Real talk: feminist issues with Equestria Girls · 12:32pm Jun 1st, 2013
I make no apologies for the amount of liberal lingo in this post. If any of my left-wing bullshit is too dense for you to make sense of, go ahead and call my shit out in the comments. I don't mind explaining stuff in plain English.
I've corralled together some actual feminist concerns regarding Equestria Girls. This is, of course, based solely on my own navel-gazing; you're insane if you think I'm going to go looking for feminist blogs commenting on Equestria Girls. What, do you think I'm a masochist or something? Just because I fantasize about being thrown against a wall by Spitfire while she clenches down harder on the bit between her teeth and
First, the most simple one: Body types. The old idea of standards of beauty being to blame for kids going bulimic. The characters all have this lanky stylized look, which is to say their bodies in no way resemble real bodies, and more to the point, they all look the same. The idea is that the characters are rail-thin, so girls will feel bad for not being rail-thin. I might reply that the bodies are so unrealistic that they're not being presented as standards of beauty. Nobody sees their bodies as beautiful because those bodies don't look like anything a human body would normally look like.
But now I'm grasping at straws. A fat kid clearly knows that they do not look like these characters. The characters all look the same, no stand-outs, so real life stand-outs are alienated.
In all likelihood this is a Hasbro-mandated thing. No matter how much it would please me for Pinkie Pie to look something like this, she would look nothing like the toy that they're trying to sell.
I wonder if it would be worse or better if they gave the girls wildly different appearances? Twilight as some awkward spindly nerd, Pinkie see above pic, Applejack as tough and muscular. They have the exact same body type in the show, so wouldn't it be sort of odd for them to vary wildly in human form?
Another thing we plainly see in the trailers: Outfits. Yeah, this one is bad. So the obvious complaint is that every character is dressed up all girly, implicitly telling girls that they can't or shouldn't wear flannel. Again, this is kinda hard to argue with. It's a pretty unmistakably true criticism. The biggest fear, I'm sure, is that this makes Rainbow Dash and AJ too girly. That's pretty awful, right? So much for telling girls that it's cool to be a tomboy!
I'll say right off that I think Rainbow Dash's skirt is almost acceptable. You'd never play soccer in that skirt, but then again, walking around school wearing just a T-shirt and those bike shorts would be rather immodest. Mind you, the Rainbow Dash I know wouldn't have any problem walking around in a "rather immodest" getup, but Rainbow Dash also likes looking good. I'm sure she thinks her little jacket makes her look 20% cooler.
You know who does object, in canon, to wearing anything that isn't either 1) strictly functional or 2) the coat of hair Celestia gave her?
While I was cropping this image, I kept on trying to justify this shit to myself. I did not find a way. The Applejack I know would have to be muscled into wearing a prom dress. The fact that Human Applejack wears a skirt to school by her own free will outright angers me. AJ is a forced-to-grow-up-too-soon tough bitch dedicating her life to running the family farm. The one time I've seen a fanfic successfully go against the canon that Applejack hates wearing girly shit, it only happened after AJ got very thoroughly "feminized" by Rarity's gigantic
People, I have worn a skirt. I do not know why anyone wears skirts. I complained "Oh god I feel like I'm walking around while wearing no pants." And the girl I borrowed the skirt from said "Yeah, we feel that way too. Now you know."
Then again, maybe we need to get real here. This is another of those things that's just gotta be a Hasbro mandate. The doll's gonna wear a skirt. What this means is that the writers aren't the ones saying that girls only ever wear girly shit, which means the writers probably aren't sitting over there saying "hmm, Rainbow Dash is too tomboyish here, we'd better make her more girly so that girls can identify with her." Since these people wrote episodes for the actual show and everything, they probably understand that Rainbow Dash as we know her is an enjoyable character.
But yeah, the skirts are stupid.
Next up, not a strictly feminist issue but an important one: Whitewashing. I'm not really into this whole race thing, but I think some people would argue that because there seem to be no ethnicities between characters, it's assumed that every character is white. Yes, that's more the audience's fault than the movie's, but at the same time, by not acknowledging the existence of race and the differences between people, it alienates people who are "different." If you have some kind of sharp difference from the "normal" North American culture that the Girls belong to, then you are excluded from their world. Say you have a foreign speech affect, or you have some kind of religious practice that makes you stand out i.e. you wear a head-scarf. Which Equestria Girl do you identify with? Do you identify with anyone in the entire damn movie? Hmm. Seems like you don't exist.
