Call for Comments: The Male Gaze and its Discontents

From Katya: This week we’re revisiting the Male Gaze. I know we’ve been here before but we have a string of guests coming up offering their own spin on various “gazes” and related subjects so we thought it was worth a revisit. (If you’d like to check out our previous conversations, check out some of…

Call for Comments: Sexy Cartoons and the Kid Gaze?

From Mav: As we approach Valentines Day this year I started thinking about our Valentine’s special from last year about “fictional celebrity crushes.” One of the things we drifted into talking about on that episode was characters like Lola Bunny and Harley Quinn — characters that despite originating in children’s cartoons, were clearly created explicitly…

e122. twentysomethingteen

There are a lot of television shows and movies about teenagers, both comedies and dramas.There always have been. And yet, actual teenagers on television are extremely rare. Teens are typically played by twenty-something actors (or older). This is especially the case when it comes to teenagers in shows with a heavy sexual or romantic components…

Call For Comments: TV-Twentysomething-Teens

From Mav: A friend of mine posted a meme recently that made fun of the way teenagers are depicted on television. It shows a stock photo of a typical looking adolescent boy labeled “Teenagers in real life” next to a stock photo of a rugged looking model labeled “Teenagers on Netflix.” My first inclination was…

e103. Birds of Prey and the Fantaboulous Deconstruction of one VoxPopcast

All across the world, everyone is trapped in their homes riding out the COVID-19 pandemic. Movie cineplexes are shut down. Sports, Concerts and other Events are being cancelled. TV shows are running out of new episodes. Just this week, we learned that comic books are going to stop shipping. We’re running out of pop culture.…

e63. Transcosplaphobia

Recently Mav witnessed something fascinating on the internet. Several men arguing on a message over whether or not it was appropriate to post transgender cosplay models and to talk about how sexy they were. This isn’t to say that they were concerned about whether or not it was appropriate to objectify women — that was…

Call for Comments: Transcosplaphobia?

From Mav: A funny “think” happened on my way to the Internet the other day… I was very much wanting to do SOMETHING having to do with Pride Month on our show and had been thinking of a couple of ideas. Well, if you’ve ever heard the show at all, it should be pretty clear…

Call For Comments: The PCA/ACA Preview Special

From Mav: We’re doing something a little different on the next show. One of the reasons we started VoxPop was because as academics we end up doing a lot of academic conferences… and we had the idea that the kinds of discussion we have at them would make for an interesting show, especially since my…

Episode 29: Sexy Halloween

“In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” At least, that’s what Mean Girls would have us believe. The…

Call for Comments: Cat Ears and Lingerie?

From Mav: It’s October, and so we are continuing our string of Halloween themed, or at least Halloween adjacent shows. This week we want to explore something that I’ve actually used as a debate topic when I teach freshman comp. Sexiness and Halloween costumes. Or specifically, are Halloween costumes getting too sexy? Remember that part…