The Hawkeye Intiative

One of the most socially important memes out there is perhaps the genderflip, and one of the FUNNIEST collections of this strategy is contained in the site, The Hawkeye Initiative. The blog's premise is that in order to identify sexism in the comic book/ graphic novel industry, all one has to do is to flip the gender of the image portrayed. So, if a female superhero's "Strong Female Pose" looks a little suspicious, you can bet that if you put male superhero, Hawkeye, in her place its inherent sexism will be exposed...

      

                         Here, Avengelyne gets the Hawkeye treatment from artist Deimos-Remus on Deviantart.com. 
                                                                        "Owww... got to get to the chiropractor..."

What's really cool about this site is that it allows comic book lovers of all stripes to create their own artwork in response to the ridiculousness of what the industry is publishing, and upload that content (along with the original example) and add it to the site. In this way, it is a curated collection of images that exposes and isolates the sexism embedded and naturalized in the images, and educates the community of comic book viewers to what is really happening within the genre.When the viewer can bring her new awareness to her reading of these stories she can then commit to buying the comic books that already offer better representations of its female characters, and use her purchasing power to demand the industry to produce less-demeaning alternatives. It also offers the aspiring artist a lot of insight into how to authentically empower her own female characters.


              

"Enter now... oof... I think my hip just went out...." (Gambit & The Externals/ Tony Daniels)

And more silly stuff. We humans are a funny lot. 

"Wait! Don't shoot muh package..."  (Jose Malaga/ Jeffrey Dean)