I believe there is a fully rendered vulva at the top of the crack as well, as if it migrated to ensure the oggler may oggle upon all of her erotic assets unhindered by convential, unattractive anatomy. I could only dream of drawing something this cursed sexy.
Id actually really like to see this interpretation of the femme fatale. The Thing making itself as appealing to a man as media allows it to assume- especially shit like absolutely ass tier fanservice anime. You could get some really good body horror if realistically rendered, like the breaking spines and big ass anime eyes and lack of nose at all.
It's an ongoing problem. No one agrees on what makes men attractive, even when hyper sexualized. Some people will point to Hugh Jackman on the cover of Good housekeeping as an example of a mans thirst trap. But that doesn't exactly feel equal to the kind of thirst traps we see with women.
From the perspective of predominantly male fanbases these tend to be catered too, male sexualisation is aspirational while female sexualisation is objectifying
It reminds me of the saying, "No one knows who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish." As in an environment that's familiar to you becomes invisible. Women being sexualised is so common it doesn't register that it's a trend a lot of the time. People point to men being sexualised in defence because it's so abnormal that even one is worth commenting on.
Personally my take in sexualisation is that it's a mix of the design of the character and the observer. I'm not sexually attracted to myself when I look in the mirror, but someone might be sexually attracted to my body because they like skinny white guys. So is it attractive or not? In being observed do I become hot? If an ass claps in the wood does it make a sound? I think this also goes for personality since being into a certain personality can make a character way hotter than if it's not the type of person you find attractive (which doesn't necessarily rely on sexualised design). But like I suspect it's evolution making you want to procreate with someone with specific physical traits and those traits have been identified and exaggerated in various ways through media. It's fine to have that reaction but separating yourself enough from it enough to be respectful in the day-today is the key.
Generally I think the two parallel problems are "is this sexualised character sexual without being objectified?" and "What are the types of experiences that deserve to be represented?" The first one is about execution on a specific type of person and the second is, I suspect, what people actually mean when they say that they're pissed off by sexualised characters. It's not necessarily that it's objectification (although it might be), it's that it could be something else, but isn't. I think you need both to really get at the core of the issue since sexuality is as much a part of the network of human experience as everything else.
I have a theory about this. What men find sexually appealing is broadcasted far and wide and early. Even in reasonably family friendly media we have men lusting after women who have the same classic sexualized features. People think it's funny to pretend baby boys are attracted to big boobs and such.
There isn't really an equivalent for little girls. Women aren't trained to sexualize certain features from a young age.
I think that's why women roll out crazy ideas for that 'hear me out' era
Y'know, that is what I was thinking too. If male sexualisation got as much history as female, how similarly weird would the character designs get? My first thought was a "shirt" that is just long sleeves rolled up halfway, probably with a turtleneck that has an Adam's apple window.
Nah, it was true. His bulge was hanging all loose and floppy because of a bug. They just tightened it up the way it was supposed to be initially, they didn't actually make it smaller.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s and I’m 99% sure those women are succubi poorly trying to replicate human women but increasing your chances in taking your soul with no way of my words to dissuade you or anyone else. With that said, can you make up your order now?
Random but one of my favourite historical fun facts is that the Romans loved the Spartans so much that aristocratic Roman families would send their children to Sparta to learn their ways purely for educational and recreational purposes, not for any practical reasons. Sparta and the Spartans at ine point in Roman history was essentially a living museum and tourist attraction.
It's funny and hot when they're role-playing as hypermasculine for sex (especially when they're the bottom 🤤). But it's just as tiring as wannabe alpha straight guys outside of sex.
I think he’d try to start making the toxic guy salads in an attempt to find a salad he will eat and show him that’s it’s not all just lettuce and tomatoes. And then maybe toxic guy finds a salad he begrudgingly admits is pretty good. And then salad guy invites him to dinner where he will teach him how to make the salad. Toxic guy brings a pack of steaks and tells him that he’ll teach him how to make REAL food, and at first salad guy is a little hurt- all this work he put into broadening this meatheads culinary horizons and he’s still making jabs?? Toxic guy senses the tension in the kitchen and tries to explain- not that the salad isn’t real food too, it grows from the earth, nourishes the animals, and goes great with a sizzling, juicy steak! They complement each other!
Anyway one thing leads to another and he’s got Toxic guy on his knees, slorping down his man meat.
