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elonmuscovy · 2 years

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I don't want to hear anything else about drawing thin cartoon women more "realistic" to combat fatphobia until we get serious about having more respectful fat representation in cartoons. Actual fat characters put in positive roles typically given to thin characters. The problem isn't that "pretty" cartoon women are drawn too unrealistic, they're cartoons. it's that they're drawn the same way Every. Damn. Time. And yes, it's meant to uphold unrealistic beauty standards. But simply saying cartoons should be drawn more realistic doesn't address the underlying issue of sheer lack of representation.

1. Might piss someone off in saying this but cartoons are supposed to be at least somewhat unrealistic. They're drawings. No, i don't think they should be used to push unrealistic beauty standards on little kids; i just strongly believe more variety would be immensely more helpful (Variety would be more entertaining as well). Let's say they did start drawing Disney Princesses more "healthy" and "realistic". Yeah. Instead of being bombarded with images of unrealistically thin characters, we'd have realistic thin characters. Yes, even if they're more "realistic", it's still upholding thinness as the default and norm. If you think making caricatured thin characters more "realistic" is a great idea and really does anything to combat eating disorders and fatphobia but nervously tug your collar at the thought of an actual fat princess or any other actually fat positive representation, afraid that it will somehow "promote obes*ty", guess what? ✨You're fatphobic as shit.✨

I saw that shit with the "fat" Barbie doll. I saw posts about the concept a few years back. No shock, it was incessantly mocked and people were whining that it would "promote obes*ty". Oh boo hoo, think of the kids!! 🙄 Mattel eventually came out with some more varying body types for the dolls. It's cool they're trying to be more diverse in their designs and all but I've seen those dolls at work. I wouldn't really consider any of them to be "fat".

2. It's aggravating when people are like "Where's Elsa's organs?? She looks unhealthy" or whatever. As if fat cartoon characters aren't drawn like literal spheres with twig limbs or stumps? Or used as shorthand for being "silly", "unintelligent" or "greedy"? Are the "pretty" thin characters more deserving of being portrayed more respectfully than fat characters? Don't get me wrong. Exaggeration is part of what makes cartoons so neat but it really could be done more respectfully. Believe it or not, you can still have fun contrasting cartoon designs and still be body positive. Its more that thinness seems to be the "default" and they get to be every type of character. Fat characters seem to get shoved into the same kinds of roles repeatedly. I'm seeing a shift away from that, thankfully but it's fairly recent.

3. Saying that the cartoon character "looks" unhealthy is counterproductive. In the real world, you really can't tell a person's health condition based solely on their body shape. Some people are naturally big. Some are naturally little. Also, a person's health condition doesn't make them less valuable. Think about that when you start attaching those labels to bodies, fictional or otherwise.

No, it's immensely aggravating that bogus ideas of what's attractive and what supposedly isn't is so deeply ingrained in kids media. But when the conversation becomes about caricature vs realism (in cartoons no less!!) instead of pushing for diverse body representation, you're still centering thin bodies and exposing your fatphobia. 🙃

I think about this a lot and i needed to vent about it.

#cw: body image #cw: fatphobia #vent

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bookandcover · 4 years

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[Another late-breaking update...] What a fun read! If you’re looking for a light-hearted and angsty romance, this novel has it all! I loved the pairing of a modern college kid with a stiff-upper-lipped British monarch. It feels like a lot of wish fulfillment is happening in this book, as these two young men navigate their steamy, secretive relationship with (unrealistic?) emotional maturity. But, if you’re allowing wish fulfillment, you’ve got to GO for it (and this novel certainly does!)

