She Ra: Oh No! Expressed feminine attributes!

Jon really does hate anything feminine.

I've got to admit, this is another thing I never watched - but I don't need to have watched it to know Jon's main issues with it.

I could have given him some points if he'd said that She-Ra didn't have many lines, she wasn't good in battle or she just stood there and didn't do much. Those are genuine complaints that would have out-lined some kind of caring about leaving a female character as nothing more than a 2D cut out.

But we all know Jon better than to expect him to care about developing female characters.

His main complaint is 'She-Ra was a Barbie doll that rode around on a unicorn and had a side-kick with a heart on his chest.'

Sounds like a legitimate complaint... if Jon actually meant to criticise her non-diverse looks and actually cared about the body image and self esteem issues girls face.

What Jon actually means is that he really has something against a little bit of both. He resents good looking women and he resents the female aspect of She-Ra. He doesn't like the idea of a woman still being powerful if she openly admits to liking unicorns and enjoying the cuter things in life.

I myself have to say a few things about her appearance. She's a typical blonde, slim-figured, big boobed woman. That's typical of the show because look at He-Man. What guy actually looks like that? Sure I'd like to see something different. A black woman. A big woman. A woman with a different body shape. However, just because a woman is conventionally pretty doesn't mean she can't be strong.

Most of all, just because a woman is particularly feminine doesn't mean she can't kick arse. I've mentioned before how both men and women have been lead to think that all things girly are weak and futile. Bitch, I bleed out of my vagina once a month. Kick me in the uterus and I'll laugh at you, cause my body does worse than that to me on a pretty regular basis. If I want to ride into battle on a fucking unicorn then fuck you I hope my unicorn's horn skewers your pathetic ass. Let's all remember this female icon :-

This girl saved the world countless times and even sacrificed her life to do so. What was her power? Love and moon beams. So just because something is inherently feminine doesn't mean it should immediantly be replaced with something masculine just for the sake of making it tough. Maybe there are valid complaints with She-Ra, especially about making her body more realistic. However, the show was aired in 1983 having a few re-incarnations. There were bound to be stereotypes and poorly developed female characters.

However, Jon's complaint doesn't seem to be that she could have a more realistic figure but that she should have a more masculine figure - like Morgalla. This really isn't a step forward for feminism or women in general. Morgalla's figure is as equally extreme as She-Ra's and though Morgalla isn't Barbie, it's interesting to say that she actually takes on more of a He-Man figure. 

So, the idolised female figure She-Ra represents is bad and in Jon's words 'plastic'. Yet, the unrealistic, idolised male figure that He-Man represents is A-Okay and even totally viable for women?

Another example of Jon's hypocrisy. He doesn't understand that idolising one body type as the only body type a woman can have if she wants to be strong is equally as sexist as constantly portraying us as big-breasted and skimpy.