/r/GatekeepingYaoi has this kind of stuff (remixing comics and memes so that the guys are kissing), but ironically you're more likely to find it in /r/GatekeepingYuri since its way more active and allows all genders (and pictures of Yuri Gagarin)
I wouldn't know how to overly sexualize a male character.
On the other hand, I know how to sexualize a female character.
On the third hand, I do not know how to draw so it does not matter.
Coming from a woman, I find Nightwing to be a great example of how to sexualize a man without it being gross/silly. That shot of him upside down? Hoo boy.
Dude, this is so great! Reminds me of the actor playing wolverine (very tired and memory challenges) on magazine covers aimed at men vs aimed at women, the latter he's smiling warmly wearing a comfy-ass-lookin sweater. It's insane to me how a lot of men don't get this. I'm not attracted to men and I understand this, but I'm also in community with a variety of gendered-folk and we are open enough to talk about things like preferences and sexuality, so maybe I'm taking that for granted.
Camera angles, shot compositions, the situation, etc.,
A bikini isn’t inherently a sexual thing, but what makes people associate it with sexuality is that in movies, anime, Manga, etc, you always get these shots/moments were a woman wearing a Bikini has camera shots and angles that focus on her breasts or butt or something else, and these shots are often done to titillate.
A good benchmark for sexualizing men to know if you're doing it right is if the average viewer thinks the sexualised scene is gay, because it's kind of an unconscious assumption that men are the target audience.
I had always felt that top gun was woke and was trying to corrupt our children by exposing them to shameful concept of sweaty, sexy, beach volleyball!
What? No, of course I’m not attracted to Val Kilmer and projecting my insecurities on others, you even insinuating such a thing disgusts me!
Now I’m going to take this bottle of hand lotion and this issue of the sports illustrated swimsuit edition to the bathroom to take a BIG MANLY HETEROSEXUAL DUMP!
It's a combination of detail and posing, IMO. The women in the bikinis are constantly in poses where they're sticking out their chest, or bent over, or have their legs spread, or just generally have their breasts as a prominent part of the silhouette. Care is taken with the
curves in the linework such that you could identify the position of the areola through the clothes, because they're meant to be the focus of the image. You don't tend to see men with their bulge or ass emphasized in the same way. How often can you identify the individual testicles through Superman's spandex?
It's a bit more nuanced I'd say. The covering of the body in such a way as to draw attention to what is being covered can cause a kind of excitement that makes the whole feel more sexual.
Give him a midriff that shows off his happy trail.
Linger the camera on his ass, very obvious (perhaps even revealing) bulge and sometimes his forearms when his sleeves are rolled up
Make him pose in uncomfortable positions to show off said bulge and/or ass. Angle the camera without respect to his face or personhood, unless he is making a pouty or cold steel expression where you can imagine he is about to munch some carpet.
When he has to wear armor it’s just a chain speedo with a very obvious codpiece.
Yupp, go look at any slutty(non nude) Leon Kennedy mod and you'll get how to overly sexualize a male character real quick. It's basically the same type of outfits they put on female characters xD
Massive bulge? What are you a barbarian? No, a tiny, almost unnoticeable bulge is the mark of civility. Civilised men are growers, not showers, just ask the ancient Greeks.
"It's hard to sexualize men" Simply wrong. Sexualizing a man is easy as fuck. Men just don't want to be caught drawing other men like that. Search up bara yaoi and you'll see men sexualized in every possible angle.
I think this is a huge part of it, men arent taught to see themselves as 'sexy', to be desirable. Men are taught homosocial ideas of status and signifiers to achieve and then devalued by other men for not meeting those goals. And one of those aspects its a control of the expression of sexuality. Men are taught to outwardly want a very specific idea of a woman, and if they admit to liking outside that box, theyre shamed for it. (And this includes men who might be bi, or simply find a single other man attractive). They dont get to be seen as a desirable person, in some weird ways I think a lot of media makes men almost devoid of desirability, and instead they are power fantasys where youre not meant to identify with the male hero as desirable or even sexual, youre only meant to identify with his performance of masculinity.
So the minute men are put in a sexual gaze they tend to think its gay since they have no other framework.
Terry does what Terry wants, especially when it comes to sexual matters. Thus I can only hope at some point he's comfortable accepting a role where he can wear a tiny miniskirt and fishnets, preferably with a crop top that leaves some of his underpecs visible.
I don’t think men really get what the issue is because they don’t have to live in female bodies.
