Random thought: Is Catwoman essentially a Furry stand-in, and is that why she's so popular?
Negative corollary: If this were true, Tigra would be more popular, and she's not.
(Image ©2007, Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc.)
Positive corollary: Catwoman is teh hawtness:
(With apologies to Neal Adams; to make up for my theft of the image go over to his site and buy it!)
Further discussion: Furries have become the designated punching-bags of the geek community. It reminds me of a story a Ph.D. friend of mine told about researching her dissertation. She was interviewing some Star Trek fans, and she asked them, "Do you think you're geeks?" They said, "Well, yes, but we're not as bad as those guys over there, who know every line from every show." So she went over to those guys and asked them the same question, to which they also responded "Well, yes, but we're not as bad as those guys over there, who go to conventions." She then asked the convention-goers, who pointed to the people who dress up at conventions, who in turn pointed to ... you get the idea.
The point is that people instinctively look for someone lower on the social ladder to make themselves feel more normal. Those of us in the geek culture (and I certainly include myself in that group) have at least some stigma on us, so we dump on people who are even geekier. But look, being different is part of what's good about being a geek. That reflexive denigration, in my opinion, weakens one of the core pillars that make geekiness attractive, that sense of inclusion and tolerance for -- even celebration of! -- weirdness and difference.
People make fun of Furries, while at the same time gobbling up Catwoman merchandise like no one's business. And if you think Playboy Bunnies have rabbit ears and a cotton tail by accident, you've got another think coming. And that was thought up by Hugh Freakin' Heffner, the King of Cool!
So get out there and hug a girl in a cat costume today, you'll make the world a better place.
I’ve had a huge poster of that Ms. Marvel cover on my wall for the last year. 😀
Yeah, instead of a girl in a cat costume, can I hug a girl in a catsuit? Given the paucity of female furries outside of shows like Drew Carey and Entourage, I think the latter would be easier to find.
The disturbing thing about furries is the sexual undertones they apply to entertainment that’s meant for children. A Playboy bunny is still distinctly mature and human – she looks like a woman in bunny ears as opposed to a bunny with human-female qualities. She doesn’t look like something originally meant for children, while most furry creations are directly Disney-influenced.
We live in a society where sex is taboo and connecting sex with things related to children is the ultimate wrong. I’m not saying furries are pedophiles, but their imagery of what we associate with children’s characters combined with sexiness takes it too close to the line of social taboo to be comfortable in the theory of mind. It’s enough to make it somewhat creepy.
Personally, I wish furries would just go easier on the sexual overtones. Yes, there’s implied sexuality in female superheroines (not surprising when you look at what the creator of Wonder Woman was into)but thanks to the Comics Code Authority it remains relatively chaste. It doesn’t get much worse than that shot of the catfight you posted above, which for a medium that our society sees fit for children and teens is probably as bad as it should get without a “FOR MATURE READERS” warning.
Well, Nate, the furry “sexual undertones” you allude to are largely imposed by those outside the fandom. While, yes, there are furries who just really dig the idea of having sex with, say, Krystal from StarFox, most furries actually have very little sexual interest in anything furry.
The simple fact is, the ones who are into all of the sexual stuff are also the ones who the media pays attention to, and so the rest of the furries (the ones who are totally normal sexually) look bad because of it. So it kind of puts most furries in a very awkward position.
XKCD agrees with you. I tried to post the link here and couldn’t, but Google “xkcd” and “aversion fads”. Or you can go by the strip number, which is 471.
Well, that’s mostly right, but furriness is not a fetish; it’s a fandom. While it does have an unusually large sexual base, saying that all furries are only in it for the sex is like saying all Trekkies are only in their fandom for the sex: It’s untrue, rude, and, frankly, demoralizing to to almost every furry.
I don’t think anyone who reads super-hero comics on a regular basis (me, for example) has any standing to point fingers at any other group of fans for sexual fixation. That many enormous-breasted women in painted-on outfits don’t happen by accident.
Haha…very true, Jeff!
Very true indeed…
Whatever, Jeff and Doomed Pixel. At least superheroines are (with few exceptions)human. Maybe I am just going for what the media focuses on, but this does set up the stigma that creates a hierarchy in nerd-dom.
Although for the record, I’ve never liked the excessively exaggerated anatomically incorrect proportioning in some comics.
I dunno, TheNate, Supergirl’s an alien, Wonder Woman’s an Amazon (arguably divine instead of human), all of the mutants are non-human … look at Mystique, she was practically naked in three X-Men movies and people ate it up, and she was furry.
I get what you’re saying, the confluence of overt female sexuality and the specter of bestiality is unnerving to a lot of people. I just think most people are kidding themselves when they’re running around all hot for Catwoman, the Playboy Bunnies, Mystique, female aliens and robots. It’s become socially acceptable in most nerd circles to make fun of Furries, so people do it, but that doesn’t make it any less unfair or hypocritical.
Furries are weird. **shudder**
Hey, man…That hurts…
We’re not all weird.
But, admittedly, some are.
Anything that gets women in sexy clothes is OK by me.