake is right on the border between SFW and not. It's also not nearly as common of a term. I've also heard carrot cake and pound cake, I'll let you figure those out on your own.
DutchBoeremeisie
Weirdly, I was watching an old Cheers episode last night where Diane teaches Sam about the difference between cheesecake and beefcake.
FoxPesdassi
I've heard "cheesecake" as gratuitous sexualization of women, "beefcake" as similarly-sexualized men, and far more recently, "cake" as meaning just the butt.
bbrtki
or just fanservice
Xenarion
"Fanservice" comes from manga/anime culture, so I'm not surprised there's a different term in western comic culture.
Cranbananarama
Same, new term to me, and now I'm wondering how cheesecake and cake/butt even became connected.
theSoulciologist
Cheesecake has been an industry common term for more than 10 years, but same same yeah
Navrodel
"Cheesecake" refers to the pinup art in general. Definitely an older term, but still gets thrown around a decent amount in comic circles and some marketing companies.
"Cake" usually just refers to the butt and thighs, though I've noticed it more recently sometimes used interchangeably with thickness to describe any amount of sexualized plushness on a woman.
TheWombatStrikesAgain
I thought cake was just butts.
MoopsyLD
I think its just this person that refers to it as "Cheesecake" cause not everyone likes cheese cake itself. "Cake" encompasses all people.
TurnsOut42WasASlightMiscalculation
Cheesecake is just an older term
MoopsyLD
the way she was using it did not refer to ass and thighs rather more like using cheesecake instead of fan service. like that male example showed absolutely no ass and her she hulk example showed just the breasticles. so her examples are just not matching.
zuken
The older cheesecake term does not refer to ass in general either. And the fact they don't match is part of the point. The way men and women are illustrated in comics is not the same.
Z0op
Cake is just ass and thighs, cheesecake is a specific version of it (cheesy, lame, cheap)
Kats8652
And then you've got male characters that look like beefcakes. (I will never get over the insanity that is this drawing)
szepasszony
This isn't done for women though, it's more about the male power fantasy. Most women aren't into this super buff look, especially when it is so over the top
Beefkins
This will forever be my favorite because it's just so fucking bad.
ToSisPoS
Dave Willis in Shortpacked! addressed that. https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/false-equivalence
theSoulciologist
Sooo male illustrators are horny and give us all dysmorphia?
ThisOldCPU
You can see the image he traced the bulk from, then proceeded to mutilate every other perspective.
Bobbobbobobbananafanafobob
The neck is the worst part.
GoldenSun3DS
The one on the left also looks gross and weird.
kahooki
I also frequently post this comparison.
In the end Rob Liefield did a shitty drawing of Arnold/Captn A - Pose is wrong interpreted, right arm basically vanishes behind shield, head too small etc. pp.
Superfictious
He looks like he'd spring a leak if I poked him with a pin.
ThisOldCPU
WackyWavingInflatableArmFlailingTubman
Ah thanks for the trace, now I see it
Septcanmat
One of the biggest issues of course being that the change in pose means there isn’t a reason for the muscles to be flexed like that. So in the picture of Arnold, there’s a reason why muscles are bulging the way they are, whereas with captain America it makes it seem like that’s just his “at rest” form, which is even more absurd.
MedicSolidarity
Looks way better with the other arm
hyperchondriac
For the muscles to move like that (I e. The left pectoral to protrude past the right and point at the viewer) the pose naturally would need to be something other than a plain right profile.
Either that, or Cap is working on breasting boobily.
WellThatsJustWhatWeCallPillowTalkBaby
I giggle every single tome i see poor mutant Cap.
Vercury
That's just Rob Liefeld, he may have come up with Deadpool and Cable but he's still an awful awful artist
MithridateEupator
You leave FF titties and keg sized 8 pack Captain America alone.
GIMike1972
He chonkin!
Midgarmerc
Rob Liefeld is a ....special breed...
Beefkins
Spent so much time giving Captain America absolutely massive honkers that he never learned how to draw feet.
CrimeThinker
Those are actually just pouches. More pouches. Both the feet and the pecs you think you're seeing are more pouches.
kevbot5000
Do feet give artists the same issues as hands?
Scruffy2
As an artist - yes. But feet are worse as you don't see them as often as hands, as they're usually below tables or out view for other reasons, where as hands are usually uncovered and nearby
TinyLiehon
Is that perspective even allowed? How uneven must your chest be to get both nipples in view in profile? This is some Peppa Pig shennanigans, I tell you what
tychog99
Bro looks like if Elon Musk got yolked
arek314
That one is pretty famous as he did Arnold's side profile from some competition. Cap chest looks so swole because Arnold was standing sideways to show off his biceps
FiftyShadesOfMascarpone
Or like a young twunk who is portrayed in the same sexualized poses as his female colleagues, with frequent butt shots and needlessly bare-chested action scenes. See also Spider-Man for awkward twunk poses that serve a maximum amount of cake
emberfish
Dick Grayson has been recognized in-universe by his ass alone. By multiple people.
NappaTheFriendlyGhost
As a bisexual: the batfamily holds a special place in my heart. We have twink with abs (Nightwing), cute geeky girl who needs a hug (Batgirl/oracle), disaster lesbian i totally cant fix but can probably make worse (Batwoman), Rich older man to take care of me (Batman), Huge jacked hunky boi with daddy issues (redhood/Jason todd).
emberfish
Also that last shot is absolutely diabolical
FiftyShadesOfMascarpone
Or the variant cover in the top left where he manages to show off his bulge and his butt crack at the same time. And a nipple for good measure. Let's see superheroines pull that off /s
emberfish
And they say Cubism is dead smh
FreePalestineAndTheWorldFromIsrael
To be fair, it is Nightwing
50m31AW
Exactly. Why he got all dat ass if we ain't supposed to see it?
Kats8652
Gotham Knights was a step back from the other Arkham games butat least they got the cake of Nightwing and Batgirl (to a lesser degree) down to a tee.
FreePalestineAndTheWorldFromIsrael
Im currently playing it as Red Hood. Makes me wish we had a TMNT game in the same style
MassiveCollisionY
The whole flashpoint animation is genuinely hilarious to me because how absolutely beefcaked guys are in it. It is insane.
Nandortherelentless
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1c2VxODVnejFhNnUyYWVvOWN6bmoyc3c0dmQ5YWI3bGJpbGczNHlvZCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/qw06vMbpPSZG0VppXq/200w.webp
PanNonOpticon
Or if we talk about uncomfortable poses, the yardstick is Spiderman.
jayman0123
even his daughter in the 1998 run of spider girl comics wasn't completely immune, but they did a good job not making it too bad. this is probably the worst one:
Tomigami
Shoulder foot, shoulder foot
Spider-Man's got a shoulder foot
Spine is soft, life is hard
Doesn't have an insurance card
Doc Ock
Won't fix his shoulder foot
emberfish
Spider-Man’s power is that he can do that
PanNonOpticon
What cake is this? Funnelcake?
revasseur
Funnelwebspidermancake
swifter66
Cinnamon twist
ItHappenedInThe20thCentury
I think Liefeld gets a bit more shit than he deserves, but that one is... oof, man, that one is *hard* to stomach.
NotACanadian
You either end your career as a foot fetishist or stay in the business long enough for people to make fun of you for not being able to draw feet
emberfish
I like how Kohei Horikoshi made a bad guy covered in hands, and always gives his characters super intricate sneaker designs, because that’s what he likes to draw.
ItHappenedInThe20thCentury
It's a tough business, what can I say?