2023 was an incredible year for women in film. Between Beyonce and Taylor’s concert movies, Barbie and 1 single woman getting nominated for best director at the Oscars there was a lot to celebrate. But just like with anything the universe seeks balance and in 2023 we nerds also experienced something on page and screen that we should have evolved out of decades ago. In the year of Barbie we had not 1, but 2 incidents of fridging in the comic book universe. Both came from Marvel and both are inexcusable. I would love to celebrate how far representation in this field has come, really I would. But I can not do that if we are still making the same mistakes. I am not going to celebrate that there is now less sexual assault in comics. I am not going to celebrate that fridging is less common. I am not going to celebrate that women are infantilized less often in comics. I will not celebrate less. Not in 2024 when every grown person on the planet should know better. I will not be celebrating less. I will celebrate when women are ALWAYS treated like human beings, fictional or not.
https://vocal.media/geeks/2023-the-year-of-women-and-fridging
So two instances of fridging in 2023, officially setting women back several decades. Fridging is wildly unacceptable in any form of media and the fact that certain men still can’t find better ways to motivate their stories is frankly pathetic. If you can’t figure out how to set their characters off on their journey without needlessly murdering the women around them then you are a bad writer. We are hoping for better in 2024 and for the rest of time but honestly we need to keep drawing attention to the mistakes so that we may prevent them from happening again. We can not celebrate progress that doesn’t exist. Marvel needs to get it together, for it is not only the fault of the writers coming up with these shitty stories but it’s also the fault of the editors and producers that allow them to happen. The men responsible for Kamala Khan are Zeb Wells and George Beliard. The men responsible for Maria Hill are Kyle Bradstreet (fucking Kyle), and Brian Tucker. Yes there were other people on the writing staff but for most of them Secret Invasion was their first gig and therefore they most definitely didn’t make any major writing or creative decisions.
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