Male Gaze / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

Comic Books

Comic Books

• The Avengers: Smasher, a minor heroine from The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) got massive display of this in one panel◊ where her buttocks are ludicrously enlarged.
• Black Widow: Black Widow gets this all the time, her solo comics in particular tend to have increasingly racey◊ covers. Only relatively recent comics have toned this down with Natasha.
• Captain Marvel: If Carol Danvers is in a book wearing her "Ms. Marvel" leotard, chances are the artist will find some way to get a rear shot◊, regardless of what she may be doing at the time. Artists have been known to draw her with a rather sizable backside. Later comics have mostly toned this down with Carol when she's Captain Marvel... well◊ most of the time◊.
• Elektra: Elektra's body is prominently featured during fight scenes. When she dodges, artists usually draw her from behind to emphasize her ass. Flying kicks are drawn from the front, effectively becoming full-page crotch shots.
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Gamora especially in her earlier comics, had heaps of this thanks to being a Green-Skinned Space Babe. Annihilation in particular had many gratuitous panels of Gamora’s sizeable green buttocks and breasts as she embraces her lover Nova. Later comics would give her Adaptational Modesty, to fall in line with the film version.
• The Incredible Hulk:
  • In The Incredible Hulk (2011), the character Amanda Von Doom (no relation to Victor) gets a good amount of this. The same series also has Betty Ross walking around in skimpy bikini and only improving the situation by turning into Red She-Hulk.
  • Played with in Immortal Hulk. Betty does still gets this in the traditional manner, but she also gets the Male Gaze in her Humanoid Abomination Red Harpy form◊ making for a bizarrely sensual yet somewhat disturbing effect.
• The Loners: The team debate whether the villainess's getup is a costume or a tattoo.
• She-Hulk: She-Hulk has gotten this a lot of through the years especially during her fourth wall breaking days in the 80s. However it can be inappropriate at times e.g Civil War (2006) where an entire panel is focused on She Hulk’s fine buttocks◊. This normally wouldn’t be a big issue, but the scene in question is a serious discussion about superhero ethics, not a peep show, therefore the fanservice is unnecessary as well as artistically off-tone.
• Spider-Man:
  • Mary Jane Watson while not in the 60s (the comics code would not allow it) was definitely subject to this in the decades that followed most◊ notably under Todd Mc Farlane's pen. It's also lampshaded multiple of times in-universe like one time MJ explained◊ to Peter "Every woman knows there are ways to be make sure nobody pays attention to your face" and in another comic Peter went to talk to MJ while she was in the middle of a Bedroom Farce and got distracted by his wife's lingerie.
  • Black Cat and to a lesser extent Gwen Stacy get the Male Gaze as well. Spider-Gwen occasionally◊ get this as well.
• Spider-Woman: Marvel took a lot of criticism for a 2014 cover image of Spider-Woman drawn by Italian erotica artist Milo Manara which showed her with somewhat oversized buttocks in an odd squatting position. Marvel later apologized for it.
• Ultimate Wolverine:
  • When she first shows up, we can see Magda's back up close.
  • When the final issues of Ultimate Wolverine VS. Hulk FINALLY came out, there's a scene with Betty Ross injecting herself with a drug in her buttocks, which are front-and-center in the panel. The whole comic is rife with this, see the Hulk's harem.
• X-Men:
  • Psylocke gets this a LOT. It is a rare issue that she does not show her butt to the reader. She's regarded as the Trope Codifier for Boobs-and-Butt Pose.
  • Rogue thanks to her Sensual Spandex gets◊ this◊ as much as Psylocke, especially when Jim Lee drew her. In one Jim Lee drawn issue while Rogue was fighting Mojo and a good percentage of the panel is her shapely rear.
  • Storm has a long of history of being the subject of Male Gaze even in her earliest comics. She’d even go around naked and only covered by Godiva Hair, thanks to her culture being less fussy about clothes, also Chris Claremont had a massive crush on her. Lampshaded In-Universe as Gambit's students in one issue kept trying to peek on Storm whilst she sunbathed topless.
  • Jean Grey also got her fair share amount of the Male Gaze from the 80s◊ to the 90s◊ and beyond◊. Whether it be her green Marvel Girl dress, her Phoenix outfits or her yellow Sensual Spandex Jean's curvaceous body rarely doesn't get special focus.
  • Emma Frost, she has "the best body money can buy" and proudly◊ shows it off. Many panel are dedicated to her breasts and buttocks.
  • X-23, while she obviously didn't get this in her debut in X-Men: Evolution (being a young girl), would be subjected to the Male Gaze upon becoming a Canon Immigrant to the comics and getting a Age Lift, gets this◊ frequently◊, being a former prostitute. Although she does get it far less than the aforementioned female X-Men.
  • Courier from Gambit frequently◊ recieved◊ this◊. Interestingly, Courier was a male shapeshifter who was Mode Locked in this form by Mr. Sinister.

