Anonymous asked: I think you've already said something about this, but the fact that Ghostbusters has four action women who aren't sexualised is so important to me + somehow the fact that Holtzmann is not sexualised makes her even more attractive to me???
hoooo BOY let me tell you my Thoughts on this one, anon. Buckle your damn seatbelt.
Part 1: The Non-Sexualized Costumes
First of all, let me start by quoting from this post that I love from @cloama:
McCarthy, Wiig, Jones and McKinnon in this movie are not funny-hot, like Cameron Diaz dorky dancing in a pair of underoos in Charlie’s Angels. They’re just funny and serving you soft-butch, wild-butch, nerd-chic and (albeit a little too stereotypical) cut-a-bitch realness
It was true before the movie came out and it somehow rings even truer now. How easy (and lazy) would it have been to make the jumpsuits sexy? Skintight catsuits with zippers down to show off maximum cleavage like a Sexy Ghostbuster ™ Halloween costume. Honestly it wouldn’t have surprised me, since even Black Widow and Wonder Woman apparently aren’t allowed to kick ass on screen without wedges are part of their costumes.
But the jumpsuits were baggy and painfully practical and entirely unsexy, and so were the rest of their wardrobes. The way these women dressed was so real; it was work-appropriate and casual and most of it looked pretty damn comfortable. They wear cute rain boots. I love those rain boots. There were no ass-shots or gratuitous naked scenes or that godforsaken scene where Plain Female Character has to get dressed up Because of Plot Reasons and we discover she’s been Bangable All Along.
This movie does not give two shits about the Male Gaze. It doesn’t care if you want to fuck these women.
Part 2: How did all this wlw fanservice even happen
Okay, so idk if ya’ll have noticed but I’ve been devoting a lot of time and blogging to the marvel of modern media that is Jillian Holtzmann, trying to figure out what the hell it is that makes her so appealing. And I think you just nailed the answer: the movie wasn’t trying to present her as sexy at all.
Despite the fact that sexuality and attraction is one of the most fluid, hard to quantify things in the entire world, there’s a very narrow idea of what makes a woman “sexy” in modern media.
…yep, there it is. Performing femininity is key, and that mean immaculate make up, push up bra, revealing clothing, long well-cared for hair. High heels factor into it a lot. And I’m not saying these women aren’t attractive or that they don’t look good, but…
As a woman who sometimes performs some degree of femininity myself, I understand what a pain in the ass it is. More often than not I look at a woman who’s meant to be a sex symbol and all I can think of is how painful those shoes must be, how long that makeup must have taken, is that bra hurting her back? The way most women are presented as sexual is laboriously unsexy, because it’s all so fake by nature.
(This is in no way a slam against real, non-fictional women who chose to present themselves in any of these ways. You look rad.)
You know that gif from Community where Donald Glover is talking about how he prefers women in pajamas over lingerie because he just wants to know that they’re comfortable? It’s like that.
ENTER HOLTZMANN.
Like I said, this movie doesn’t give two shits if you think Holtzmann is sexy. She’s not presented in any of the ways usually used to sexualize female characters. Her wardrobe choices are violently weird and mostly body-concealing (we never even got to see the crop top under those overalls), she makes a lot of weird faces and does weird voices, she’s not geeky in a cute feminine way but in way that likes blowing shit up and doing god-only-knows what with cadavers.
(You’re an ENGINEER, Holtzmann. What the hell do you need a dead guy for?)
And yet. She’s completely and utterly confident in all of this. Kate McKinnon sells all of Holtzmann’s capital-w-Weird with so much confidence that you have, like, zero doubt this is Holtzmann exactly as Holtzmann wants to be. She’s loud and weird and really unapologetic about making sex eyes at her teammates and also at guns. She’s not sexy because she’s in underwear with perfect makeup; she’s sexy because she’s wildly magnetically strange and is having a blast doing it and you want in.
And, yeah, she’s sexy because she’s really REALLY obviously casually confidently gay and hits on her teammates with style and aplomb in charmingly odd ways.
Dear Hollywood: less Sexy Women ™, more women who are so cool and confident and fun that they become sex goddesses along the way. There’s a difference.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but
the above ties into something I’ve been saying for ages about the way female
characters are routinely presented as being The Same Kind Of Conventional Beautiful
without any reference to context: it ignores the fact that personal presentation is an expression of personality. It’s why you
get so many shows that simultaneously play up the All Women Love Shoes And
Fashion And Shopping stereotype, yet never commit to discussing or visualising
a set aesthetic for the female characters beyond what’s meant to look hottest
for the male gaze. The stereotype becomes a cheap shorthand excuse for dressing
the characters as though they’re heading for a glamour shoot, because god
forbid “this woman cares about fashion” be translated as “wears really
gorgeous, practical rainboots and sews pockets into all her skirts” instead of,
as it more commonly is, “has perfectly styled long hair worn down at all times
and always wears heels, even if they’re an FBI agent in the field”.
Basically, it’s a creative decision
that inherently privileges “looks magazine hot” above “has a specific, unique
personality that impacts her appearance”, and it pisses me right the fuck off.
And it so often divorces the
character from their context! You want to know why so many female characters instantly
read as unreal or implausible even when they’ve said nothing in text to deserve
it, take a look at how they’re being presented visually and weigh that against
what you’d expect of an actual person in that setting to look like. If there’s
a dissonance, that’s probably why: you’re used to reading social cues in
clothes and hair and deportment, and the coiffed woman you’re seeing on screen
is pinging as contextually fake. You’ll get a female cop living in a rundown
apartment who lives on caffeine and has no personal life, but she’s still
wearing designer shoes that cost more than a week’s pay and rocking a hairstyle
that you, the viewer, know could never be achieved without two hours of work,
even though the character supposedly just leapt out of bed and drove to the
crime scene. You’ll get teenage daughters of single parents, in shows where
financial insecurity is an actual plot point, wearing six new outfits an episode
and never recycling any of them – even when their male peers have an
established, minimal wardrobe of recognisable pieces for verisimilitude –
because the wardrobe department wants to treat them like dress-up dolls. You’ll
have women who work on their feet all day in stiletto heels, and no, I don’t
care that it’s possible to learn to run in those shoes – the point is that, in
making every character wear them, you’re making an identical decision about
each of their personalities.
Or rather, failing to make a decision, because you’ve
already decided that how they look is more important than who they are. And I’m sick of it.