This strip is named "Monty" (formerly it was Robotman, which was quite a bit funnier, really), and the characters pictured have appeared so infrequently that I don't even know either of the women's names. I think this is telling--I know that men are sometimes pressured by family to have kids (from my own experience, in part), but I'm guessing that my intuition that it's more likely to get such pressure if one is a woman isn't far off base. Thing is, this particular strip might actually be slightly funny if it were Monty's mom pressuring him, because he's the sad sack of the strip, the guy who doesn't generally get what he wants exactly how he wants it. As it stands, this strip depicts a sideline character in a run-of-the-mill 'joke' about how mothers of adult daughters just want their kid to have kids (bringing in some ageism to boot!). So, on one hand this strip might just give us a reflection of the way things 'are', but on the other hand it simply isn't very freakin' funny on any level. Whereas Monty as Ladybugman, which I can't find an image of, while still reeling with some gender problems, is at least smirk-worthy.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Gender Identity in Comics
At the risk of this quickly becoming a one-note blog, here's another piece of gender identify problems in comic strips:
This strip is named "Monty" (formerly it was Robotman, which was quite a bit funnier, really), and the characters pictured have appeared so infrequently that I don't even know either of the women's names. I think this is telling--I know that men are sometimes pressured by family to have kids (from my own experience, in part), but I'm guessing that my intuition that it's more likely to get such pressure if one is a woman isn't far off base. Thing is, this particular strip might actually be slightly funny if it were Monty's mom pressuring him, because he's the sad sack of the strip, the guy who doesn't generally get what he wants exactly how he wants it. As it stands, this strip depicts a sideline character in a run-of-the-mill 'joke' about how mothers of adult daughters just want their kid to have kids (bringing in some ageism to boot!). So, on one hand this strip might just give us a reflection of the way things 'are', but on the other hand it simply isn't very freakin' funny on any level. Whereas Monty as Ladybugman, which I can't find an image of, while still reeling with some gender problems, is at least smirk-worthy.
This strip is named "Monty" (formerly it was Robotman, which was quite a bit funnier, really), and the characters pictured have appeared so infrequently that I don't even know either of the women's names. I think this is telling--I know that men are sometimes pressured by family to have kids (from my own experience, in part), but I'm guessing that my intuition that it's more likely to get such pressure if one is a woman isn't far off base. Thing is, this particular strip might actually be slightly funny if it were Monty's mom pressuring him, because he's the sad sack of the strip, the guy who doesn't generally get what he wants exactly how he wants it. As it stands, this strip depicts a sideline character in a run-of-the-mill 'joke' about how mothers of adult daughters just want their kid to have kids (bringing in some ageism to boot!). So, on one hand this strip might just give us a reflection of the way things 'are', but on the other hand it simply isn't very freakin' funny on any level. Whereas Monty as Ladybugman, which I can't find an image of, while still reeling with some gender problems, is at least smirk-worthy.
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