Lady In Red

I've been reading a book about 1950s horror comic books and the 1954 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency Hearing that led to the censorship of comic book industry. The Horror! The Horror! has numerous wonderful color photos of the covers of the comic books which brought about the creation of the Comics Code Authority. What I found interesting is that the majority of the women on these covers are wearing red.







What does it mean? Does in represent blood and a bloody death? Are they scarlet women who deserve to die? The covers do bring to mind all those Halloween and Friday the 13th movies in which any girl who has sex dies a horrible death because she deserves to for breaking society's code which states only bad girls have sex outside of marriage. I think the color red on these covers represent all three; blood, bloody death, and the scarlet women who deserve to die.

Our society has not moved one step past this archaic view of women. Think of how easily the word slut is thrown around and how lower back tattoos on women is now described by the derogatory phrase tramp stamp, implying that any women who has one is sexually promiscuous. Of course the bar for just what is considered sexually promiscuous when it comes to women is a whole lot lower than what it is for a man. When are we as a society going to stop defining women by their sexual behavior?