The issue of Women in Refrigerators

This post continues a conversation started earlier on this blog on the status of women in comic books. Anita Sarkeesian over at Feminist Frequency is a pop culture media critic who produces an ongoing video series in collaboration with Bitch Magazine regarding tropes in popular media that marginalize and trivialize women. The second part of this series deals with the Women in Refrigerators trope that occurs quite frequently in comic books and across popular media:

When [Gail] Simone released her list [of over 90 comics that featured female superheroes who suffered a loss of super powers, brutal violation or an untimely, gruesome death] in 1999 there was an instant backlash from some comic book fans who thought it was unfair that they were singling out female characters. This criticism happens whenever we point out tropes specifically about women. In this case, comic book fans criticized the Women in Refrigerators by saying that male heroes get killed and tortured too so what’s the big deal? The people who run the Women in Refrigerators website responded to this by creating another trope (how much do I love fans!) called Dead Men Defrosting. Comic fan John Bartol explains, “In cases where males heroes have been altered or appear to die they usually come back even better than before, either power-wise or in terms of character development/relevancy to the reader." 

This video is quite enlightening. For more information check out these related links:

• Tropes vs. Women: #2 Women in Refrigerators - the original blog post at Feminist Frequency
• Women in Refrigerators - the official Women in Refrigerators (WiR) website, including Gail Simone's original letter, an ever-expanding list of comic book characters, and responses from other comic book fans
• Dead Men Defrosting by John Bartol
• The Cold Shoulder: Saving Superheroines from Comic-book Violence by Shannon Cochran at Bitch Media
• Women in Refrigerators: Alexandra DeWitt - an article critiquing the original WiR comic for which the trope was named
• A Woman's Place is Not in the Refrigerator by Marie Brennan at Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists

Women and sexuality in comic books

Since the Avengers movie was released, an image has been circling the various social networks depicting how the male Avengers would look had they been posed the same way that women in comic books are almost universally drawn. Although this is topic that comes up quite frequently in girl geek communities, the inevitable male response is usually "Men are idealized in comics, too," or, somewhat less frequently, "I like my lady superheroes sexy." And while there is truth to the statement that men are idealized in comics as well, the way they are idealized is different. David Willis, the author/artist of the webcomic Shortpacked , summarizes the difference in this wonderful comic strip (click to enlarge):

While I have a lot of thoughts on the subject of the depiction of women in comics (and their movie counterparts), my good friend Keith has compiled a wonderful collection of blog posts regarding the matter, which are entirely more eloquent than I am:

Dressed to Kill
Men in Skintight Leotards
What if male superheroes posed like Wonder Woman on the David Finch Justice League cover?

These in no way explore the depth of the problem, but they are a good introduction!