The Essentia Sphere

Well, folks, it looks like we feminazis have gotten our pretty little panties in a bunch again. Don’t you know that we’ve all been overreacting over the MJ statue? Boy, women are so emotional.

We have ourselves a little interview with Adam Hughes, the guy behind the statue. He defends the statue, claiming that she’s not doing Spidey’s laundry. And—giggles—it’s just supposed to hark back to the days of the pin-up. Oh, and don’t you know that MJ has always been a slut?

With this kind of logic, how can you argue with him?

This is probably going to open up a whole other can of worms, but it’s something like using the “n-word.” Even when I’m sitting and having a discussion about how horrible that word is, I can’t even use that word in a clinical discussion about how horrible it is. I have to say, “n-word” instead. But Dave Chappelle can use it all day long, and nobody gets offended. So – is it actually an offensive word, or is the context offensive? Is it offensive when it’s used by a racist individual as a slur?

Duh. I mean, don’t you women get it? The statue is a statement about . . . something. When asked how the above answer pertains to the MJ statue, Hughes says:

Well, that’s how I end up looking at this – is it really a sexist or misogynistic act if it wasn’t intended that way on the part of the people doing it? If you perceive something that way, but it wasn’t meant to be that way, and it’s not sending people back to the stone age, is it really a sexist or misogynistic thing that’s going on, or are you seeing something that’s either not there, or that the artist never intended to be there?

So see, you bunch of crybabies? He didn’t mean anything by it! Oh, wait! It gets better!

There was a story about an aide to the Mayor of Washington, D.C. a few years back who used the word “niggardly” to describe a budget, and people didn’t understand the word, only heard what they wanted, and he was forced to issue an apology and ultimately resign for a perceived insult that he never came close to making. It had nothing to do with African Americans or anything racist, but he had to apologize, and ultimately resign because of the perception of the word. And there have been other times that has happened as well. An virtually all cases, you had an educated individual having to apologize – or worse – for using a word that was a little too expensive for the average person to pick up on. Rather than try to find perhaps what the word meant, the easiest way out was to take offense, and protest against the perceived insult, even when it didn’t exist.

Now you see, don’t you? The MJ statue is too intelligent for you! The average person just can’t pick up on the nuances of the thong. You don’t understand the giant boobs falling out of the shirt. Poor, stupid, emotional women.

Now look here—you’re complaints have caused this poor guy and the makers of the statue problems! Shame on you for wanting women to be seen as more than sex objects! Shame!

AH: We’re not changing any of our plans on the subsequent statues, but we’ve gone through and looked at the other designs to see if we’re doing something that could be misconstrued as sexist or misogynistic.

NRAMA: But isn’t that a slippery slope? Isn’t that in a way going back toward self-censorship in order not to offend a segment of the audience who the product’s not aimed at who are going to be offended by a thousand differing degrees?

AH: It’s not self-censorship, but rather, we’re flirting with self-awareness. Self-censorship would be us looking at the plans for Aunt May cleaning Uncle Ben’s toilet in a teddy for the next statute, and then change that to her doing something assertive, and not doing chores. It’s self-awareness if we look at the designs and see something on the next statue that could possibly bring about the same amount of negative attention from the same people, so that we can prepare for the possible repercussions, whether legitimate or otherwise.

Censorship is wrong! Why should these people have to change something that is insulting to half the world’s population? It’s all been “misconstrued” by overreacting feminazis. You see, the thong and the boobs are just harmless fun. Like the old pin-up girls. See? See?!

Ahhhhhh. It’s always nice to see the excuses for misogyny in the comic book industry. But I think they may need to think of some new ones. I mean, when you have male comic book readers seeing a problem with your statue, it means you may have gone overboard with the objectifying of women thing. When male comic book readers don’t believe your BS line about “but I didn’t mean anything by it” then you might have messed up.

Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just us emotional women who hate the statue. We’re the only ones who “misconstrued” it because we just didn’t understand it. Yeah, now that I think about it, I really can’t see where we got all those silly ideas about that statue.

I’m going to thank LaconicChick for bringing this article to my attention but I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that she likes to make me angry. She’s the one who first showed me the statue! LC is messing with my mind!