Personally, though, I don't feel excluded when I'm forced to identify with a white character. I dunno. Do any of you know have feelings about this? How okay is it to exclude those who aren't as thoroughly assimilated as I am?
Moving on to a rather specific complaint: The high school setting. Actually, I don't know what's inherently wrong with this except that it means that EG shares a space with some truly hideous abortions of shows. So it turns the m6 into kids. So what? They never acted like adults in the first place.
Pic unrelated except that it made me laugh when I saw it. Sure is weird to think about the characters turning into kids, though. What about Rarity, who owns her own business? Rainbow Dash, who is repeatedly given authority over the weather team? Or, hell, Princess Twilight?
A less obvious one: Twilight seeking affirmation via the approval of others. She wants to be the prettiest, she wants to win the contest, she wants to be better than that red-headed bitch. But mostly she hinges her self-worth on how great the rest of the school thinks she is.
This comes down to how much faith you have in the writers. Will there be a little subplot with Twilight seeking to win the approval of her peers? Will she inordinately base her self-worth on how much the other girls respect her, and how much boys want to fuck her? Will the way she overcomes these difficulties be demeaning?
My prediction is "No and You're Stupid For Disagreeing With Me" but um, whatever you like is fine too.
Here's one that I was worried about myself: Twilight goes gaga over a boy.
Pretty serious problem here: One of four known pony goddesses, probably among the top ten most powerful magical beings in pony-canon, suddenly turns to jelly when a boy locks eyes with her. Yeah that's a great message for little girls.
There's all kinds of stuff that's rageworthy about this, and trying to explain it got me frustrated as I tried to write a single explanation that crossed several separate points of feminist rage. I'll just let you take my word: This would be bad. I imagine you agree.
I talked myself out of worrying about Twilight being submissive to a dude for the same reason I'm not worried about the whole "twilight is an insecure teenager craving approval" thing. This is in the hands of the writers responsible for some of the show's best episodes. Have a little faith.
Finally, I'm certain someone must be saying this somewhere: "The whole prom queen thing and the culture of pageantry and fashion shows objectify women because of the male gaze and rape culture and" Hey buddy. The SCUM Manifesto called from the 90s to say "keep it up." Everyone else I heard from wanted to say "fuck you."
In the end, I think, most of these complaints are nothing but unreasonable demands from left-wingers like me.
I once wrote a rant about how Disney Princesses by and large don't have negative messages for girls, and it applies here too:
To criticize Disney for being racist and sexist is to criticize mainstream ideas about what constitutes "gender equality" and whatever other left-wing stuff is worth fighting for this season. I don't think that's an adequate reason to call Disney out for giving negative messages to girls. Again, people feel like Disney has this obligation to be highly progressive in absolutely everything they do, because everything they do pervades our culture so strongly. That's a completely unrealistic standard.
What do they mean "rape culture"? This is something I've never understood.
In conclusion, I predict that the movie will be funny and all around tolerable. I also fully expect it to have some feminist issues. I'll probably watch it, enjoy it, then try to forget about it.
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Say someone makes a really creepy rape joke. Do you have the guts to take responsibility and be an angry feminist bitch? If you don't, you are implicitly telling people around you that telling that joke was okay.
I'm not such a big advocate of this idea, but there are a bunch of other things that sometimes get called out as such. Just look it up.
In short, it's the way our society supposedly makes rape out to be less terrible than it is.
Yay for left wing liberalness?
I confess I feel the same way on the body type and clothing issues. I think it feels very forced and lazy and I worry about it. AJ especially made me want to eat nails.
As for the argument about Twilight needing approval and going nuts over a boy I feel like you're jumping too far too fast. I've only seen the one trailer in my defense so if there's more I have yet to see it. But in the trailer I saw there was no indication of twilight wanting to be prom queen for any reason other than to get the element of magic.
As for the boy thing, i'm still reluctant to call him a boyfriend til we get more info since he's voiced by her brother and I doubt her daddy issues are that obvious and severe.
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>voiced by her brother
I knew about all the incest jokes of course, but I never really thought it would be canon. Now it's even weirder. Meeting the human version of her brother, but he doesn't recognize her? I dunno. Maybe that'll actually be interesting.
My headcanon is that the final word in this sentence was supposed to be "horsecock", but you censored yourself.
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Rape culture is more the ingrained mores and icons that make rape behavior acceptable to society. Things like, for one very minor instance, movies/books/video games wherein a woman is the "prize" at the end of the hero's quest. It's implied therefore that he can do with her as he pleases after defeating his opponent, regardless of whether she wanted to be rescued in the first place or not. It drives home for men a sense of "women are there for you to use". See also: boys will be boys.
