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capesandspandex · 30 days ago

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Ok so might accidentally end up doxxing myself with this one but here we go…

The Himboification of Dick Grayson, and Why It Sucks From A Gypsy Perspective

Warning: this is a long one! Also tw for brief mentions of Dick’s canonical SA/rapes, and discussions of purity cultures.

And disclaimer: none of this is intended to slut-shame anyone, so hopefully it doesn’t come across like that. I’m just hoping to explain the weird sexualisation of gypsies in the media, vs our more conservative attitude to sex. This also isn’t meant to shame anyone or tell you how you must imagine Dick Grayson - if you like dark skinned, more-fem Dick, then you keep on enjoying that! This is just what I’ve noticed as someone who is a gypsy, and some patterns I’ve seen in how Dick is portrayed and received.

So, I have a lot of problems with the depiction/perception of Dick Grayson, and particularly the hyper-sexualisation we see. I am not alone in this, and I know it’s something which has been discussed a fair bit in the past.

Honestly, I don’t even know where a lot of this came from? It’s only really in the past decade or so that we start to see it emerge properly in canon; prior to this, whilst it was agreed that Dick is good looking, he was kind of able to get around as a normal guy, and was praised a lot more for his capabilities and athleticism than for his looks. But with the New 52, there seemed to be this shift where Dick is really reduced to his looks. The Grayson/Spyral comics are particularly guilty of this: so many times we see Dick called an idiot (even if somewhat affectionally), sexualised (even by teen-aged girls when he is in his twenties), and reduce himself to his looks (Dick himself even says something along the lines of ‘It’s a good thing I’m pretty’). You can argue that the whole point of Spyral is that Dick was undercover, but it’s something we still see today (I’m thinking the 2025 Valentine’s Day Damian storyline). We can dismiss this as being ‘out of character’, but with how it’s been a gradually accepted part of DC canon over the last decade especially, I don’t know how long we can reasonably make that excuse.

The gypsy perspective isn’t necessarily the main reason I hate this, it’s just one which I feel capable of offering. (if you’re new here, hi, I’m a traveller/gypsy/showman/whatever you want to call me from a fairground and circus family in the UK. I’ve always stuck to fairgrounds myself but a lot of my family were/are still with the circus so I’m not an idiot and it’s all closely related anyway. I also grew up speaking Romani so there’s that.)

Other reasons I hate it include: the double standards of objectifying Dick being treated as almost acceptable because Dick is a man; Dick as an SA/rape survivor; and the fact that it’s bloody stupid because Dick is a highly competent vigilante and detective - a partner of Batman, then Batman himself, who even on his sick days is solving cold cases for fun. He is a genius ffs.

But anyway, onto the potentially doxxing gypsy perspective.

I know that Dick’s ‘gypsy rep’ has been a bit touch and go over the years. Grayson’s run is quite infamous for her handling of this (the whole internalised racism she gave him during his Tevis mob era, and Bruce’s stereotyping in Gotham Knights still makes me feel icky), and it’s only recently that it’s really been discussed again, mostly being ignored by writers in between. However, I’ve also mentioned before that to me, the writer with the most accurate representation is ironically Morrison (because he wasn’t trying). The thing is, even if writers have kind of circumnavigated the whole ‘gypsy’ thing (a term I use because it’s common in the UK, and is one Dick uses himself, alongside ‘carney’ which is the American English version of the British ‘showman’, a subtype of “gypsy”), it’s been canon since Day One that Dick is from the circus. And due to how circuses work, especially with the hereditary nature and how it was more common for the gypsy family who ran the circus to perform in the 40s when Dick was introduced, even if it wasn’t explicitly stated, Dick Grayson has kind of canonically (or at the very least, subtextually) been a gypsy since his introduction.

So now that bit of house keeping is out of the way, why does the himboification of Dick Grayson really annoy me, as a gypsy/showman/carney myself?

So, the first issue I have is really the exoticism. There’s been a large push especially from fan-artists (though it has been very subtlety reflected in canon) to have Dick portrayed with darker skin, to more “accurately” portray him as Romani (spoiler: this is not accurate). There is a fantastic post which explains this further, but it’s actually kind of colourist to say that Dick Grayson is whitewashed. I’m a full gypsy, not a diddakoi or anything, and I’m pasty as fuck. Sure, my dad was often mistaken as South Asian in his youth, as his family are all very olive-skinned and tan dark in the summer, but my mum is white as a sheet (much to her own father’s annoyance) and I take after her. This is the case for a lot of us, especially in the North of Europe. And yet, I am still ethnically a gypsy. Dick does not lose his ‘gypsy card’ for being white. And the fact that many of the fandom view it as necessary for Dick to have a darker complexion to fit this perception of what a Romani person looks like (especially since this perception largely comes from gorjas who’ve never knowingly met a gypsy before in their lives) is not only inaccurate, but kind of problematic. I don’t mind seeing a darker Dick Grayson, but it’s how people act like he has to be dark skinned to be Romani which is frankly just incorrect.

