Red Hot Riding Hood

I just happened to come across this whilst searching for material for a certain other blog of mine and I thought I'd share it here. This article is about a Russian strip club that caters to het women. It raises some pretty interesting questions about "the gaze", the role of feminism and consumerism in sex culture and the essential differences (or lack thereof) between men and women.

The thing that really stands out to me is that the article constantly asserts that this whole thing 'isn't gay', which to me implies that we've come so far from being able to accept the female erotic gaze that we automatically see male nudity or male displays of sexuality in terms of homosexuality. See also this SocImages post on a related topic.

Skin trade

This video from The Onion neatly captures exactly what I hate about PETA. Like the very best of satires, this sketch is only a hair's width away from the bizarre truth. Incidentally, PETA's "response" at the end of the video practically had me in tears from laughing so hard.

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

Grade-A bullshit

I simply can't do enough to point people in the direction of this Sociological Images post. Ever wonder what astonishingly rigid gendering in children's books looks like? Wonder no more! This one features gems such as "Boys build houses/Girls keep houses," "Boys fix things/Girls need things fixed" (WTF? Being useless and needy is considered a role now?) Don't let me spoil it all for you though, hop over and discover it yourself.

It wasn't until I blew it up that I realised just how unbelievably pointy Poison Ivy's face looks in that pin-up

Above: if you can twist so that we can see both of your boobs and both of your butt cheeks at the same time, you've probably done some damage to your spine, Harley.

June will see the debut of new Batman spin-off comic Gotham City Sirens, a series focusing on "the bad girls of Gotham City!"

"Sirens," seriously?

I understand the fact that a lot of the Batman mythos has its roots in the noir genre, including a hefty amount of femme fatale characters, but honestly, they're callng a title based around the female members of Batman's supporting cast Gotham City Sirens?!

Two things to note. One: this new series is clearly influneced by Gotham Girls (is the new name supposed to imply that the 'girls' have now grown up, and are now full-fledged sexual, alluring threats?). Two: that this essentially replaces the previous title about the various women in Batman's supporting cast, Birds of Prey (which not only had a generally very positive portrayal of women, but was notably written by one of the most successful female writers in modern comics, too).

I have to say I'm in a bit ambivalent about this. Creatively this new series looks interesting as it's being written by Paul Dini, who does tend to make really good use of Batman's quasi-noir roots in his stories, leading to some usually very readable tales. On the other hand, I just can't get over the inherent sexism of the femme fatale trope.

Also, note that there is no Boys of Gotham/Gotham City Incubi title coming out. The companion title - also written by Dini - is called Batman: Streets of Gotham.

Am I kicking up a storm in a comic-book-shop teacup over a title I haven't even read yet? Perhaps. But I'd feel remiss if I didn't at least comment on this little pop-cultural trend.

Man-eaters

I could go on for days about all of the nonsense presented in the first clip above. As for the second, that bell idea is so weird that it absolutely intrigues me. Imagine if they still employed that in cinemas today. It's pretty distractingly fourth-wall-breaking though, no?

"Exploring" a mall near you, soon

Ok, this is my fourth post today, so that must mean I'm eating well but infrequently (my brain goes a mile-a-minute when I'm really hungry but have otherwise been eating healthily). I just wanted to link to this post over at the best blog discovery I've made in quite some time: Sociological Images. I highly recommend reading through and pondering over their entire output, but this latest post was one I found to be of particular interest (especially when paired with this one about the gendered packaging (and, more importantly rebranding) of the charming Dora the Explorer).