Movie:  Incredibles 2

Are bodies clothed, filmed and/or drawn with equal respect?

Let’s focus on how the adult female lead is drawn in these screenshots. What words come to mind?

Next, in these screenshots, what parts of ElastiGirl receive “center stage”?

The words that come to my mind have nothing to do with being powerful, strong, or elastic.

Instead, I think of words that would fit in with the “tits and ass” lyrics in A Chorus Line.

This is a kids’ movie, right?

What messages are these images sending our kids?

The illustrators could have drawn ElastiGirl in countless ways to reflect her powers:  round and bouncy, tall and thin like a rubber band, short and stocky, tall and muscular, and so on.

Instead, they drew a superhero who looks like a 1950’s pin-up for their own personal erotica, not a family movie for the public.

When drawing superheroes, we might exaggerate features based on superpowers, such as extra-long arms for elastic power.  When body parts with a sexual connotation are exaggerated, however, we create sexualization.

Sexualization presents a person from a sexual point of view.

Drawing ElastiGirl with prominent breasts and a prominent rear end is choosing to draw her in a sexualized way. Plus her slight arms with practically zero muscle definition, extremely tiny waist, and barely-there neck undermine her power rather than illustrate it. ElastiGirl is drawn wearing high-heels, which do not make anyone run faster or jump higher, and her black boots end just below her rear. With such long black boots, the illustrators are guiding our eyes up her legs to her rear end. I lost count of all the times her rear end is featured on the screen. The lingering impression is that ElastiGirl was drawn as a visual aesthetic to give a certain adult heterosexual males titillation (i.e. eye candy) as they watch the story unfold along with everyone else. Another message conveyed is that a female character must look this way to be featured in a widely distributed, big-budget film (i.e. a movie created and distributed by a mostly male team).

These are serious problems, particularly in a children’s film. 

“If the women are always sexualized…[in film],” said Nicole Martins, an associate professor in the Media School at Indiana University Bloomington, “then I don’t think we should be surprised that we have men who treat women that way,”

“Boys see how their bodies are portrayed in relation to girls” and internalize a connection “to dominance, power, and aggression,” write Jaimee Swift and Hannah Gould of UNICEF

Women and girls are not on this planet (or in a children’s film) to titillate certain men and boys. They are here to live their lives expressing their individual combinations of skills, interests, and goals.

Even in the first Incredibles movie, when we first meet ElastiGirl, Mr. Incredible looks after ElastiGirl as she exits with sexual longing, not peer admiration.

The movie industry has created so few female superhero movies that we may be tempted to show only gratitude for ElastiGirl existing at all and turning a blind eye to how she’s drawn.

But does it serve our daughters to see female superheroes drawn this way? Does it help our sons respect girls as their intellectual peers?

Now let’s look at how the male superheroes are drawn in this movie.

The four male superheroes featured are drawn very differently from the females.

Mr. Incredible is drawn with exaggeration but not sexualization. His prominent arm and chest muscles relate to the superpower of strength. Other muscles that are also important for strength, the gluteus muscles, are almost entirely missing on his frame. Men do have rear ends, but Mr. Incredible’s is barely there. His oversized chest and arm muscles fuel what is sometimes called the “male power fantasy”:  (1) more muscles equal more power, (2) more power is good, and (3) boys and men need to use their power to dominate others (i.e. less powerful boys and men and all women and girls). After seeing these depictions, males are more likely to feel powerful in relation to “other,” women and girls, and believe more firmly (though perhaps entirely subconsciously) in the need to have power over others to feel secure.

FroZone is drawn to look strong and is the most in proportion of the characters. It’s important to note that the illustrators drew both adult male characters, Mr. Incredible and FroZone, with little to no evidence of genitalia. There is zero sexualization of the adult males. Combine this with how the female characters are drawn in this movie. What messages are the illustrators sending our kids? That males’ bodies are tools for action and to be respected? That female bodies are not for powerful acts but for others’ arousal and pleasure?

With the male children, Dash and Jack Jack, there is also zero sexualization and minimal exaggeration. Based on Dash’s superpower of speed, he could have been drawn with extra-large or extra-long legs but he wasn’t. In fact, except for his larger head, he is drawn in mostly regular proportion. Except for Jack Jack’s head, the baby is also in generally regular proportion.

Let’s move to Violet, the other female lead. How is she drawn?

What do you notice about Violet’s legs? Her arms? Her waist?

When I look at Violet, I do not think powerful or strong. I think brittle, fragile, and breakable. 

I notice how extremely tiny her waist is, as well as most of her frame. The illustrators could have drawn her with muscle definition, outlined by electric waves, and giant hands for sending out force fields. But they didn’t. She has also been sexualized with her high heels, long black boots that end just below her rear, and an exaggerated waist. Her hair is straight, black, shiny, and swings gently from side to side: no connection to her super powers of force-fields and invisibility. Instead she could have lightning-bolt-shaped hair, hair standing on end, or purple hair (the color of her force fields).

Movie makers can do better.