Hot Pants and Spandex Suits: Gender Representation in American Superhero Comic Books

Dauw, Esther De

ISBN 10: 1978806043 / ISBN 13: 9781978806047

Published by Rutgers University Press, 2021

About this Item

Seller Inventory # mon0002557586

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Hot Pants and Spandex Suits: Gender Representation in American Superhero Comic Books
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1978806043
• ISBN 13: 9781978806047
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

The superheroes from DC and Marvel comics are some of the most iconic characters in popular culture today. But how do these figures idealize certain gender roles, body types, sexualities, and racial identities at the expense of others?
 
Hot Pants and Spandex Suits offers a far-reaching look at how masculinity and femininity have been represented in American superhero comics, from the Golden and Silver Ages to the Modern Age. Scholar Esther De Dauw contrasts the bulletproof and musclebound phallic bodies of classic male heroes like Superman, Captain America, and Iron Man with the figures of female counterparts like Wonder Woman and Supergirl, who are drawn as superhumanly flexible and plastic. It also examines the genre’s ambivalent treatment of LGBTQ representation, from the presentation of gay male heroes Wiccan and Hulkling as a model minority couple to the troubling association of Batwoman’s lesbianism with monstrosity. Finally, it explores the intersection between gender and race through case studies of heroes like Luke Cage, Storm, and Ms. Marvel.
 
Hot Pants and Spandex Suits is a fascinating and thought-provoking consideration of what superhero comics teach us about identity, embodiment, and sexuality.

About the Author

ESTHER DE DAUW is a Leicester, UK based comics scholar, who works on superheroes, gender and race. She has published in The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, contributed a chapter to the edited volume Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, and was the primary editor for the collection Toxic Masculinity: Mapping the Monstrous in our Heroes.