Karen Healey‘s at it again, this time teaming up with Terry D. Johnson, a scientist from the University of California to calculate the BMI of superheroes using stats from Marvel’s website, and compare them by gender. The full study is here.
Karen’s conclusions are here, and they are what you’d expect from just observing the artwork:
In most cases, the female BMI stats bear little resemblance to the women as depicted in the art. Unless she’s made of helium, a woman of Ms Marvel’s height with her (lavishly illustrated) breasts, hips and thighs does not weigh 124 pounds, and is not depicted with that weight. But the stats, like the art, point to that overpowering criterion for the representation of women in Marvel comics: Women have to be sexy.And by Western standards sexy includes being tall and slim. In this case, sexy has been translated into absurd numbers for height and weight. Clearly, very little thought has gone into this, but the lack of thought is indicative both of the common cultural perception of what “attractive” weight is for a woman and the utter lack of realism in that perception.
Marvel men, let us note, do not escape the patriarchal realism-skew. Men, you understand, have to be strong. Captain America, canonically at the peak of human physical perfection, has a BMI of 28.31, which in real life, even for an athlete, would make his physician frown suggestively. Want to lay bets on the chances of any Marvel woman whose mutations don’t alter her body mass having a BMI anywhere close to this? Psylocke’s BMI is the most realistic of our sample – at 21.66.
November 8th, 2006 at 6:55 am
Yeah, it seems that Marvel men = heavy/strong whereas Marvel women = light/slim. Which both equate to western standards of sexy. That’s superheroes for you!
Still, Marvel really should add on a few pounds to the women’s stats. (Then again my wife, who used to be a gymnast, has a BMI of around 19)
Although comparing Marvel characters with US citizens is perhaps a little unfair. You Americans are renouned for your rotundness!
November 8th, 2006 at 7:06 am
Well, most of the Marvel characters are Americans!
November 8th, 2006 at 8:03 am
Yeah, but as the comparison itself admits (after doing it anyway) it’s a bit stupid to compare superheroes to the general population. Absent comparison data from athletes the comparison to the real world is meaningless. Or as the “study” has it “not conclusive” which is a fancy way of saying the same thing.
(FWIW, it strikes me as quite possible that the smaller variance found in Marvel women could be found in real world female atheletes as well e.g. through a floor effect.)
Further, the “study” brings up but then fails to correct for type of power. Martial artists should be different from merely fit power users. Checking up on whether this is true (at a glance it doesn’t seem to be) would also provide a clue to the central question the “study” simply takes for granted in accordance with the researchers’s biases: is the result due to simple lack of diligence in making up the body measurements or (conscious) expression of the requirement that “in the Marvel Universe, women must fulfil criteria for being attractive by Western standards before fulfilling the criteria of biological realism.”
The quote above backpedals a bit on that (and the implied charge of sexism), but then “lack of thought is indicative” again, so nevermind the lack of a demonstrable causal connection.
And for an encore, the Cpt. America example again isn’t even considered as indicative of poorly made up measurements.
November 9th, 2006 at 6:28 am
“Psylocke’s BMI is the most realistic of our sample”
And her body was engineerd by the Japanese
Is there a hidden mesaage?
November 9th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Markus,
I’m not saying my tongue wasn’t a tiny bit in my cheek the entire time I was crunching the numbers for the heights and weights of imaginary people, but doesn’t it seem even a little weird to you that the range of a random sample of women was so very limited and tended so low?
I don;t think it’s a VAST MISOGYNISTIC CONSPIRACY OMG. I think it’s carelessness indicative of blind sexism – the kind of sexism people don’t even realise they’re enacting until it’s pointed out.
Also, in the study itself, no individual’s numbers were mentioned. We were looking at mean and normal distribution. In the column where I *discussed* the study (which is where the quote is from) Captain America is indeed cited as indicative of lack of thought. What did you think comparing Captain America’s canonical physical perfection with the weirdness of his actual numbers meant? And how does that refute the point of women skewing unrealistically towawrds “sexy”, while men skew unrealistically towards “strong”?