I recently watched an anime I was really excited about only to get smacked in the face with this. There was a man on the team who was very muscular and his male teammates admired how big and strong he was. That’s where it ended, though. He was still a character. He was respected as a person. He was a person who happened to have the physique other male characters wanted.
The female teammates were not given the same level of consideration. They were all obsessed with the MC and given numerous blushy-faced interactions with him. That’s all you ever see of them. Hell, one of the female characters’ power involved her forcing other men to sexually assault her (hard to explain, but she doesn’t want them to touch her. She has like a magic aura that makes them do it).
The women are constantly sexualized, and used for goon bait. They’re constantly shown wearing nothing but bikinis, undressing, or in compromising positions. And the best they can do in terms of female character development is make one of them really good at fighting. I have a feeling a lot of men who watch it think that having goon bait that can fight is good character development.
I was really excited for it because despite Soul Eater having some of the same issues, it was just a much better written show and the female characters were mostly written with real purpose.
Aside from the constant gooner bait, the show just wasn’t good enough for me to wanna watch it after that assault scene. You compare the first three episodes of Soul Eater to Fire Force and it’s night and day. Perhaps that’s why they felt the need to pad it out with cheap goon characters. So hard to find an anime these days that has a good story and doesn’t rely on gooner audiences to get by.
Yeah a lot of people in this thread are just mind numbingly stupid. "But women think shirltess men are hot too??"
Kind of telling that men in this thread are so used to women being goon bait characters that they cannot comprehend the idea that being hot is not the same as sexualization.
Women can be attracted to buff shirtless men, but buff shirtless men usually still get proper characterization. They don't exist solely as a sex object in the media in question, they are an actual proper well-fleshed out character, not some himbo fan service character for women. I don't know why people have a hard time grasping this difference.
To add on a little something I noticed too; when they are (the male characters) portrayed as purely “goon bait” and not have proper characterization, it’s almost always because it’s a satire of female characters always being sexualized, and not actual sexualization on the same level as those female ones. A little difficult for me to put it into words, it just feels like it’s played for a joke with men, but with women it’s just… the artists comfort zone? I don’t think it’s necessarily on purpose, just easy to fall back to and easy to keep doing instead of trying and potentially failing to be compelling (or even respectful at times)?
And sadly, that 60% are also the most likely to approach, as the other guys will be concerned with whether an approach would be intrusive on your night out.
One of the most legit examples of men being sexualized is when women refer to "grey sweat pants season", though somehow this often seems to involve Jon Hamm.
For those who can't imagine how men could be further sexualised, look no further than Tom of Finland.
And no, it's not a criticism of Tom of Finland, nor of the sexualisation of women in comics. People can have their kinks AND be nice about it at the same time.
And, look further that just the anatomy and bare skin. It’s also about pose, about angles, about what’s put under focus to the viewer. You can have unrealistic sexy proportions unsexualized, and perfectly realistic neutral proportions sexualized.
A simple example, a few years ago, there was a russian game with a faceless robot with hair tied in a braid around her head. Gamers were saying she couldn’t be sexualized, since her proportions were based on a real dancer ; the sexualization actually came from the choice of open coat and lines reminiscing of high socks.
There's also the video with batman and catwoman models swapped in a game, both don’t move and don’t pose for the camera the same way.
Right, people never ask gay men when this topic comes up. Just look at any of the thirst traps that get posted to /r/gaymers. Chest hair, big ass, big bulge, huge chest, muscles for days, chiseled jawline.
One of the top comments is "men can't be sexualized in the way women are." My brother in christ, yes they absolutely can be.
scrolled WAY too long for an actual example of men being sexualized. didn't even think about gay guys. Women don't usually broadcast what makes a man "sexy".
That's always been my biggest complaint honestly. People are going to sexualized anybody but it seems like only women lose all sense of anatomy and become contortionist.
Like I've seen exaggerated proportions on both sides but unless its Baki, dont really see guys put in poses to show off the "goods" that straight up defy logic, anatomy, and physics.
There's a really cool chick who does videos of herself doing Jojo poses. Can't recommend it enough. I think this anime is actually pretty good with anatomical correctness from what I've seen.
It depends on the part but generally yeah. The anime reflects the author's style evolution over the years which consequently means that the earlier season's (which are also some of the more memorable one's) are much more wonky
The anime doesn't include some of the worst offenders, but JoJos (despite being one of my favourite franchise and Araki one of my favourite creators) is legitimately one of the worst offenders for consistently ABYSMAL anatomy.
