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Comment by alecdbrooks | Hacker News Reader

Criticizing how fictional women are dressed is not the same as criticizing how real-life women are dressed. When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.

When I see feminist criticisms of how female characters are dressed, they're not criticizing three dimensional autonomous characters that happen to wear revealing clothes. They're criticizing usually stock characters that perpetuate stereotypes about women and objectify.

That being said, some feminists (or should that be "feminists"?) absolutely do police women's clothing choices, and that's just as wrong from them as it is from anyone else.

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>Criticizing how fictional women are dressed is not the same as criticizing how real-life women are dressed.

Who do you think portrays them on tv and in movies? Fake women? Give me a break.

>When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.

I like how if a man does it, it's sexist, but if a woman does it, it's "empowerment." I guess men aren't allowed to write empowered female characters. And yet, if they don't write them--that makes them misogynists, too.

>They're criticizing usually stock characters that perpetuate stereotypes about women and objectify.

In my experience, this is just very elaborate justification for plain old jealousy of another woman's looks.

> Who do you think portrays them on tv and in movies? Fake women? Give me a break.

Oh, I had forgotten actresses write their own roles and pick their own wardrobes. And since most producers are women [0], most directors are women, most writers are women[1] and most people behind the scenes are women [2], I don't know what I was thinking. You're absolutely right: Men really have no influence on the process at all.

/sarcasm

>>When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.

>I like how if a man does it, it's sexist, but if a woman does it, it's "empowerment." I guess men aren't allowed to write empowered female characters. And yet, if they don't write them--that makes them misogynists, too.

I'm comparing a woman's personal choice to a man's choice of how women are portrayed. Men can dress as they wish. What they shouldn't do is objectify women.

[0]: http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/percentage-of-wom...

[1]: http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/tv-writing-remains-white-m...

[2]: http://entertainment.time.com/2014/01/15/report-women-are-st...

It's very common for readers / viewers to feel that elements of a story represent a world view that is much wider than the specific bounds of that particular story. If you read 1984 without reading Orwell's goals, how would you characterize his goals? Is he trying to say something about all societies, or is his book concerned only with _that_ society? The more superficial the interaction with a work, the easier it is to mistake an author's perspective.

I think these sorts of differences in perspective are common to people in general. Some of it is jealously, but a lot of it is simply a failure to understand or take into consideration the viewpoint of the piece.

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