Men in Fiction

Everyone rags on the over sexualization of women in …. Well everything. Especially comic books or Sci Fi & Fantasy works. It’s not hard to find an incredibly well endowed, super tiny waisted, skimpy outfitted woman when looking through even the Geek page on Pinterest. In fact, it’s harder to avoid finding those women. People can go on and on about how it objectifies women, how we’re represented as useless without a man, how physically impossible those women’s measurements are, or how unrealistic it is to fly with a strapless shirt on. That one should be obvious, I mean just ask a woman who has dived into a pool with a bikini top on. It’s a desperate scramble of fixing the girls before you come up for air. Then to drive the point home, they say: “What does this teach our little girls?”

I completely agree with them. But that’s not what got me writing today.

We’re so caught up in the fight for equality for the future generations of women that we forget the little boys out there seeing all these fantastic super heroes.

Now I’m sure you’re saying: “What?”

I’m serious though. Especially with the success of the Avengers on film, we’re not realizing that just like showing skinny women to little girls—showing strong, gorgeous men to little boys affects them just as much. They look up to these heroes and want to be them, just like so many little girls wanting to be the models on the front of Vogue.

But as it is with the girls not being able to come close to the photo shopped perfection on a glossy cover, not all these little boys will be able to come close to the computer helped testosterone packed fake god on the big screen.

And on top of that, these characters are also teaching the little boys what a man should be like. A man needs to be strong, incredibly smart or athletic, must be able to make every woman swoon when you flex your arms or smile. You must be rich, you must have an important career, and major failures aren’t allowed.

You can see in real life and in the sci fi world that those men tend to go through women faster than a fifth of expensive vodka. They become narcissistic, egotistic, and frankly douchebags.

So while you’re letting your son or your brother watch these amazing men do amazing things in the movies, remind them there is more to being a man than being able to kick ass. Teach them that they don’t have to be the strongest, they don’t need to be extremely wealthy, and it’s okay to fail at something.

We need an average hero for our boys. Someone who doesn’t always get the girl and doesn't always win the game, but he always tries his hardest and gets up to do it again when he fails.  

That is manlier than throwing money at a problem until it goes away.