Like, some of the worst I've ever seen. Araki can do the most haunting, beautiful high art drawing one page, then in the next one Lucy Steele has a hand for a foot
I think in the case of JoJo, it's a little less of the overt sexualization and more comedic exaggeration for the sake of dynamic posing.... With maybe a dash of fan service at times.
Something people seem to miss consistently is sexual vulnerability. Up skirts, wardrobe malfunctions, posing and phrasing are all used to make female characters appear as sexually available and reciprocal as possible. Shirtless buff men doesn't touch that at all
That's because shirtless buff men are for the men in a power fantasy kind of way and the vulnerable half naked women are also for men in a sex fantasy kind of way. It's all made for the male gaze.
There are plenty of sexualised men in media catered towards women and gays, they are just less popular than media for men and general audience, and I do think people are conflating shirtless whit sexualised, I don't think the average man from otomes or moder romance books thend to be as hyper masculine as the average shirtless buff dude in media for dudes, hyper buff dudes seems more common in media for gay men though.
It’s so weird how we’re at a point where women should have a large upper body (breasts), large lower body (thighs and butt), but non-existent waist. Why are we wanting human women to be modeled after wasps?
Exactly because it is impossible to achieve. This way you will forever feel humiliated and forever buy magical supplements/fitness programs to get there
It's all overly shredded men with insane proportions doing ridiculous poses.
I think another angle of it is that men aren't as against being sexualized and unless it overtly appeals to them because their gay/bi. they just gloss over it. Conan, jojo, fist of the north star, "manime" in general, etc.
If you find no appeal in the male form like me, this shit is just cool. Im just aware that this is kind of the same thing as above.
Almost naked greasy buff dudes doing goofy poses while doing stereotypical manly things, with their junk regularly emphasized.
edit: I want to add a little addendum to this.
If you read this whole mess of a thread, i think (or atleast I hope) you might take away not so much as changing your entire world view, but rather the nuance of what I'm trying to get across.
I have my opinions, you have yours, but i hope at the very least the nuance of it is something that can be communicated. Even within this thread I have reached agreeable conclusions with those i was debating.
At the end of the day I suppose the only thing we can ever take away is our own conclusions.
Women's first experience with being sexualized is nearly getting kidnapped from the mall at age 12, men's first experience with being sexualized is just not a thing that happens for 80% of men. And even really hot men that do get objectified or sexualized are generally safe when they are.
It's just a completely different average life experience.
Yeah, go read the comments under the ample news stories of e.g. female teachers statutory raping their students. It's all full of "He should be happy", "What a lucky kid" and so on.
It's not seen as "being sexualized" but as "being lucky". So of course, if you frame it like that, nothing bad ever happens to men.
Almost every guy I know is a victim of CSA or sexual harassment as a minor. You're making life worse for victims by weaponizing what we go through for gender war shit. It's fucking disgusting. Just stop.
Acknowledging that men are uncomfortable being sexualized is NOT an attack on NORMAL women. It's just an attack on women who feel entitled to sexualize strangers but don't want to be associated with who they deem "the villain".
I was an infant the first time I was sexualized. My mother still talks about it like it's funny. I've been SAed more than once this year alone.
My partner's mother was, and is, a sex addict. He's a victim of CSA and SA.
My brother is a victim of CSA.
Statistically, 1 in 6 men ADMIT to experiencing SA and men are significantly more likely to minimize their own experiences.
I promise you, you know a LOT of male victims but because you say shit like this, they simply don't feel comfortable telling you about it because they know the first thing you'll do is compare them to a woman.
I think that's super valid at a macro level and probably explains a lot of women's feelings. At a micro level, it doesn't always hold water.
I, a male, was sexualised a lot from maybe the age of 14 by parents of my friends and even extended family. It wasn't comfortable. I was groped a lot. A lot of sexual comments.
That was my experience. Similar to the female experience in some regards. I don't feel any hate or injustice when men are portrayed like super buff unrealistic figures. I just think it looks cool.
In my experience, it's all an individual experience for how people feel about the media portraying unrealistic body image. I wonder sometimes if I had a large network of other boys that were sexualised, like women do, that I might have a different opinion.
1 in 6 men have been SAed. What you experienced wasn't a "woman experience", it's simply the reality for SO MANY children regardless of their gender.
What happened to you isn't lesser just because you're a man. Being molested isn't "the female experience". It's just something that happens.
🫂 It sucks seeing people minimize it happening to men or outright saying it doesn't happen, but you are valid in your experience. Never stop talking about it because the more you talk about it, the more comfortable other men will be in doing the same. Creating that network starts with talking about it.