This is doubly problematic when people use his being Romani to exoticise and sexualise Dick. Like with Esmerelda in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, I’ve often seen the fandom (and even canon, to some degree) use Dick’s heritage to make him seem other, and almost remove some barriers for proper conduct (i.e. be overly affectionate, etc). We see this kind of sexualisation with a lot of non-white characters, like Talia for example, and I think that the push for a visibly non-white, exotic Dick Grayson does fall in line with the same kind of racist hyper-sexualisation we see there. Alternatively, maybe this idea of a ‘sexy gypsy from the circus’ has its roots somewhat in real life, but actually results from major misunderstandings: until the sixties, it was common for circuses to have peep shows, with girls outside advertising it in their underwear; the misunderstanding comes in that these girls were not gypsies themselves (see my next point) but hired gorja staff who worked for or alongside us. It’s not unreasonable, then, that a child visiting the circus (and thus shaping their idea of what a circus is) up until the 60s might misinterpret this as being related to gypsies ourselves (songs like Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves, also add to this misconception that we’re the ones in the peep shows when we are not, even if that song is a bop) - if that child then worked for DC or was in the fandom, as writers/artists/fan-fic authors/fanartists in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, from the 80s to the 2000s, they might have mistakenly thought this was part of our culture, and not a business running parallel to ours (I hope this makes sense?). This is just a theory, but one of the only places I can think of this stereotype coming from, besides just plain racism?

Anyway, this hyper-sexualisation is ironic because a big part of our culture is actually that it is a purity culture, with equal expectations on both sexes to maintain modesty and virginity prior to marriage (of course, it’s a bit more relaxed nowadays but the expectation is still there, even if you’re in your 30s and unmarried!). This is drilled into us from a very young age, so even if Dick was removed from his culture by the age of eight, in a real life situation, he would likely already be well versed in this aspect of our culture. As I mentioned earlier, even before Dick was explicitly stated to be a gypsy, I think it’s definitely possible to read a gypsy upbringing into his character, even if unintentional, as written pre-Grayson - there’s one discussion Dick has about his anxieties about moving in with Kory whilst unmarried (I forget which comic this is from), and I cannot help but feel this resonate with me as a gypsy.

Then there’s the element of dress. TV shows like ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ have done a lot to convince people that we all dress immodestly, but first of all: MBFGW focuses on another subtype of gypsy, Irish travellers - not showmen/circus like Dick is portrayed to be; and secondly - it’s such a small percentage of the population who do dress like that, that it cannot be taken as truth. I’ve a fair few cousins who are half-Irish traveller, and none of them dress like that. You’re far more likely to find a gypsy man wearing a shirt, a jumper, a pair of jeans, and boots than any of the gelled hair and vest top combos you see on there.

It’s a big thing that Dick has some questionable fashion choices (which are often featured as justification for his supposed ‘himbo-ness’), and this is definitely true in canon (Discowing, that one polka dot shirt, the mullet era… oh Dick, you disaster), but I’ve seen a lot of people correlate that directly with his growing up in a circus. As someone from that background, let me tell you that is just a Dick thing. It has nothing to do with being from the circus, we all dress rather normally - I’m sat writing this in a blue T-shirt, a pair of navy jeans, and a pair of boots - aka the kind of thing Dick wears more often than not in later not-the-80s canon! The thing is, this kind of presumption is something I’ve experienced myself in real life. I was doing some charity work, and there was a press element - when the journalist found out I was a gypsy from a circus family, and that I had horses, I was told to come to the photoshoot in my ‘little pink sparkly dress or whatever it is I ride in.’ I ride in jeans and a T-shirt btw. They just presumed because my family owned circuses, I must do vaulting and perform and I don’t - I worked in the kiosk or on the rides. The point is, people make a lot of presumptions about us just because we’re from the circus, and it’s not accurate.