Films

Films

• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man 2:
    • We get a lovely shot of Black Widow's rear when we see her in the catsuit for the first time. We also get another gratuitous shot of it again when she fighting the bad guys and pulls out the small mines from her belt. The fight scene is also notorious for the repeated occasions when she does a Three-Point Landing pose and the shot blatantly centres on her bosom. It doesn't help that Natasha is played by Scarlett Johansson.
    • Not to mention the Dirty Dancing-esque scene prior to this where Happy is driving her to Hammer's office and she begins changing in the backseat. The viewers are treated her taking off her shirt exposing her bra...nearly causing Happy to crash the car because he was Distracted by the Sexy. She quickly comments that he should keep his eyes on the road and the poor bastard makes an epically heroic attempt to do so, even after the audience is treated to one lone leg rise up.
    • There's also the scene prior to that one of Natasha and Pepper Potts walking into the Stark Expo up the stairs,◊ wearing tight little black moderately short dresses. The camera stays on them from the back for a fairly long time, given that nothing else was happening on the screen, and it didn't advance the plot in any way.
    • To be fair, Pepper completely lampshades this trope in the most Deadpan Snarker way.
      Tony: Who (Natasha) is she?
      Pepper: She is from legal, and she is potentially a very expensive sexual harassment lawsuit if you keep ogling her like that.
  • The Avengers does this a great deal with Black Widow when she's walking away from the camera in a lot of shots. There's a scene of Scarlett Johannson tied to a chair, wearing a Little Black Dress, stockings, and no shoes, beating up several goons with a jaw-dropping sequence of contortions and acrobatics. Also, her character is purposely trying to invoke this very trope on her "captors" in order to distract and mislead them. She then spends the rest of the film in a skin-tight catsuit, best exemplified during her scene interrogating Loki, but is slightly overshadowed by all the Female Gaze flying around her costars.
  • All of this stuff gave Natasha a reputation among certain critics as a pure Ms. Fanservice that took at least two more films that did away with these shots (or at least toned them way down, given certain shots in Captain America: The Winter Soldier here and Avengers: Age of Ultron here) to live down.
  • Black Widow (2021): The film has a lot of shots of the female characters' butts (most prominently the female leads: Natasha, Yelena, and Melina), especially Scarlett Johansson as the titular character. A notable example is when she's walking from short-circuited generator towards her car, and the camera seems glued her ass as it's in motion the entire time, even as she leans over to put a tool-box in the back seat. It doesn't help that they're always wearing tight clothes, whether they're form-fitting jeans that hug their curves or the standard spy suits. The director herself has stated that this is intentional.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: The way the camera moves when we first see Mystique in her cleavage-exposing dress evokes this.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• In the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "Face My Enemy", May's first appearance is a slow pan up her legs, getting out of a car in a short party dress.
• Daredevil (2015): In some of Matt Murdock and Karen Page's more intimate moments.
  • In the very first episode, we see Karen strip her T-shirt off in front of Matt when changing into one of his dress shirts, and it's obvious from Matt's reaction that he notices she's naked.
  • In the fourth episode of season 2, they have their first kiss in the rain. Leading into the kiss, we get some very gratuitous close-ups as Matt brushes raindrops off Karen's arm and face, using the visual shorthand of conveying to the audience what exactly Matt is feeling.
• Iron Fist (2017): Madame Gao's sales reps deliberately show off their cleavage, legs, or bend over, while advertising Gao's heroin to a seemingly lesbian doctor, a businessman, and a Russian drug dealer respectively.
• WandaVision goes out of its way to put its gorgeous lead Wanda played by Elizabeth Olsen, in multiple◊ eye-catching outfits that scream this trope. Of course given campy sitcom setting, this is entirely intentional.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• Many examples in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. From Maria Hill to Black Widow, there is no shortage of shots of the female characters walking from behind and usually with a belt positioned to highlight the motion of their hips. However, it's The Wasp who gets the most blatant example◊ of this in her Fanservice bikini scene.
• Both main girls in Iron Man: Armored Adventures get a few of these throughout the series, especially the beautiful Action Girl Whitney Stane, whose skirt provides plenty of 'interesting' angles for the camera to play around with.
• Happens in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends the first time Iceman and Firestar are introduced to Storm. The view cuts to Iceman's POV who is looking her over from her legs upwards, whilst proclaiming "Wow". When he gets to Storm's face, she looks a little annoyed, prompting Iceman to stutter; "Uh, I mean, hi!".
• In Wolverine and the X-Men (2009), there are a few shots where the camera angle is so that about 1/2 of the shot is a female character's buttocks, the other half is the background and the other characters in the scene.
• An episode of X-Men: The Animated Series, in which Rogue is blasted by Apocalypse so hard her normally-indestructible bomber jacket is burned away (though her even-more-indestructible tights, hair, and flesh are not), she collapses to the ground, the camera positioned behind her...and you are suddenly ''spandex◊.

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