May's Weight

It's something I've touched upon a couple of times before, and it's something I have a great deal of personal interest in; depictions of women in the media, particularly younger females. It's often given a lot more coverage than other topics, it's places a great deal of undue pressures on young girls during a frankly difficult and tumultuous time in life and the media nearly always misrepresents it or flat out gets it wrong.

The reason I've decided today to cover this again is a recent re-read of the classic Spider-Girl #27, specifically the letter page in the back of the issue. A reader wrote in to comment on Marvel's website biography for Spider-Girl. At the time (based on the cover date: December 2000) May's bio listed her height as 5'5'' and weighing 112 pounds. The reader goes on to state that she herself is 5'4 and 120 pounds, and asserts that she is in no way overweight, asks that Marvel take more care in this regard as she would not like her daughter to gain a unrealistic view of a healthy weight. I applaud this considerate reader.

Let's look at some printed sources to see what Marvel's done in this regard since, shall we? Cool.

Remember that silly Battlebook I was telling you about last time? It's a source. In fact, as far as I can tell it's the earliest printed source I can find for May's statistics: Height: Approx. 5'5'' Weight: Approx. 110 lbs. Now, this was November 1998.

Skip forward too the most recent iterations of Official Handbooks to the Marvel Universe, we have the following stats:

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z Vol. 11 (first published in 2009) gives us an updated height and weight. Considering Mayday at this point is now around a year older- she was 15 when she first donned the webs, and turned 16 in Spider-Girl #67-makes some sense. Now, Spider-Girl is 5'7'' and weighs 119 lbs. This was still problematic to me.

 The height made sense to me, both from how May's height had been depicted through the art and with my previous note about the character's 'ageing up' in the interim. However, the weight seemed too low to me. So, a while back, I contacted the authors of the Handbooks and asked them what thought processes go into generating these particular statistics. Mr Stuart Vandal was kind enough to give his thoughts, which I have re-posted here:

In the case of characters who appeared in older Handbooks, there seemed to be a definite tendency for women to be underweight - though that might well have to do with what was considered to be a healthy weight back in the 1980s perhaps being lower than what we consider to be a healthy weight today.
For characters who got entries for the first time in more recent volumes, we try to be as accurate as we can. If a character's personal stats are given in an actual story, we use those, no matter how unusual they might appear to be (we reason that there might be an in-story reason for someone to weigh virtually nothing or to be massively heavier than they appear, though we do check with writers in the more unlikely cases, to avoid perpetuating errors).
On heights, we have to accept that artists can be very inconsistent, but, allowing for that, we look for (a) approximate matches to others whose heights are already established, and (b) good shots of the character standing up straight next to someone of established height who is also standing straight, and all on level ground. Once a reasonable height is established, I personally check height-weight charts to find what is considered an appropriate weight for that height - you should find most newer female characters have what might be considered more reasonable weights for their height and build.
For oversized or unusual characters, we do take figuring out reasonable weights seriously. You would not believe the discussions we've had on the matter, and most of the time we can rely on our resident engineering wizard, Mike Fichera, to provide useful experiments and calculations. He's worked out the weights of dismembered individuals' separate body parts, a skeleton and bee combination (Swarm), living planets, and many more. Mike also set up got a converter program to allow us to figure out giants or shrunken individuals - just plug in the weight for someone of a given regular height, then adjust the height up or down and watch the weight change accordingly, in proportion to the new height. For animals, we can rely on head writer Jeff Christiansen, whose mild-mannered alter ego is a vet. 

So....thoughts, anyone? I'm definitely not done with this topic.

Until I wrestle an elephant in a wok and stop caring about this sort of thing, I remain

frogoat

Body Image?

As she first appeared.

I had the opportunity recently to re-read a lot of the original Spider-Girl series. Now, that in it's self was rather gratifying, validating me that this was, in fact, a great series. But while I was doing some reading, a friend of mine was taking some interest and asking questions and making comments. Now, some context. I rarely read comics around others and I enjoy the odd occasion when I get to address genuine questions, rather than mockery. So, anyway, my friend pointed out that May, as Spider-Girl, is really rather skinny. This got me thinking, really thinking. So, is there a rationale behind this that can be justified? And also; is this depiction of a young woman's body in comics a good one for young readers, especially girls?
 

 Okay, I should narrow this one down. The issue referred to by my friend, specifically issue #65, is penciled by Ron Frenz. Now, I love Mr Frenz. His art is adaptable, clear, old-school and fun. Looking over the series as a whole, starting with the original What If ?! #105, I decided Mr Frenz clearly isn't trying to depict May as anything other than a typical teenage girl. May is depicted as slim but athletic, by both Ron and Pat Olliffe (who penciled Spider-Girl from #1 through to the mid-fifties, give or take a fill-in now and then by Ron). Pat's depiction of May notably changed from his early issues, with May physically appearing taller and leaner as time went on.

                                                                                                                             

Pat Olliffe's take on May throughout his run.

Fill-in issues by Ron show an attempt to mimic Pat's style, where ever possible, not wanting to break the tone of the book. As I said, Ron is a professional and very talented. In the middle the Season of the Serpent six-parter we have a sort of handing-over of the penciling duties to Ron. Frenz' slowly let his style come through, eventually arriving at the slightly cartoon-y take on May's world we see in the aforementioned issue #65. I'll be honest, at first, I found this take jarring, but it soon grew on me.

Cartoon-y but Cool: Ron Frenz takes the reins.

 This, then is the explanation for May's skinny look. Changing over time again, Ron's ever-evolving pencils would give us a more muscular Mayday, with a slight change in the cut of the costumes lines, and a change to the look of the masks eyes, giving us a more grown-up or mature look. I really appreciated this new take as it seemed reasonable that May would have the body of a gymnast, in much the same way I prefer Spider-Man depicted. It makes sense a bouncing ball of spider-powered energy would have an athletic body, rather than one of a body-builder.

A more mature Mayday by Ron Frenz.

So, Mayday has been depicted in an ever changing way, not always photo-realistic, not always consistent, but always growing. The big question then; is this a good thing? Does a cartoon-y but still skinny May offer any young readers a positive message, or does she reinforce the negative body-image ideal of thin young women? Honestly, I look on this series with rose-tinted glasses sometimes, but this topic did deserve serious examination. I can't reasonably ignore this possible criticism to my favorite series and character.

 May is a positive role-model for young readers, she's a strong female character who doesn't use sex appeal as a selling-point. May plays basketball, she thinks for herself and often tries to avoid violence, preferring to find another way whenever possible. She makes mistakes, fights with her parents and let's her friends down, but always tries to make amends. While the rest of the world seems hung up on body image, here is someone who wants to be defined by her actions, not her cheek bones or waist line. I'm not saying May isn't sensitive to that type of thing, just that she knows better than to take it seriously or let it change her.

Thoughts?

 So, in the end, I think society in general puts far to much emphasis (either positive or negative) on how a person (especially a young woman) looks when there is a much richer, unique person underneath it all.

Until Spider-Girl wears bikini armor, I remain

frogoat