Both Alex and Henry are designed to be romantic figures. Alex, as our protagonist, is grittier, easier to identify with. While smart and determined, he’s also unsure of his next steps (law school? a career in politics?) and waffles in the way someone who has often put others first does when they have to strike out on their own. He’s silly and loves to have fun, in the over-the-top way that only a self-indulgent young adult can, but his partying and his spitfire attitude is paired with the social awareness that seems to pervasively mark Gen Z teens who grew up on the internet. Alex faces a real identity crisis--figuring out that he’s bisexual, falling in love with someone he shouldn’t desire (not because he’s a man, but because he’s a closeted royal)--with a lot of grace and humor. He doesn’t take himself too seriously and yet he has the kind of unflappable confidence I associate with American boys who go to good colleges, study while avoiding the typecasting of “nerd,” and wear polo shirts. I liked Alex’s freshness as a protagonist in the romance genre. In many ways, he resembles the self-sufficient, bombshell (but business woman) heroines of heterosexual chick flicks, but his insecurities run deeper, his complex relationships with his parents and his strange dependency on Senator Rafael Luna, establish him as both more vulnerable and more genuinely rowdy than I’d expected. Alex’s sister June seems perhaps better suited to this archetypal “confident woman who just hasn’t met the perfect man for her” role. June was a character who I just never got onboard with in this book...Alex is surrounded by no-nonsense, powerful women, yet a lot of them remain two-dimensional (in my opinion, and really my only complaint), defined by their roles/surface-perceptions and not a lot of depth. Nora was definitely my favorite female character--with her critical role in revealing that hackers were hired by Richards to expose Alex and Henry’s relationship, and her willingness to retreat into full “nerd-dom” to do so.

Henry--in contrast to Alex’s at times annoying, but very realistic, college kid with a chip-on-his-shoulder characterization--is the kind of romantic figure you’d expect to encounter in a heterosexual rom com. He’s the mysterious British Royal, formal and superior, that fangirls long to see break out of his shell. Alex’s masculine characterization--his initial competitiveness with Henry, his brusqueness against Henry’s unfailingly polite demeanor--makes the archetypal sophisticated, elitist hero work here. Because it made sense. I related to Alex more and more deeply as he fell further and further for Henry, when he reacted to that allure, but also to the true Henry underneath his polite mask--caring, warm, intelligent, and deeply romantic. Henry’s secret date for Alex--sneaking him into the Victoria and Albert Museum, for which he has his own key--is exactly the kind of classy, grand gesture date that earns him a place alongside quintessential leading men. Yes, Henry didn’t feel as fresh as Alex; he felt like an archetype (even further from reality than the smart and doesn’t-know-she’s-hot typical rom com leading lady), but it’s an archetype that’s used over and over again for good reason. So many of us love to love a man like Henry. And I’m glad that includes fiery, self-aware bisexuals like Alex.

Against this backdrop of livery rom com energy that reads like a full-blown fan fiction at times, a more serious tone is struck through the politics and presidential campaigns that form the context of protagonist Alex’s life in the novel. Reading this novel during the Trump presidency, the alternate universe presented here is all the more alarmingly idealized. In this alternate universe, a woman--divorced, with a mixed race family--was elected to the U.S. presidency after Barack Obama. The stark contrast this First Family poses with Trump and his cohort makes this literary world even more obviously one that is hoped for, and longed for, but not the one in which we live. I was swept up in the romance--Alex and Henry’s certainly--but also the romantic vision of an America that chooses and supports this family in the White House. While being saddened by the vast difference between this alternate universe and our own, I liked both the author’s political idealism and the background that the world of political campaigning (a space inherently filled with secrets, alliances, and backstabbing) provides for the storyline.

While politics doesn’t offer, necessarily, shades of realism, it does offer shades of seriousness. At times, the political situation of Alex’s family (can Alex’s mom be re-elected to a second term when her son has been exposed and dragged by the press for his illicit, international relationship?) poses real hurdles in Alex and Henry’s relationship, adding to the drama of the plot line and triggering the challenges that the characters have to face together. In general, I dislike the romantic comedy plot convention of characters creating unnecessary drama and misunderstanding through their inability to communicate or demonstrate emotional maturity. Jealousy, misunderstandings, and silly assumptions drive wedges between happily matched couples partway through far too many romantic comedies. When Alex and Henry settled their differences and fell into each others arms only halfway through this novel, I worried we’d be facing these kinds of trivial tropes that trip-up and delay the happily ever after. Instead, the challenges Henry and Alex face are external to their relationship. These challenges don’t divide Alex and Henry, although other characters, primarily Henry’s homophobic family, struggle to physically keep them apart. This was part of their surprising emotional maturity to me, but--in retrospect--this may not surprising at all. Instead, I’ve been conditioned by legions of romance novels and fan fictions to expect emotional crisis, flailing, and BAD AT FEELINGS the moment any opportunity for miscommunication presents itself. Alex and Henry do seem grown-up, though, for their young age, facing a lot of real challenges, and not just self-made drama, with grace and self-aware. Their maturity steers the novel into thornier (and therefore more realistic) territory.

