Archer's Got The Sexy vs. Sexual Balance I Do So Hope For

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For those who haven't seen Archer, it's an animated, half hour show about a global espionage agency that is run by Malory Archer an older, x-secret agent. The two main secret agents are Malory's 36 year old son, Sterling Archer, and Lana Kane. The series focus also includes the office HR director, the accountant, the secretary, the R&D scientist, and a couple intelligence analysts. They're all highly dysfunctional, ridiculously selfish, and each f-ed up in their own way. It has been described as Arrested Development meets James Bond. In fact several people from Arrested Development do voices for the show. Anyway, I'm almost through the 2nd season on Netflix, and I'm pretty much much likin' it a lot. It's wrong, but in a much smarter way than something like Family Guy (if you want to argue against that then I'm all ears. I'm sure there are other valid points of view on that note), and it's just damn funny. Plus Sterling Archer is maybe the hottest cartoon dude I've ever seen. I would do that drawing for sure.

The reason I'm interested in writing about Archer is because the women in it are often depicted as being aroused and even masturbating. Just the simple act of depicting women who unabashedly masturbate is fairly progressive in itself, but I think the other cool thing is that the women are shown as being aroused by a wide array of things; everything from pepper use in sex to dark deeds to Burt Reynolds to hot chiseled secret  agents to interracial porn. Just like the male characters, the women's sexual situations, fantasies, and kinks  are often used for laughs. So yes, there are plenty of times where main male characters use female characters sexually and where the men are classic chauvinist pigs, but the beauty of this show is that the female main characters do the same kinds of things. They are all self-involved assholes.

I often point out in this blog that I'm not really bothered by the existence of overly sexy-fied (objectified you might say) women in the media or the existence of piggish men with their jokes and ogling. I'm just bothered that there's so damn much of it, and that it's not balanced by even close to as many over-sexy-fied men or piggish women with their jokes and ogling. I mean overall in our media it's not even close. It's akin to a balance with the earth on one side and my eyelash on the other.

This show, however, feels more balanced to me, and I think that's the part that makes it feel a little smarter. I mean yes, Lana Kane has giant bouncing boobs and always wears skirts that barely cover her junk, but Archer is obsessed with his tight black shirts and is constantly shown in his underwear and towels and stuff. He even got in a naked fight with another equally sexy male agent. It was pretty much unnecessarily sexy, and I appreciated it.

So, check the show out. You can see Sterling walk in on his mom masturbating to phone sex with the head of the KGB (And it actually looks like a sensibly realistic way of masturbating. Her arms move side to side under the desk - and in no way does it look like she's inserting anything into her vagina). You can also hear lines like "I swear to god you could drown a toddler in my panties right now," or "I for one am going home to watch Hooper and masturbate till my fingers bleed." Just so you know, Burt Reynolds was involved in that episode and Hooper is a Burt Reynolds movie...in case you want to masturbate to it also.