is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe, Design Chair at Wildcard and co-founder of Kidpost. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired by Etsy, Inc.), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children. Refer to the advertising and sponsorship page for inquiries.
+Gender Representation in Comic Book Characters
In this report, data visualization designer and journalist Amanda Shendruk examines the naming conventions, types of superpowers, and representation on teams of 34,476 female comic book characters to better understand the differences in how men and women are portrayed. The results are not necessarily surprising—comics have long had a reputation for being skewed toward the fantasies of adolescent males—but the particulars that she discovered reveal how egregious the imbalance actually is. For example:
- The number one male super-hero power is strength, while the number one female super-hero power is agility
- Far more male super-heroes than female super-heroes carry paraphernalia, e.g., gadgets, strength-augmenting suits, scepters etc.
- More female super-heroes than male super-heroes are blessed with “mental” super-powers
- Among characters who can shapeshift, female super-heroes generally change their form entirely, while men can manipulate the size of their, er, bodies
- Among female super-heroes’ names, the top three terms used are “Lady,” “Mrs.” and “Girl.” Among male super-heroes, the top three are “Man,” “Mr.” and “King.”
Read the full, fascinating report at pudding.cool.
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