House of Eratosthenes

Lately every movie that has some action in it, has to involve a butt-kicking female. What’s sad is that it’s like watching an alcoholic try to cure his alcoholism by drinking more alcohol, because there is a desire here to get a message out that women can be just as heroic as men. What’s missing is the heroism. They stand up to sexists, they win arguments, they kick butt. Actually saving the day though, as in protecting the lives of untold numbers of total strangers, that’s still a dude thing.

There’s supposed to be some creativity involved, too, but there isn’t any. The constant costume is this NeckToToeBlackCatsuit. Modesty Blaise made this look good. It makes sense for Batgirl and Catwoman to be wearing it.

But that’s not enough. Selene. Emma Peel. Black Widow. Aeon Flux. Trinity. Wilma Deering. Charlie’s Angels. Scarlett. The Invisible Woman. The Bride. Seven of Nine. Katniss. Yori. And, some women who don’t belong in catsuits…Lara Croft, Wonder Woman, others.

It’s the bare legs, stomachs, backs…skin pisses off feminists. Interestingly, a pleasing female shape doesn’t seem to arouse this kind of rage out of them. Odd, since their battle cry is supposed to have something to do about reforming unrealistic societal expectations placed upon the female physique. A hundred-pound strumpet doing high kicks in a NeckToToeBlackCatsuit does nothing to bring about such reform, and yet we are surrounded by exactly that because the studios don’t want to piss off the feminists.

Well if the story is supposed to involve some kind of realism, I can certainly go without the bare skin. What I can’t abide is the NeckToToeBlackCatsuit. It is a warning siren of studio cowardliness, coupled with extreme lack of creativity. Black Widow, that’s okay because she’s been illustrated this way in the comic books for years. It’s the cookie-cutter motion that piques my fatigue, and ultimately closes my billfold. Oh, we’re supposed to have action. Write in a butt-kicking female, and have the costume department order up a NeckToToeBlackCatsuit.

Well here is an idea. How about…get to the root of the problem? How about writing it so that the woman, rather than just kicking high, winning arguments, beating people up — does what the male action heroes do that make them heroes? Find the control box that activates the deadly satellite that will vaporize Hong Kong in X many minutes, risk life and limb to get to it, and prevent a disaster? Which, if allowed to happen, wouldn’t harm her personally in any way, but would end the lives of innocent people she has never met, and never will meet?

Yes, some women in action movies do something like that. But not as often as the males. The high-kicking in the NeckToToeBlackCatsuit, generally, is invested in self-preservation. And before she gets to that, she’s winning arguments, asserting her position of superiority and dominance over retrograde sexists who don’t have the correct opinions.

It’s the wrong approach. James Bond did engage in & win some arguments here & there, sometimes against bad guys obsessed with world domination, sometimes with scatterbrained females. But the primary emphasis was on saving-the-day. The studios are missing this key point, so in their zeal to elevate reform of cultural attitudes above entertaining the audience, they’re typically not even going about it the right way.

Interestingly, a pleasing female shape doesn’t seem to arouse this kind of rage out of them.

This is where the NTTBC is brilliant, though. There are two kinds of feminists: lesbians, and those who wish they were lesbians. Both are pissed off at skin, because that’s what men like. But lesbians don’t want to admit they’re turned on by a “traditional” hot body — that’s a “social construction” of the “Patriarchy” — so they can focus on the butt kicking and the fact that she’s fully clothed. Feminists who aren’t lesbians, meanwhile, can publicly admit that girls in the NTTBC don’t turn them on, because butt-kicking female action grrls aren’t supposed to turn people on. It’s a win-win.
- Severian | 05/05/2016 @ 06:32
Was thinking some more about this. Another point I forgot to include is the attribute of exclusivity.

We ALL have skin, right? Whereas, I actually agree with the feminists about the unhealthiness of this “beauty standard,” particularly regarding the sixteen inch waist or whatever…not too many have that, even among women who eat salads and stuff. But we all have skin.

So it’s even more remarkable, and a bit strange, that they get all cheesed off over the one thing and not over the other thing.
- mkfreeberg | 05/05/2016 @ 11:17
NTTBC or not, the one thing I think I can be done with right about now? THAT POSE SHE’S IN. Every action hero does the “crouch with one arm splayed back while looking up” pose, usually after falling an impressive height unharmed. They just stick the landing. In fact, I think Trinity may have started this (inadvertently) with the slow-mo landing with her one leg and arm splayed way out pose. That Pose is basically the same thing.

Hell, I mean, even Spidey does it after he snatches Cap’s shield in the Civil War trailer. ENOUGH OF THIS. It looks kind of dumb.
- nightfly | 05/05/2016 @ 13:26
” Find the control box that activates the deadly satellite that will vaporize Hong Kong in X many minutes, risk life and limb to get to it, and prevent a disaster?”

Who ya’ gonna’ call? Ghostbusters!
Pretty sure they’re going to be a bit shy of impossible Asian acrobatics, and catsuits in the wardrobe dept.
I could be wrong.
- CaptDMO | 05/06/2016 @ 06:43
Whoever first thought of the idea, “Hey, let’s have this pretty, skinny, frail-looking little girl, seems totally weak and vulnerable, and then when the bad guys try to grab her, it turns out she’s some kind of martial arts expert and she beats them all to a pulp” … whoever first thought of that plot twist, that was a brilliant idea, a neat surprise twist.

But it’s been so beaten to death, it’s not a surprise any more. It doesn’t work.

