#no capes (edna mode) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

justatalkingface · 1 year

Note

So I know you haven't seen The Boys but I have a topic that I think fits MHA because I got it from that same show. MHA had a totally missed opportunity, I mean, among hundreds of others lol

But then I think about Momo (who is more than a hundred missed opportunities) and her pitiful internship with Uwabami, who was more interested in how pretty they were to sell her products.

It would have been a great opportunity to emphasize the beauty standards held for female pro-heroes. They're clearer there just not said but I know they are because they really like to make the female pro-heroes look as conventionally attractive as possible since the most popular female pro-heroes in-universe are conventionally attractive women. Do NOT get me started on Midnight (I'll save that one for another question though XD)

And also the sexualization, that ties in with the beauty standards since Momo and Kendo were clearly uncomfortable with everything in that internship. And it's extremely obvi that the female pro-heroes are sexualized, even the underage aspiring female heroes. SIGH... if only... if only Momo could have had that opportunity to explore that, because she didn't come intending to use her looks, she came intending to use her brains. How devastating would it be to realize that people only pay attention to how you look? Gosh I wish that could have been something for her.

Yet no, she and the other girls are still sexualized, in fact I think they got even MORE sexualized after this? I mean jeez...

That will always bother me. The sexualization of the girls and what's bullshit on top of that is the extra bullshit argument that the boys are sexualized too? Yeah right.

Now it's true, the boys are seen shirtless a LOT but... it's not through sexualized lens, it's through idealized ones since the boys being so physically fit and demonstrating their strength is a sign of manliness and promoting that masculinity. It's not meant to be sexual, the GIRLS are meant to be sexual, which is sick.

I mean god you don't see the girls emphasizing their strength the way the boys do. Except MAYBE Mirko but I emphasize 'maybe' since she's STILL very sexualized as you said in another post.

The girls are pretty much only there to be oggled whether it's for sexualized means or moe-ified means because even if the girls aren't being sexualized, boys love seeing the girls act like typical waifu-material and I say that because almost ALL the female characters are generally kind, docile and cheerful. Moe traits that appeal strongly to men, and no problematic traits that make them more two-dimensional.

Have you noticed that? Even the 'meaner' girls like Mt. Lady and Toga have moe-ified or sexualized traits. Toga is arguably the most nuanced female character but she's a victim of sexualization too by having her quirk make her naked for God knows why. Mt. Lady from her first scene was doomed from the start since that was all sexualization.

It's like the girls aren't allowed to be even remotely unpleasant or even have any kind of flaws in ways that would make them seem like real individuals. They're pretty much the same kind and caring person with a different face but somehow the same body shape.

Does... that make sense? ^^; I ask that question too much only cuz sometimes I don't always articulate my words right.

Yeah, it's clear that women in heroics are judged as much for sexual appeal than anything else; it makes a bad sort of sense because of the whole 'heroes are celebrities' bullshit.

I think... I think this is something that, in canon, probably got worse as time went on. When Quirks were starting out, and heroes were all just vigilantes, it was about ability, and with AFO around, survival. Like, look at Nana, she's attractive, sure, but her outfit is probably what is best described as 'bog standard hero': it's a bodysuit that covers most of her skin, practical looking gloves and boots, and a cape (has Edna Mode flashback). Beyond the cape (shudders), it's basiclly a costume that exists to just identify her as a hero, nothing more.

I'm not really in the mood to try and pour through hundreds of pictures, but that is both one of the most practical female costumes that I remember and the oldest one.

It makes an insidious sort of sense, even, in the most realistic kind of way: when everything fell apart, and heroes first started being a thing, the public perception was probably, 'Save me! SAVE ME! I don't care if you look like Pennywise the Goddamn Dancing Clown, I DON't WANT TO DIE!!' Nobody cared about outfits, or if you were a hobo or a weirdo, as long as you protected them.

Things settled and heroing became a career, and the costumes became... not standardized, but professional. There was quality behind it, but it was still less 'This is me in particular!' and more an identifier that 'I am a hero!'.

Then, as time passed, and safety became something standard, instead of exciting, the heroes become more... public. There was competition, money was needed to pay off damages, so the celebrity-ness of it all starting kicking into play, and from there it spiraled as certain people got ahead using their appearances, which probably caused a sort of publicity arms race until we have the canon system of ranked heroes and what not.

In a Watsonian sense, it does track. But, let's be honest here, Doyalist is right in this case, Hori wanted to draw sexy women.

You mention Mt Lady, right? Yeah... here's the thing about her. She's sexualized because she's a fetish. I'm not going to tell you what, or go into detail, because that's not what I want to spend time on, but if you don't already know it's not that hard to figure out which one.

The choice of Mt Lady as the first female hero we see, I think the only one in that first chapter, is telling. It's even more telling when the second female hero we see in any real depth is Midnight. And, let's be honest: she's literally just a different fetish. I mean, Mt Lady, in five seconds, shows more depth of character by being glory hungry, and as a living example of the corruption of the hero society, than Midnight does in MHA almost the entire time.

Like, "canonly", Midnight wants to dress like that. She was going to dress more extreme than that, if I'm remembering Vigilantes right, and I think a law was passed that basiclly boiled down to, 'Midnight, no horni?' I went "canonly" because, of course, that's bullshit, and Hori is just trying to explain her everything off by just going 'she's just like that!' I know you didn't want to go into her in depth, but I just would want to say... instead of making excuses for her (non)characterization, I would have loved if she had taken the female students aside before the internships.

