An open letter to Marvel...

...here I am scrolling through Hypable and notice the new Captain America posters have come out. Woop! Yay for new posters! I love me some new posters, especially when they involved the badass Black Widow!

So what do I find when I see the new posters? The image above of Scarlett Johansson in the role. At first glance? Meh...

Look a little closer and there's some serious fiddling around that's happened here.

Her boobs have been pushed up and out, her waist skinnied down, her torso and neckline has been elongated and her hips widened, and don't even get me started on the placement of her arms.
She looks like a Barbie doll in a leather jumpsuit, not Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow.

Ignoring the pose and the costume this is what bugs me so much about the movie industry and the marketing it sometimes employs. It happened with Emma Watson and the Order of the Phoenix poster, Kiera Knightley with the King Arthur poster and countless others all over the place! And why?

Does it really make a difference to people who are gonna glance 5 seconds at the poster on the street. Will they think 'Oh no, I'm seeing Captain America now because Black Widow's boobs aren't big!'.

Y'know the people who will notice though? Impressionable young women who look up to Scarlett as a positive role model as some with a kick-ass attitude to body image and has even been heavily quoted on the subject.

"...Women shouldn't be forced to conform to unrealistic and unhealthy body images that the media promote." - Scarlett on negative body image

However, there are a few awesome people who have taken it upon themselves to revert the changes back. My favourite's below - from Tumblr user Clickandrun - the original is on the right and their version is on the left.

It's still the same pose, it's still the same costume and it's still Scarlett. But her body is a more realistic and guess what guys? She still looks like a badass.

In fact, if you just take the image on the left of the poster, it could happily pass as a perfectly decent poster for promoting the movie!

Shots fired Marvel. Your move.