Girls read comics

This week’s offering is a surprise Guest Column!

Robyn Fleming edits Cerise (the online magazine for women in gaming), admins at The Iris Network forums, and writes, among other things, the Hathor Legacy weekly column/links round-up I Read The Internets. She’s also marrying her fiance in October. I’m looking forward to standing beside her and holding her stuff.

My first impulse upon seeing a handful of pages from Black Canary Wedding Planner was to dash off a quick and silly LiveJournal post about how weird I thought it was when Wonder Woman, Vixen and Black Canary tried on panties together. Not because of the fanservice factor, or the mild faux-homo-eroticism arising from the women posing for one another in lingerie – both of which are pretty much par for the course in superhero comics, after all – but because it’s always been my understanding that one simply does not try on panties, for hygiene reasons.

So I wrote my silly post, and then wandered away and did some other stuff (there were cookies involved, at one point), and figured that I’d said what I needed to say. But then Karen and I got to chatting, and I looked at the pictures of Black Canary’s shopping trip some more, and then I looked at some other preview pages, and I realized I had more to say after all. Karen kindly offered me the opportunity to say it to all of you, so here goes!

The Black Canary on the pages of this comic and I have a few things in common. One of them is that we’re both getting married soon. I didn’t have as much trouble finding the perfect dress as Black Canary did (eBay was good to me), but I sure seem to have a lot more trouble getting in and out of mine.

I can only assume that years of experience getting in and out of fishnets and a leotard have given Black Canary superhuman powers of dressing, because I’m fairly certain that it’s not actually possible to put most wedding dresses on – or take them off – by oneself. At least, not without roughing ‘em up a bit. It takes a good friend and about ten minutes for mine – and it’s not sleeveless (and therefore likely very tight, and reinforced with boning), like the one Black Canary is trying on in the comic. But she gets into and back out of hers with no assistance, and in a hurry.

Which I suppose would be possible if it’s the sort of dress that zips up, and the zipper neither reaches too high nor dips too low. The majority of the wedding dresses I’ve seen lately (and trust me, I’ve seen many) featured buttons or lacing, but zippers happen! Sadly, there’s no way to know for sure on the back closure issue with the sketchy and obviously inconsistent back view of the try-on dress we’re given. What happened to the little ribbon around her hips? How does this strapless gown suddenly extend up to Black Canary’s shoulders? We may never know.

Another thing that Black Canary and I have in common is that we’re both martial artists. I’ve got a second degree black belt, and my understanding is that she’s even more bad-ass than I am. One of the things that makes my wedding dress the perfect one for me is that it has long, flowy, romantic sleeves that are, amazingly, actually cut roomily enough that my arms fit in them. See, a side-effect of being able to break bricks with my bare hands is that I have a hard time fitting into clothes that are designed for the average woman. My arms are just too big and muscular (and so are my thighs, and my calves…).

I’d expect fellow martial artist Black Canary to have pretty muscular arms, too. But one thing that’s made abundantly clear as she poses in a strapless gown, skimpy lingerie and her usual sleeveless leotard in this comic is that she doesn’t. Her biceps don’t seem to be any bigger around than her wrists. And it’s not like she’s muscular in that lean, chiseled way, either. There’s no definition whatsoever on those smooth, slender arms.

Black Canary and I have other stuff in common, too. I’ve been planning my wedding myself (though with lots of help from my fiancé and my mother, to give credit where it is certainly due), and I can definitely sympathize with the frustration and desperation she’s exhibiting in this comic. I’m totally sick of talking about it, too. Trust me, well meaning friends and relatives! I know damn well that time’s ticking and I’d better get my ducks in a row and [insert your own tired, cutesy metaphor about how little time I’ve got left before the wedding here]. Yes, there’s a lot to do still! Yes, I am a busy woman with a job and a life and stuff, and I waited too long on taking care of flowers and arranging shoes for the bridesmaids and outfits for the groomsmen! No, I do not want to talk about it!

You know what sucks? Planning a wedding! Oh man, this one had better take, because I am never doing this again.

But you know what else sucks? Reading a comic about someone who, despite being a superhero, has quite a lot in common with me and my current situation, and being unable to really enjoy it because of all the stupid mistakes and inconsistencies sprinkled throughout.

Lots of women get married. Lots of women try on wedding dresses, and buy lingerie. These things aren’t difficult to research. There’s really no good excuse for creators – writers, artists and the editors who are meant to be watching over them – to skip over the research process, but it’s even worse when the fact-checking is so easily done. In this case, the realities being ignored for the sake of titillation or plot convenience – the hygiene considerations of lingerie-purchasing, how wedding dresses are constructed and what it’s like to try them on, what a trained martial artist’s body really looks like – are pretty key to the title character and the focus of the book.

The Black Canary Wedding Planner was talked about as though it would be a comic that women could really relate to, full of girly wedding stuff. But so much of the wedding stuff is so wrong that, at least in my case, it actually resonates less than more common superhero comic storylines. In the end, I can’t suspend my disbelief enough to really relate to the Black Canary in this comic. The poorly-researched fictional world in which she’s doing her wedding planning and my real one just don’t have enough in common.

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Commenting on GRC Guest Columns: A Guide.

1) Please assume good faith on the part of the guest. I invited these writers because I am familiar with their work and I think it’s good. I don’t edit their columns, and I may not agree with them 100% on every subject, but I think they say smart and thoughtful things. You are free to disagree with them, but please consider them my honoured guests in this space that I host, and be polite in your disagreement, as per general forum rules. The columnist, if they respond, is naturally bound by those same rules.

2) If you have questions for the columnist, address them to the columnist (who may or may not respond). If you have ideas related to the topic, discuss them the same way you would discuss them had I written the column.

3) Guest columnists may write in styles and discuss topics I don’t or haven’t. That difference is almost certainly one of the reasons I invited them here. If you have objections to the guest’s style or choice of topic, you may voice them – politely – but you may like to consider whether you are actually adding anything to the discussion, or performing the equivalent of saying “Karen, your column would be great if it wasn’t written from the point of view of a girl reading comics and getting pissed.”

With all that in mind, you may well like to discuss this column here!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 12:34 am and is filed under DC, art, bodies, costumes, gender, guest columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.