The release of Black Widow has given Marvel Studios a chance to look back on its past depiction of women, Scarlett Johnansson's Black Widow, in particular, and question where it made some mistakes in earlier films and how to address them going forward, but what's fascinating is that Marvel Studios executive producer Victoria Alonso says that the studio gets more complaints over how it objectifies men over how it objectifies women.
That fact came up in a recent Time article where Alonso reflected on how she was not pleased with how Black Widow was introduced by Marvel back in 2010's Iron Man 2, where Natasha Romanoff (undercover as a secretary in Stark's company) is offered some boxing tips and instead shows off her prowess by taking down Happy Hogan easily. Tony then turns to his chief aide, Pepper Potts and asks who this underling is and when he is told, "Potentially a very expensive sexual harassment lawsuit," Stark searches for photos of Natasha in her underwear and jokes, "I want one.” Victoria Alonso, executive vice president of production at Marvel Studios, was irked at the line at the time, "It bothered me then and it bothers me now. I remember thinking, ‘She’s not a thing.’ But how apropos: the world sees a sexy woman and thinks that because she is beautiful, that’s all she has to give.”
Therefore, in a piece about how much work Marvel is doing to avoid objectifying Black Widow in her new film, it is fascinating that Alonso adds that the studio receives more complaints about objectifying men than women. She specifically cites "those shirtless scenes" as what people complain about.
Presumably, Alonso is referring to Chris Hemsworth's shirtless scene in Thor Ragnarok...
Or perhaps the shirtless fight between T'Challa and Killmonger in Black Panther...
Or perhaps the jokes about Captain America's butt? However, as the article notes, such complaints sure sounds like it is "fair to assume that any flak along those lines has more to do with sexist double standards in society than with the studio having a worse track record with men than women." Johansson herself noted that she felt that Natasha was "used as a kind of chess piece for her male counterparts."
Whatever the truth is, the upcoming Black Widow will avoid objectification period.
Source: Time Magazine