When Kim Namjoon got a mention partway through this novel, I felt even more certain that our author was an ARMY! The fan fiction overtones of this novel made it familiar, modern, and lively. My friend who recommended the book (also a BTS fan) explored Casey McQuiston’s twitter when I pointed out the Kim Namjoon reference, and found her posts from Metlife last year. We both got a kick out of confirming that she’s an Army and immediately wanted, even more so, to be her real-life friend. This was a very enjoyable book in part because of its wish fulfillment approach--drawing on the conventions and archetypes known and loved by rom com and fan fiction readers. Yet, at the same time, it had enough backbone and social/political commentary (I read an article just this week about whether Texas could “go blue” in the next election) to expand its impact beyond “light-hearted” and “fun” (although there’s nothing wrong with pure, sugary fluff and enjoyment, of course!)

#red white and royal blue #casey mcquiston #good reads #fanfiction #bts army

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antagonistchanremade · 4 years

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Wanna know what you’ve probably never heard of but you should be glad about that because it’s absolutely cursed?

Spaceballs: The Animated Series.

Spaceballs the movie was a fun, silly movie that definitely had adult jokes but they were the sorts of adult jokes that would go over childrens’ heads (”It’s Mega Maid- she’s gone from suck to blow!”) and thus the movie was fine for kids. It was also very very good.

Spaceballs: The Animated Series is one of the most crude and unfunny Family Guy knockoffs I’ve ever seen. And it was just filled with the most disgusting tropes regarding romance- particularly, Lonestar and Vespa suddenly hate each other again now, and they introduced Yogurt’s nagging wife, both so they could make lots of “Ohoho the ol’ ball and chain, doesn’t marriage just SUCK???” jokes.

They also made Dark Helmet REALLY short in an incredibly obvious attempt to make him look more like Stewie Griffin.

There’s a scene in one episode where Dark Helmet is trying to mess around with this “game” at an arcade that’ll allow him to design the girl of his dreams. And uh... I was like, eleven when I watched this series. And I’d always heard about how bigger boobs were always better, and I’d just kinda...... accepted that. I thought boobs should be as big as possible.

Until I saw this scene. Because Dark Helmet gives her tits that are like twice the size of the rest of her body- each- and I very suddenly went “Oh! There’s such a thing as boobs that are too big! Alright, then!”

Like, this show tried to make the sexiest woman ever, but she ended up being so ugly to me, such an exaggeration of everything that’s considered conventionally attractive in western culture, that it actually made me start evaluating my taste in women for the first time instead of just following what people around me said was sexy.

And hell, I have actually seen people draw women with tits that insanely big since that haven’t been nearly that ugly, and I’m pretty sure it’s because those people weren’t trying to make “the sexiest woman ever”; it’s because those people had specific fetishes for those kinds of unrealistic body proportions. And so instead of being a crude caricature of what western society deems attractive, they’re passion projects by people who are just really into this sort of thing. And while that’s not my thing, it’s still not nearly as ugly to me as that bullshit.

#god SB:TAS sucks so much

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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How Censorship Created Porn’s New Face of Pleasure

Welcome to Rule 34, a series in which Motherboard’s Samantha Cole lovingly explores the highly specific fetishes that can be found on the web. If you’ve thought of it, someone’s jerked off to it.

The links in this article may be considered NSFW.

"I know it when I see it."

That's how United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously defined obscenity during a 1964 trial that would decide whether the state of Ohio could ban the public showing of a hard-core porn.

But when you see a woman with her eyes crossed and strings of spit dripping from her gaping mouth, do you "know it"? Riley Reid, one of the most popular porn performers in the world, dabbles in it. Wildly popular internet personality Belle Delphine did it, a lot.

But ahegao—the gagging, drooling face made popular by hentai—started long before either of these performers began experimenting with it. And as a fetish, it's still considered taboo by some.

