betterbemeta:

It’s pretty wild to me that gross fanboys are throwing temper tantrums over She-Ra’s new design not having big boobs or a sexy bustier. It has nothing to do with whether or not it was expected (it was) but with how this particular media is fundamentally misunderstood by them.

She-Ra was a toy tie-in,  kind of cross between an action figure and a fashion doll. So the same logic that applies to how fashion dolls were marketed at young girls, applied to She-Ra. That they were primarily aspirational, a fantasy adult life for dress-up and play-pretend. Think about what Barbie is supposed to be here. And note that the doll isn’t even that booby, but the bustier exists mostly to be the ‘under-costume’ or ‘bodysuit’ more fashion accessories could be added to.

But if there’s something I’ve observed about modern cartoons and toys in particular is that there is less ‘grown up’ play-pretend and more ‘kids’ play-pretend. More heroes for kids look more like kids than grown-ups now. Rather than discussing, ‘what kind of hero do you want to be when you grow up?’ more kids’ media and shows discuss ‘what kind of hero do you want to be now?’

But girls in particular traditionally were served a lot of play that’s aimed at training them to be adult women. Don’t get me wrong, boys do too, but for every Play Toolset boys get, girls used to have to navigate a dozen grown-up fashion dolls, play kitchens, play-pretend makeup stations, baby dolls to pretend to take care of, you name it. It’s only within the past few decades that explicitly gendered toys for girls that are about being girls, rather than future women, have gained traction. if anything, My Little Pony was tame in this respect and many grown women remember it fondly as one of the few girly toys out there that featured a play fantasy about their own same age. My own parents gave me a lot of legos, model animals and dinos, and other gender-neutral toys to play with because they primarily knew girls’ toys as tiresome at best, grooming tools at worst.

Maybe some artists had motivations in hand, but She-Ra looked the way she did to sell toys that were familiar to parents who bought girls’ toys. And at the time she originally came out, parents were familiar with fashion dolls that looked like adult women and maybe Wonder Woman comics. She-Ra was designed accordingly, and also for the expectations that childrens’ play was about wanting to be an adult, not seeing oneself as a kid.

(Though I’m OK with any kid who aspires to have THESE GUNS)

Today, we have all sorts of kids’ cartoons and media that embraces more neutral character designs that don’t resemble traditional muscle-bound action figures or wasp-waisted fashion dolls. We have shows like Star vs. The Forces of Evil, we’re a post Powerpuff Girls world. And the toy market itself is different from how it was in 1985, even if it’s slow to change.

Shitty backlash boys are right in that “She-Ra doesn’t look like a woman!” but just don’t understand why she looked so different from the little girls who were supposed to play with her doll. It wasn’t because girls needed to be taught what being a sexy lady looked like (or… not… to be boyish lesbians? or something? jesus) but that it was expected from all children that they dreamed of being powerful adults, with adult bodies. Today, I think we favor designs that kids can dress up as right now.