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Honestly, that's a pretty cheap shot. Nine times out of ten, you can usually call the creators out on poor characterization for that.
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>Rarity "feminizes" AJ with a giant
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You seem to misunderstand. When the hero gets the girl after his final victory, it's like she's a "prize." It's subtle: the idea is that it's ingrained, and we think of the princess being rescued as a reward; a trophy, even if the hero is obviously not raping her. It's not characterization; it's that the whole thing implies that the writers have a certain view of women.
I'm starting to back off on body image complaints. I get it, and it's a legit thing to worry about. But to really sink in the audience would need to not realize that this is a cartoon and therefore unrealistic.
Calling Serena Williams ugly, or Jessica Simpson fat, or any of the other terrible judgements we put on actual people for not looking like supermodels (btw, supermodels don't look like that in real life, they get airbrushed) is the real issue there and extending the concept to cartoons is going beyond the realm of reasonable complaints.
So now I dislike the character designs because they seem lazy. Whether tha was DHX or Hasbro's toy design department is irrellivant; you're trying to compete with Barbie, you need to bring your A-game.
Same thing for the outfits. Lazy.
We don't know anything about the male character. Chill out, bronies.
As for whitewashing, I never though about that in this context. None of the mane six have a black (or Hispanic or Arabian or Yiddish or Hindi or Persian or Slavic or Italian or British or Québécois or African or Trinidadian or Nepalese or Cambodian or Japanese or Inuit or Cree or Nuahtal or Hopi, for that matter) voice. Except, of course, for Sapphire Shores. (Wasn't she accused of being a stereotypical Mad Black Woman? I seem to recall quite a few mildy annoyed parents or bronies pointing that out and Tabitha St Germaine apologizing because she only meant to embody Queen Latifah, not a racial stereotype) Has the show then alienated all the non-WASP-voice members of its audience? Or do they ignore that and connect with the character who's personality they can relate to the best?
The logical extreme of the whitewashing argument is the the original show alienates all non-ponies, and pointing this out is not just the ramblings of a redneck conservative asshat who doesn't understand. It is pointing out that no a slippery slopes are slid down.
So I would say that the whitewash argument is weak here. Especially since the alternative would be seen as racist.
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>Especially since the alternative would be racist
I thought about dropping a comment about Zecora, but it led to an entire new avenue of discussion.
Race is its own subject and quite honestly I have a strange relationship with it. I mentioned that I'm an ultra-assimilated individual, but there's more to it than that.
The whitewashed culture of generically North American characters like the Equestria Girls was a fantasy world as far as my upbringing was concerned--looking back on my childhood, the fact that we were supposed to identify with the Magic School Bus kids just makes me cringe. You better believe that WASPy mainlanders who move to Hawaii are "marked."
The vegan girl I dated for way too long came here for graduate school, and after living here for two years it got her upset that people always assumed she was a tourist or treated her like an ignorant whitey.
I never actually told her this, and now I wish I had: "Yeah, welcome to being a minority. How does it feel, fuckin' haole?"
You can see how colorblindness (and not whatever the opposite of whitewashing is) is a positive advantage for me. In Hawaii, the white girl loses her unmarked status, and in fact her whiteness makes it harder, if not impossible, for her to become unmarked. Meanwhile, I can be whatever race I want, and I'll be a happily unmarked member of Honolulu's bourgeoisie.
The thing is, I keep being told that colorblindness disadvantages "marked" people, which is the point of view I tried to lay out in my post. You might almost say I was playing devil's advocate.
P.S. : I never, ever, ever realized that about Sapphire Shores. I hear it now, but at the time I had no idea what kind of voice she was going for.
Why the hell did I just write a goddam essay about myself? I should go back to my write-off fic.
1119396 So we're agreed: looking at cartoon ponies and discussing racism is not a good use of our time.
Equestria Girls is the worst thing Hasbro could've ever created ever!!!
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I don't know, but I thought the movie was ok. They were stick thin, and it was sorta like a High School Musical. What bothers me is the Equestria Girls dolls and the costumes. Now, those were freaky....
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Hey, real quick. Why does this have so many views? Who linked this from where?
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Srsly.
Did someone popular link to this post?
1299887 Nah, I just searched feminist in the search bar and this was the only blog that popped up that wasn't mine.
She only said that phrase once, so I doubt she thinks that
Celestia didn't give her anything