No, I didn’t think I’d ever write that, either.
But absurd though it may seem, the success of Britney Spears may be amusingly relevant to some of the controversy surrounding DC’s Minx line.
The primary concern (beyond institutional sexism) is that female writers are better suited to writing to a female audience, whether artistically or commercially. Britney obviously can’t speak to anything artistic, but it’s fair to say she knows a thing or two about commercial success. And Baby one more time, an album that was quite popular with a young, female audience, was written and produced entirely by men. Several of the songs sung by this nubile young schoolgirl were penned by Jorgen Elofsson, a Swedish man in his late thirties. Britney’s second album boasts the same story: A completely male production team. Teenagers may have loved to hear Britney sing, but they were hearing the words and music of a bunch of old men. Examining the songwriting credits of neary any teen pop diva’s albums will yield similar results.
Comic books aren’t quite the same thing, as the writer’s name is visible on the cover. And I would hope that Minx is shooting for higher artistic standards than the early pop hits of Britney Spears. But it does show that people in general, and teens in particular, will buy any message as long as it speaks to them and it’s packaged attractively; they really don’t care where it comes from. While I’d normally be loathe to use Britney as evidence of anything, it does seem commercially relevant when you’ve already hired a top marketing agency to sell a product to teenage girls. Teens won’t swallow anything you give them, but when they do they usually do it gusto.