Newsarama has an article on reaction to the Mary Jane statue, which has now apparently crossed over from the blogosphere to the mainstream media. It's like our own four-color version of the U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal! The Newsarama story also includes an interview with Adam Hughes, who designed the statue.
Posted by Jason Fliegel at May 23, 2007 1:42 PM
There's certainly a mountainous mole hill aspect to all of this, however, there is one thing in Hughes' comments that sort of crystallizes the whole thing for me at least:
...if we take bending over to be a sign of sexual availability, every woman who bends over to pick up something should be chastised...
I grew up with two sisters, numerous female friends, dated heavily in college and after, and have been married for almost nine years now, and you know what? The pose in that statue ain't how women bend over to look in a laundry basket, if ya know what I mean (and I think you do). In my college Primatology class, that pose is what we would call "a present" (as in the verb). People can be offended by that or not, and you can be offended by their offense or not, but it is what it is. At least man up and say, "Yeah, it's a "fuck me" pose -- that's what titillating, masturbatory art is about and that's what this is."
I also enjoyed that Hughes referenced the Holocaust -- not quite Hitler, but pretty darn close!
Only on a comics book site would you feel the need to offer a long preface detailing your experience with women before concluding that the MJ maquette was presenting.