I think another perspective is that men find appeal regardless in being sexualized because it's commonly seen as aspirational.
The ladies man was a stereotype for a reason.
You know the phrase "women want to fuck him, men want to be him". Yeah that's kinda the thing about JoJo.
I don't want to fuck any of the JoJo protags, but hell I'd love to be as musclebound as Jonathan, as cool headed as Jotaro, as suave as Joseph, and as determined as Giorno.
If your not attracted to them, they are presented as very aspirational. Most men who are presented as appealing are.
Is it a ridiculous standard, still yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a thing.
It's just glossed over because Men stand from the opposite end because men are told they ought to be like this. They will have their dreams come true if they can meet this standard.
Its not because it's safe, it's because it's what all kinds of media tells us we are expected to be. He-man, Conan, Bond, JoJo, comics, etc.
I think avoiding that both versions of this are kinda bad for their respective gender, not just sexualizing women, is why toxic masculinity has dug as deep as it has.
And I love JoJo but I know that dudes genuinely do model themselves after these kinds of characters, and we don't have a million faces coming out of the wood work to tell us that it's wrong, that we shouldn't be destroying ourselves to meet an impossible standard.
You can't put the shoe on the other foot without checking the size first. And frankly I don't think most men can fill em' despite desperately wanting to.
No one is saying that men aren't also victims of the patriarchy in exactly the way your outlined, just that they don't get sexualized in the way women do.
it's not considered aspirational because it's sexual though, it's considered aspirational because it's powerful. The power to physically engage something, the power to get the women they want, the power to not be held down by rules. The same could not happen with women because in the eye's of society women's power isn't valued, women aren't people, they're trophies- that's why women can be freely sexualized in media as a treat for the viewer but a woman being sexual in real life is called a slut and is looked down on when the same generally doesn't happen with men.
I agree to an extent that this isn't good for men either, the issue is it's harmful for different reasons, and when they're treated as the same it's often in service of minimizing the harm to women rather than highlighting the harm to men.
You have a point that the difference is power. Though I will argue that many sexualized characters are still shown as powerful.
That being said, I think those elements are kind of hand in hand and irregardless of how they spin:
they both still hurt people by presenting an impossible image that causes a ton of damage when one inevitably can't match it.
With the problem being we don't have anyone calling this out to the same extent. Its wrong for women to be presented that way, but like this comic, people are more than willing to go to bat for it, where men facing this issue get much more scrutiny if not vitriol.
I don't think either are ok, nor do i believe womens struggles with it should be minimized to prop up the other side of the issue,
i just think men ought to get more help in this corner of the issue, without minimizing what women go through with being sexualized as well.
It's really not the same though, as you said, you just find it cool, because it is cool. Tell me what's cool about a school girl crashing into a guy and then accidentally sitting on his face. The issue isn't that characters are shown as sexy, the issue is how it's done
Survivorship bias. Basic buff & shirtless men are the limit of what a straight mens consumption is before getting into gay territory, which they obviously don't consume and therefore don't consider. The real equivalent would probably be bara art
Half of the comment section is the guy in the comic and the other seems to think that every woman in fiction is a walking piece of goonbait. My fault for expecting a shred of nuance from a reddit comment section.
This is true. Men are shirtless all the time and the world doesn't automatically associate it with sexualisation. Women in media who are sexualised aren't just dressed sexy - but the biggest part of their screentime is spent sexualising her, or making it part of her character, or making the animation/direction oddly focus on angles that are titillating and forces the audience to pay attention to the fact that she's getting sexualised. Yoruichi from Bleach would've still been a sexy and strong character but they remove her autonomy, make her a brainless cat and focuses on sexual angles so much it takes away from the badassery from the fight. Same with when a woman falls down but somehow butt is up in the air and the camera is shoved right behind it. Oftentimes the reason for their sexualisation is being justified with a half baked in-story reason, but ultimately the author's intent was to include sexualisation. There's this anime called Sparks of tomorrow with a rather cartoonishly sexualised villain who's a man, I think he's a good example. But yeah MOST MEDIA is bad with sexualising just women and assuming a regular shirtless dude aurafarming is the same thing.
It was so funny when Marvel Rivals released a sexualized version of Captain America in a swimsuit. That's how you sexualize men lmaooooo. His whole ass, pecs, and bulge were defined.
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u/holleringelk Hollering Elk 14h ago
Simply outstanding work.