Welcome back to the MyXXFLY Universe! As you all can probably surmise, this week’s photo set draws inspiration from Frank Miller’s Sin City. Anyone familiar with the Sin City comics or films would instantly recognize its iconic neo-noir visual aesthetic, and resident photographer/digital artist Frank Ojeda brought the MyXXFLY visual story-book to life.
For this shoot I channeled my inner Old Town bad-ass whose weapon of choice is a baseball bat. The Beyonce hot sauce call-back? Purely serendipitous. Old Town is the area of Frank Miller’s Sin City that is home to the sexy and supremely lethal self-governing prostitutes. Female characters are a driving force for Sin City’s narrative as a whole, but because comic books are written by men for men, women are still the eye-candy of the fiasco and fall neatly into three categories: prostitute, stripper, or damsel in distress. The proportions? Slim and curvy of course. As society inches ever slowly toward gender equality, comic book representations of women have shifted, but the one thing that seems to endure is the classic comic book vixen proportions. In MyXXFLY’s Sin City, the women are wider in the waist, thicker in the thighs, and the damsel in distress becomes a vigilante anti-heroine. Here, we save ourselves.
Considering comic books at their inception generally had misogynistic undertones, I’m a fan of the depiction of Old Town and its inhabitants. While limited within the confines of the social structure of Basin City, the girls of Old Town are an anomaly in the comics because they have found a place in this male-dominated universe to make their own. Objectification is a reality they cannot escape, but by choosing if, when, and who they sleep with (for profit or otherwise), they have managed to use the tool of the oppressor as a way to regain control. They uphold their own laws, and look out for one another fiercely. Violate their rules? Prepare to meet your maker.
That being said there are many realities that are not depicted in comic books because it takes a uniquely female perspective to tell certain stories. Although strides have been made, popular media still has a long way to go. While things have definitely progressed since our sister suffragettes first picketed and marched, the struggle of being heard in 21st century America is a different battle altogether. Volatile race relations, gender inequality, and homophobia are as alive as ever, but there are ways to combat them. Make sure the voices of our people are heard by protesting, by demanding media outlets share our stories, and by holding our government officials accountable. These people have a duty to represent the communities who elect them, and when they do not act in our best interest, it is our right hold our votes hostage. One of the reasons I started MyXXFLY was to have my own sliver of the internet to share a point of view which I feel is entirely underrepresented. Not only as a woman, not only as a fat woman, but as an anti-consumerist fat hispanic woman.
The vixens of Old Town are women who have made the best of a bad situation, but the threats they face aren’t limited to the confines of comic books. We live in a society that teaches our boys they can own women. We live in a society where “no” is a mere suggestion when it comes from a woman. Violence, and sexual violence against women is as real as the paper pulp fiction is printed on. We are not all amazons with baseball bats. We are not samurai sword, machete wielding warriors in a town where we are free to inflict vigilante justice on the motherfucker who dared to fuck with us or our sisters. By telling our stories, by making art, and putting these out into the ether we move collectively (as a society) in the right direction.
Now, if you’ve been led to the blog by any of our social media links you may be expecting a flash fiction piece to accompany the Sin City visuals, and you would’ve been right. But, as we all know, life doesn’t always happen the way we expect, and often, our plans fall through to give way to even better outcomes than we could’ve imagined. It looks as if the fiction piece inspired by this set may have been destined for greatness, and so we’ll have to wait a little while to see how its publishing unfolds. (UPDATE: You can now read it HERE!) Follow MyXXFLY on your favorite social media outlet: tumblr, twitter, facebook, instagram for updates on the story, and week-long teasers as the week goes by. For our next shoot we rep Nicas in the 305. Stay out of trouble and keep it MyXXFLY.
