I'll admit it: A cartoon pig riding a motorized horse in front of a supermarket is funny. There's no way around that, even though the horse looks like he needs a rest (strips with anthropomorphized animals have trouble when they run into anthropomorphized animals that aren't sentient-ish).
And yet, I love how this one little strip reinforces so many gender stereotypes in four little panels. Panel One: Sad, but not gendered, particularly. Panel two: Women only want 'manly men'. Panel Three: And they want proof, so act out. Panel Four: It's funny because Pig's idea of manly is so un-manly!
One redeeming feature: Pig being Pig, flying in the face of the patriarchal forces trying to make him into something he doesn't want to be...
2 comments:
I think this strip also shows the way that many women reinforce gender roles in men.
Panel two: Women only want 'manly men'.
This is not just a stereotype: there is a lot of truth in it.
It's not true that all women are attracted to ultra-manly Schwarzennegger/Rambo types, and it's a massive oversimplification to say that women want "jerks," but women do tend to be attracted to men with more masculine traits than they have themselves.
Consequently, men have an incentive to display those traits if they want any kind of sex/relationships with women.
I thought it was pretty funny.
I took it as a commentary on the empty self-destructiveness of many forms of masculinity.
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