Need I point out the obvious? Just because you can make a movie where the pretty little girl can not only beat up any man in the place, but can beat up every man in the place all at once, doesn’t mean that girls can beat up men in real life. A lot of people seem to think this is some kind of feminist statement, but if that’s what they’re trying to do, it’s a pretty lame one, because we all know it’s fiction. If the best argument for women’s equality that you can make is, “In my fantasy world, women can do X just like men, even though in real life women can’t do X as well as men. But I can make a movie where, using staged action sequences and special effect, I can make it look like a woman is doing something that very few women could really do. Therefore women are equal to men” … umm, no. Indeed at heart, that’s an ANTI-woman statement. It says that women are only as valuable as men to the extent that they can do exactly the same things that men do. If a woman only has value when she acts just like a man, then you are saying that femininity is inferior to masculinity.
- saneperson | 05/06/2016 @ 13:47
@saneperson,

I once sat next to a feminist in a graduate seminar who maintained, seriously and strenuously, that it is “well known” that women only appear to be smaller, weaker, slower, etc. because of Patriarchy. Biology is sexist.

Also physics, but that seems to have slipped out into wider culture — which is disturbing. I once had a male friend, who is certainly not a feminist, claim some female martial artist from the movies could “kick my ass.” Which is nonsense — no matter how well trained she is, I outweigh her by 100 lbs and can practically bench press her one-handed. If she doesn’t get me in the nuts or the throat with the first shot, I’d beat her to a pulp. Not, I hesitate to add, because I’m some kind of Navy SEAL, or even an experienced fighter. It’s just physics — even the most exotic ninjitsu from the most remote ancient monastery doesn’t change the fact that F = MA.
- Severian | 05/07/2016 @ 07:18
Sev- even if it were true, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, because we’re talking about someone from the very top-end of the scale vs. someone in the vast middle. (Not to slight you, but just using your own description.) It’s like if someone claimed “Well, those WNBA players would kill you guys in a pickup game!” They almost certainly would clean up at the Y, but so what? They’re among the 100 best women basketballers in the workd, they’d better clean up against 40-something weekend warriors with 15 extra pounds and bad knees. Now, enter that same team inthe NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Is there a single team out of the other 67 that wouldn’t crush them? A few years ago, recall, the USA women’s national hockey team was defeated by Warroad High School’s boy’s squad.

Instead of enjoying things honestly and on their own terms, we’re told we must regard unlike things as identical.
- nightfly | 05/07/2016 @ 09:35
@Nightfly,

exactly so. As it happens, I’ve played pickup basketball with a member of my college’s women’s team. They were middle-of-the-pack in NCAA division I, not the elite, but there were some guys out there (not me) who could at least hang with her… and she was something like the starting power forward. So a 6’3″ girl who has been playing at the highest level of women’s sports her entire life could school most — but certainly not all — of the regular college guys in a campus gym. Could she take me to the hoop? Absolutely, but I’m quite a ways from 6’3″, and coming off the bench for my dorm-league intramural team was the highest level of organized ball I’d ever played. (And incidentally — and maybe this was just her — she was one of the dirtiest players I’d ever seen. Fistfights have started among male players over far less than the shit she pulled).
- Severian | 05/07/2016 @ 10:34
Dirty players? Firefly/Serenity
I’m pretty sure that “flat affect”, and otherwise just as “a bit off” as the rest of the characters, little River, (no cat suits there) played dirty when SHE faced off against all those big mean professional men , that CLEARLY outweighed/outreached/out armed her.
But, well, you know……
1. Off screen
2. Wasn’t a “you go girl!” premise. (pre Hugo/Gamer/ Linux code girls- gates)
3.. Fiction!
- CaptDMO | 05/07/2016 @ 13:41
[…] House of Eratosthenes has knecktotoeblackcatsuits […]
- Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove | 05/08/2016 @ 06:42
@CaptDMO
River at least also had the excuse as being slightly psychic and if you can see what’s going to happen first, that’s going to be a pretty big advantage.

Also I have to call foul on the host!

But that’s not enough. Selene. Emma Peel. Black Widow. Aeon Flux. Trinity. Wilma Deering. Charlie’s Angels. Scarlett. The Invisible Woman. The Bride. Seven of Nine. Katniss. Yori.

7 of 9 was never an action star! (just hot – and the solution of the week usually)
- Nate Winchester | 05/09/2016 @ 09:07
I’m glad we made it this long without someone posting a picture of the Klingon-looking guy in a leather thong posing on a bed filled with his guns.
- P_Ang | 05/10/2016 @ 15:16
Every action hero does the “crouch with one arm splayed back while looking up” pose, usually after falling an impressive height unharmed. They just stick the landing. In fact, I think Trinity may have started this (inadvertently) with the slow-mo landing with her one leg and arm splayed way out pose. That Pose is basically the same thing.

Hell, I mean, even Spidey does it after he snatches Cap’s shield in the Civil War trailer. ENOUGH OF THIS. It looks kind of dumb.

Like this?

That’s the three-point landing. Makes no sense whatsoever. Been done-to-death, anyway.
- mkfreeberg | 05/18/2016 @ 18:28
Superhero landing.
http://imgur.com/WfSkK3K

Deadpool is turning it into a meme.

No.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwUilIo036g

Really.
http://i.giphy.com/5wROMgXoScyIg.gif

I’m not kidding.
http://i.giphy.com/RRGORSodK7xHa.gif
- Nate Winchester | 05/18/2016 @ 18:48

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Thursday, May 5th, 2016