In Japanese, ahegao translates as an onomatopoeia mashup of panting (as in, "ahe ahe") and "gao," or face. It's different from the more natural ikigao, which means "orgasm face." It's more outlandish. Few people having real sex and experiencing a real orgasm pull the face ahegao girls do, which is part of its allure; It's a juiced-up parody of an O-face. Like so many aspects of porn, it's greatly exaggerated and unrealistic.

In a different context, there's nothing technically sexual about the hentai facial expression known as ahegao. It's definitive features include crossed eyes, flushed cheeks, and a lolling, drooling tongue—and on their own, none of these are explicit. A face that looks like this could plausibly represent anything: someone in pain, or extreme ecstasy, or lusting after a really good meal.

But even if you're a very, very offline adult, you can look at an ahegao face and know something else is going on outside the frame. And from ahegao's origins, that's by design.

"Censorship made ahegao come into being"

In her highly influential 1989 book Hard Core, film and pornography scholar Linda Williams explored the idea that a woman's orgasm is invisible: that for men, in porn at least, you can rarely deny that they're cumming. There's jizz everywhere. For many adult films, that's the whole point: the "money shot."

But for onlookers, evidence of a woman's orgasm isn't in the genitals. It's in the sounds she makes, or the movement of the rest of her body, or especially, her eyes and face. It's a lot harder for a penis-haver to fake a mind-blowing orgasm than it is for a woman. In ahegao, the idea is that the experience is beyond fakery: she's cumming so hard that she's lost all control of her face.

"In Japanese adult video as in manga, there is an art to expressions of pleasure on the face, and ahegao works as the displaced climax, or the loss of self and mind in moment of overwhelming pleasure," Patrick Galbraith, professor at Senshi University in Tokyo, told me. Ahegao is an example of Williams' expressions of female orgasm, he said.

Thomas Baudinette, lecturer in Japanese Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, told me that ahegao may have its earliest origins in late 1990s or early 2000s Eromanga, pornographic magazines for heterosexual male audiences. From there, it's spread in Western culture—but it's roots are in erotic artists' workarounds for strict censorship laws.

In Japanese obscenity law, a person who "distributes, sells, or displays in public an obscene document, drawing or other objects" is punishable with up to two years in prison or a 2,500,000-yen fine. Censorship of pornography and hentai in Japan is a huge cultural issue—so much so that politicians include the issue in their campaign platforms.

"Pornography producers in Japan have interpreted this law as requiring the censorship of the sexual organs and pubic hair, which are typically obscured in video and manga pornography through the use of mosaicking," Baudinette said.

Penatrative sex becomes a lot more difficult to portray if you can't show a penis entering a vagina, so artists had to get creative. "Ahegao was born out of the need to show bodies in pleasure within a context where it is difficult to draw penetration," he said. "Censorship made ahegao come into being."

Just as we have censorship to thank, in part, for tentacle porn, we have it to blame for ahegao. And some adult performers have it to thank for discovering a whole new fanbase.

"Remember to drool"

On her Instagram, Tira Part leans into the camera in what seems like unbearable anticipation.

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🍭 ecchi till I die, all these shorty’s call me… #senpai #waifus #tirapart #ahegao #princess #ahegaoface #ahegaogirl #weeb #anime #girlswithpiercings 🍭

A post shared by Tira Part (@princesstira.chan) on Dec 27, 2019 at 11:26pm PST

Part, who is one of the most popular ahegao performers on Pornhub with 30,500 subscribers, told me that her fans enjoy this "mind break" fantasy. "They like to see when tongues hang out and eyes cross/roll back in sheer ecstasy," she said. "Whoever makes the face is enjoying themself so much they lose control of their moans and expressions. All they can do is pant and cross their eyes, and that's really attractive."

"The face is basically just an over-exaggeration of an orgasm or being banged brainless," adult performer Littlerosexo, who frequently does cosplay and camming with her fiance, told me.

The first time Elisabeth Weir—who's racked up more than 43,600 subscribers on Pornhub—encountered ahegao was in 2016. She started doing what she only knew as "weird" faces to be silly, but her fans loved it.