Then she could have explained the 'facts of life', that she's like this because it's how she got this far as a hero, and that they'll be expected to do the same. After that, you could go the jaded route, and have her advise them to as the practical way forward, or the 'ra ra heroic' route, maybe have her explain she grew to like her outfit if you have to, but more importantly that things are different now and that they don't need to listen to anyone who tells them to dress down, and they should go their own path, Plus Ultra. But you know, Midnight doesn't get character development.

Really, the Uwabami thing was interesting to me, not because it was good, but because it seemed like it was going to be good, but then dropped it at the last minute.

The way it was set up, how mercenary Uwabami was about looks, how unheroic she was in general, the sheer confusion with Momo, how Kendo was there to point out the flaws for her, the set up was there to talk about about the sexism, and heroic corruption. I think at some point that was supposed to be the start of Momo's character arc, that she was supposed to go through a Hermione like loss of unthinking trust in authority, grow frustrated, maybe rebel a bit, and start coming into her own. Possibly Uwabami could have done something to make her seem... you know, competent in any way as well, instead of literally being a model who (checks the wiki)... finds people sometimes. There was a lot of work put in to undermine Uwabami, to highlight how shallow she seems and how Momo didn't like it, but it just... never went anywhere. Momo just remained obedient, then it ended and she basiclly wasted a couple weeks for nothing.

It really feels like someone pulled the plug there, and I'm curious about who and why, not that we'll ever know.

Ah, yes, the guys 'being sexualized'. I mean, they're attractive, I guess; there's enough fan girl simp threads for Eraserhead's whole... hobo-ness that that's clearly there, but Eraserhead isn't exposing more skin than he's covering, or wearing skintight spandex.

Really, to anyone who thinks its the same, I want to direct them to the Hawkeye Initiative, aka: imagine the male characters in the female character's clothing and/or poses. Just... just do that, and then marvel at how much skin there suddenly is. Or, imagine Izuku going to his internship with Nighteye and the man spends the entire time dragging Izuku to commercials and trying to update his outfit.

Or both!

Just imagine that for a minute for me. Right now. I'll wait.

...

....And, now that I've proved my point...

I just want to highlight something about Toga here: in theory, the idea behind clothes getting in the way of various Quirks makes sense. Quirks are biological, the powers comes from the body, thus it radiates from them, and clothes are directly in the path of that. So Momo being restricted to her body's available surface area, like her skin is a defacto sort of door she chucks items through, tracks with the settings logic. The fact that Tooru is actually invisible, and so clothes would make her noticeable because they aren't makes sense.* The problems I have with that is, A, they're just used in the most stripperific ways possible (people: give Momo more clothes! Hori: gives her a cape, then exposes more skin) and also, and worse, that we have Mirio, who has this exact same kind of problem... but he's given this convenient solution because he doesn't look attractive when naked, so he can use it for comedy on demand.

*Or, at least it made sense until we found out she just... bends the light around her, instead of being physically transparent. This gives her an option to do things beyond being invisible, thank fuck, but... if she bends light around her body, why can't she bend it around the clothes on her body?

Toga, though? Toga adds to her body; she coats herself in her magic identity slime. When it's done, it melts, and it's clear it's extra mass; she doesn't change her body, she disguises it. Out of all of them, it makes sense that she should be able to keep her clothes, since her Quirk just magics her target's outfit out of her magic identity slime along with everything else it's mimicking. They may be wet, sure, or maybe damaged, but she literally layers it over herself. I can't really think of a reason for her to have this specific weakness of 'I can't use this with clothes' beyond 'for the sexy'.

Personality wise, I've mentioned it before, Toga literally is an archetype, the crazy yandere, that's blood themed. Almost every single major female character I can think of is themed, and generally in a sexual way. It gets escalated, I think, because the hero thing means costumes, and branding, and I do think it's so... same-ish, that all the women are caring, because, A, as heroes they're literally mandated to try and take care of people, and B, there's no time spent on them to develop them.

By and by large, the male heros also try to take care of the people around them (I mean, unless you're named Endeavour, then you have other people do it), but it kinda hits different when Kamino Woods is a walking tree and Mt Lady has a skin tight outfit, doesn't it? Moreover, the only actively 'harsh' female hero I can think of is Lady Nagant. Who... is also an assassin, and had recently broke out of prison, so that's not exactly a quality example.

As to not feeling like real people... Uraraka does, since she came for money with her backstory of being poor, and seems to have graduated to wanting to help people just to help people (before Hori began to ignore her for half the series). Again, though, she has some of the largest amount of female screen time as The One True Waifu, so it's not that she's more than the others, she just has that luxury of development where the others can't.

When Hori used to post his notes in the manga, it was easy to see that he (usually) had a grasp on a character beyond what we saw, he just didn't have a chance to show it (Mt Lady, for example, wants fame to get money to pay off the massive property damage bills that she constantly makes since her Quirk doesn't work well in cities; that's actually really humanizing, but it's side material, and not something we can understand just by her jockeying for more good press).

In other words, at least at the start of the story, before Hori began to pump and dump characters to fill one specific purpose and never use again, the characters were actually characters, he just never gave us a chance to see them beyond the most shallow of takes.

But yeah, you're right: in and out of universe, the female characters exist to be females first, and always attractive ones at that, and characters second, if they're lucky to even get to be characters.

#bnha critical #mha critical #ask #Hori's chronic loathing of women #Edna Mode Gave Me Cape Based Trauma for life #Actually I think it was always there but she gave words to it #Please give them some clothes #Momo's Aborted Character Arc #Momo has been nerfed #the hawkeye initiative #Toga's magic identity slime #If you want people to respect them as characters #then spend time DEVELOPING them as characters

40 notes · View notes