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CLAMP and adult women
Jan. 15th, 2011 01:43 pmThis post dedicated to the idiot fanbrats who really seem to think I'm making this all up.
The point: While CLAMP writes plenty of girls with power, agency, and romance, adult women characters who possess or approach those things, most especially ones with adult sexuality, are frequently killed off. In the rare cases they live past the ending, or for that matter the beginning, their agency and sexuality are foreclosed in some other way.
( Listing of all manga, the women, their fates, and the resulting statistics )
Nutshell: The only mature woman shown on-page to have a current, sexual romance who does not subsequently die is in the series with a heroine that is explicitly and permanently incapable of sex. Think about that. It is slightly more common for a mature woman to have agency or power of some kind, but only slightly, and it is directly accompanied more often than not by angst or tragedy in their relationships. It is about that common for a mature woman to have, in the past, had a romantic and sexual relationship and to be bereft in-canon. It's over three times as likely that they have neither agency nor adult romance, however broken, ended, or angst-stricken.
Thumbnail: CLAMP: Girl Power! (Adult women need not apply.)
The point: While CLAMP writes plenty of girls with power, agency, and romance, adult women characters who possess or approach those things, most especially ones with adult sexuality, are frequently killed off. In the rare cases they live past the ending, or for that matter the beginning, their agency and sexuality are foreclosed in some other way.
( Listing of all manga, the women, their fates, and the resulting statistics )
Nutshell: The only mature woman shown on-page to have a current, sexual romance who does not subsequently die is in the series with a heroine that is explicitly and permanently incapable of sex. Think about that. It is slightly more common for a mature woman to have agency or power of some kind, but only slightly, and it is directly accompanied more often than not by angst or tragedy in their relationships. It is about that common for a mature woman to have, in the past, had a romantic and sexual relationship and to be bereft in-canon. It's over three times as likely that they have neither agency nor adult romance, however broken, ended, or angst-stricken.
Thumbnail: CLAMP: Girl Power! (Adult women need not apply.)
