Quickhit: Needs More Glitter

by Lauredhel on April 5, 2009

in consumerism, entertainment, gender & feminism, media

Girls Red Comics – And They’re Pissed! has a new post up! Check out Needs More Glitter, by Karen Healey. She is responding to this article, “Marvel Debuts Female Apparel and Cosmetics“.

marvelchickgear

Karen writes:

Anyway, I’m back, lured by the tantalizing scents of bad copy and casual sexism. Check this out: Marvel’s selling stuff to women now! Women!stuff! Only not women. Females. [...]

What I resent is more of the same gender-specific shit: girls don’t want to be superheroes, they want to love superheroes; “female product” is about specific kinds of normative feminine, rather than “shirts cut with space for breasts”; before making anything for women, we have to be careful not to piss off men.

What do you think of the new Marvel merchandise? Would you rather they’d run with Nancy Lorenz’ idea for a Spiderman figurine?

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Tagged as: boys, comics, comics feminism, cosmetics, females, feminism, figurine, gender, girls, girls read comics, glitter, gratuitous ogling, Karen Healey, lip gloss, marvel, merchandise, nancy lorenz, normativity, peeves, shirts that fit, spiderman, tee shirts

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This article was written by lauredhel

Lauredhel is a forty-something woman with a disability. She lives in her Western Australian family home where books, Lego, and soapmaking gear constantly compete for space. She blogs about feminism, reproductive justice, freedom from violence, the use and misuse of language, medical science, being disabled, her vegetable garden, and whatever else pops into her head. Lauredhel also blogs at FWD/Forward (feminists with disabilities), scribbles at her personal dreamwidth journal Selective and Arbitrary, and co-moderates Hollaback Australia. She joined Hoyden About Town in 2007.

lauredhel has written 1308 posts for Hoyden About Town. If you liked this post, you might like to subscribe to the feed via RSS or EMAIL to get instantly updated for more posts like this.

{ 6 comments }

1 SunlessNick April 5, 2009 at 10:21 pm: I’d have preferred door no 3: something that unabashedly celebrated Marvel’s female superheroes.

(Though the Spider-Man thing is funny)
2 Jha April 6, 2009 at 3:33 am: The Spiderman/Goblin thing really got to me. That’s like the perfect slash couple! <3

(And yeah, the marketing is stupid. *sigh*)
3 Megan April 6, 2009 at 2:08 pm: Does that shirt even make any sense? I don’t understand how Hulk + Thor + Captain America + Iron Man(?)= rock or music, but I don’t read any of their comics. Is it some kind of fandom in-joke, or pun, or is it just vapid poop that they think women will buy because women buy vapid poop? (Full disclosure: The same t-shirt with Evo Avalanche would make me very happy.)
4 Deus Ex Macintosh April 6, 2009 at 9:38 pm: The shirt was obviously designed by someone who thinks the only comic style attractive to ‘teh girrlz’ is Hello Kitty… (what, you guys never heard of Robotech?)

Deus Ex Macintosh’s last blog post..Stop it, you’ll go blind
5 slave2tehtink April 9, 2009 at 8:54 am: It probably says something about me that my first glance at the lip gloss packages had me thinking “They’re making comic book *vibrators* now?!”
6 Megan April 9, 2009 at 3:14 pm: I bet Aquaman’s would be waterproof — he’d finally be good for something. :3