Gender indicators in cartoons

[Holmbo]

I was looking at pictures of a comic I read as a child and it occurred to me how strange the visual ques to indicate gender are in much of children's media.

If the characters are animals like in this case it seems the go to method is to add eye lashes to the female characters. Even when its a child. When you think about it it's kinda weird. Human girl children doesn't have longer eyelashes than boys. I think it would be better to skip the lashes and just have the animal children have similar looking faces. What do you think?

 

[Nix]

Oh yeah I hate that too. Why is it so important that you can see which ones a boy and which ones a girl? I can’t always tell in real life and I don’t need to because someone else’s gender is none of my business.

It reminds me of this post:

At least Slack Wyrm did it well, both the male and female dragon are just that, dragons :)

Site: https://joshuawright.net/index.html

[Storm_leopardcat]

20 hours ago, Nix said:

Oh yeah I hate that too. Why is it so important that you can see which ones a boy and which ones a girl? I can’t always tell in real life and I don’t need to because someone else’s gender is none of my business.

It reminds me of this post:

At least Slack Wyrm did it well, both the male and female dragon are just that, dragons :)

Site: https://joshuawright.net/index.html

Hold up, I cannot tell which one is male and which one is female. I'm not kidding, I actually can't tell.

20 hours ago, Nix said:

It reminds me of this post:

Yes, that is quite annnoying!

[Nix]

1 hour ago, Storm_leopardcat said:

Hold up, I cannot tell which one is male and which one is female. I'm not kidding, I actually can't tell.

Yep, that was his (the illustrator’s) intention. The left dragon is called Hildegard Gretchwyrm or ‘The Great Gretch’ and the right dragon is called Ferragus Slackwyrm ‘Slackwyrm’, so that might help :)

[nonmerci]

Oh yes. And it weird cause, don't boys have eye lashes too ?

[SkyTuneRein]

Many of us can have long hair as well. We don't even all have particularly hairy arms.

We have nipples too, usually.

Spoiler

I've come across posts and chat before implying that the opposite it true. 

 

[Storm_leopardcat]

https://www.boredpanda.com/male-and-female-animals-in-animated-movies/?page_numb=1&utm_campaign=jamal&utm_m=

Remembered this!

[Atypique]

Really my brothers' eyelashes are longer than mine. Studios are stupid 

[Holmbo]

On 12/26/2022 at 6:13 PM, Storm_leopardcat said:

https://www.boredpanda.com/male-and-female-animals-in-animated-movies/?page_numb=1&utm_campaign=jamal&utm_m=

Remembered this!

Great share thanks. In those instanses it's grown "animals" but it's still weird that they have these human female indicators while the males usually doesn't have any human body parts. I think part of it is the default male problem. Where a character is assumed to be male unless otherwise specified. And for some reason it's not ok to have any ambiguity.

Edited December 28, 2022 by Holmbo