Then there’s also the fanon effeminising of Dick: often giving him softer, feminine features, make-up, etc, to make him ‘pretty’. Like with the skin-colour issue, draw Dick however you like. You do you. But don’t use his being a gypsy to justify that. Tbh, the vast majority of gypsy men I know are extremely masculine: physically, the cis-men of our community tend to be quite tall, stocky, with calloused hands and broad shoulders, by virtue of the fact that we have to build up everywhere we work, and that’s a lot of physical labour. In Europe, there’s a big drinking culture, and playing football, etc. Men also tend to dress quite masc and practically for blue-collar work. And whilst I am sure that there are some more gender-fluid gypsies out there (I have quite a few gypsy friends who are openly queer, or trans), I have seen so many posts on Tumblr with Dick presented as being quite soft and feminine looking, with make-up etc, and when people in the notes ask why he’s drawn like that, the artist replies ‘He’s Rom!’ and I just want to facepalm. You can be a gypsy and masc-presenting. You can be a gypsy and fem-presenting. However, being a gypsy ≠ being feminine, and I’m really sick of seeing it. As someone who studies ancient Persia (like, I have a degree in it and am writing an academic book), the similarities are so obvious with how the Greeks portrayed the Achaemenids as effeminate, and like with the Achaemenids, it’s just not accurate. Again, if that’s how you headcanon Dick, then that’s great, but let’s not pretend that Dick being a gypsy has anything to do with it.

So I’ve now discussed the sexualisation aspect of Dick’s character a bit (I’ve probably left something out but oh well), and now I’ll speak a bit about the ‘dumb’ part. This is a far more recent thing, I think, and I suspect it might be because: a) people have weirdly tagged Tim as the Smart!Robin (they’re all geniuses) and thought this somehow means the rest must be dumb?, b) because of how sexualised Dick is, they’ve gone full himbo (see: Dick in the Grayson comics saying ‘at least [he’s] pretty’). However, from a gypsy point of view, this really annoys me as well.

When travelling with the fairground/circus, it is difficult to get a stable education. We tend to go to school in the winter months, but in the warmer months, we are more homeschooled (maybe using education packs from our normal school), or at larger fairs/events, a special teacher may be present. It used to be common that if we were at a ground for two weeks or more, we’d be enrolled temporarily in a local school for that time, but this isn’t really realistic today. However, it is also true that traditionally, our schooling was quite halted. Whilst less common, it’s still fairly normal for us to leave school early - for example, I left school entirely aged 13 to work full time on the fairgrounds (yes this goes against child labour laws but nobody actually cares). As a result of this, a lot of us have very limited education (illiteracy is not unheard of in the older generations), so it’s not uncommon for people to mistake this for us being stupid. But the thing is, this isn’t true. My dad left school aged 11, and eventually got a gorja job in his late 30s - he is now the top in the country at his job. I left school when I was 13, but decided I wanted to go to university, so I sat my GCSEs without studying, got into college, and whilst also working a full time job, got my A Levels and got into what is ranked the number one university in the world. When I got in, people really could not believe that someone of my background could do it, so it was on national news and television. It’s not that other travellers/gypsies are incapable - for the most part, we just don’t see the point as we’ve got a job and a culture wrapped up in one which we want to keep alive and successful. The point is, it’s so common for us to be underestimated, and part of what I loved about Dick’s character is that he is unapologetically clever. But over the last decade especially, Dick is once again being reduced to just a pretty face. Now, growing up, it was a cultural expectation to take care of your looks, and whilst I think I always looked ok (washed hair every day, showered, ironed matching clothes), it was not my primary interest in the same way that it was for a lot of my peers. So having a character who was from the same background as me and allowed to be intelligent and respected for it in a way I sometimes wasn’t was really special. So to see that intellect being taken away from Dick, somewhat, does strike me. If Dick is reduced to just being pretty and flirty, that’s as stereotypical as it comes in my community, and I love it when he can be more. I’m not saying that Dick has to be super serious all the time (that’s what makes Dick’s character so great, even if he is a bit more serious in canon than in fanon, though to be fair that’s probably because canon is a lot harder on him than fanon), but he can be hot and flirty without being dumb and overly objectified.

I hope this makes sense and I also hope that none of my relatives or uni friends see this and immediately work out it’s me - there’s a reason I started a whole side blog to separate my silly little nerdy interests from anything my friends might see - but Himbo Dick Grayson is something which I can’t get behind. Let him be smart. Let him be hot but not overly exoticised.

#dick grayson

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