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#kawaii #kawaiigirl #kawaii🌸 #kawaiiaesthetic #pink #pinkaesthetics #pinkfeed #lewd #stockings #可愛い #可愛い💕 #ahegao #ahegaoface #blonde #bimbofashion #bimbo #bimbodoll #dollyfashion #tongue #アヘ顔

A post shared by 🌸megaplaygirl🌸batsxlizard🌸 (@megaplaydoll) on Jun 2, 2019 at 2:53pm PDT

"I was surprised that some people find it not only entertaining but also HOT," she said. So many people requested it, she had to add it to her cam show requests list on OnlyFans: 20 tokens (around $1) to see her do it during a live show, and for adding ahegao to a custom clip, that'll be $15 extra on top of the clip price. "People wanted to see me performing it and were ready to pay."

Weir's advice for a great ahegao: "Ideally you need to think about your best orgasm but make it 1000 times stronger," she said. "So strong that your eyes started rolling/crossing and you can't control your mouth so tongue sticks out."

Littlerosexo also first encountered ahegao thanks to a fan who requested it. She had to look it up, but was excited to try it.

"You definitely have to be serious about making it 'believable' but also silly enough to have fun with it," she said. "And remember to drool! The most helpful thing for me to run through my mind while doing it is literally repeating 'NYAAAAAAA' in my head over and over. But there's definitely some internal giggling that goes between that."

"Somebody think of the children"

Unfortunately, we can't talk about ahegao without addressing the infamous "ahegao hoodie."

According to Know Your Meme, in 2015 a collage of hentai characters by manga artist Hirume started circulating online. Someone put it on a bunch of apparel—hats, phone cases, shirts, and more—in 2016, and from there it made its way to mass-production custom design shops like Redbubble. In May 2017, a Reddit user posted a photo of someone wearing a different ahegao collage design, this time on a hoodie. That hoodie is the one that's become notoriously controversial. It's still on eBay.

This thing has been banned by anime conferences, as it's widely derided as featuring faces from shota or loli—depicting minor characters in sex acts.

Last year, organizers of the SunnyCon Anime Expo made an announcement: Clothing depicting ahegao would not be welcome at their convention.

"Going on attendee feedback, people wearing ahegao made the majority of attendees uncomfortable especially those with children at the event," a spokesperson for SunnyCon told me. From their personal standpoints, they don't see anything wrong with ahegao, especially in a controlled, adult environment, they said. But SunnyCon—held annually in the UK since 2010—is an all-ages event.

"Despite there being no porn on show, it is still taken from 18+ content and some of the faces also can be considered underage as well," they said. Hypothetically, they said, a concerned parent who knew the context of ahegao could claim that SunnyCon exposed their child to mature material. "This would result in police being called and with them informed of the context it would spark up a powder keg of legal issues," they said. They imagined a whole chain of horrifying events taking place at their expo: the wearer being dragged out of the event and charged as a sex offender, the organizers losing their venue and tens of thousands of attendees.

"Given the potential legal ramifications it's not as simple as 'somebody think of the children' or 'it's just some faces,'" they said. "People with these types of attitudes need to realise that events are businesses and have to follow the law and make money… as hard as it is for hardcore fans, times change… trends like ahegao will be phased out," with an influx of younger, new fans.

"Wearing an ahegao hoodie in Japan would be unthinkable," said Baudinette, "and the only time I have seen it at a Japanese convention, it was being worn by a Westerner."

"In Japan, ahegao is strictly limited to the world of manga and it forms part of a broader trend within Japan’s otaku culture for a sexual attraction to imaginary characters," he said. "Outside Japan is a different story… It tends to be fetishized or used as an 'in-group' marker tied to the Western otaku fandom more broadly."

One could view the existence of the virally-memed ahegao hoodie itself as the import and appropriation of an art form gone wrong. Like getting a kanji tattoo that says "small charcoal grill," unless you already understand the context of the art form, you won't be able to understand the art itself.

Contrary to SunnyCon's predictions, ahegao likely isn't going anywhere. Searches for the word have exploded in the last two years, with more cam models and influencers jumping and drooling and panting all over the ahegao wagon. Most of those models are white. As ahegao transforms from a hentai expression to viral Western meme, it could change in meaning altogether—into simply someone showing pleasure with a little cross-eyed slobber.

How Censorship Created Porn’s New Face of Pleasure syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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