These retro pop artists certainly had some…unique outfits for the women in their stories.

vintagegeekculture:

As
with Zen Rock Gardens, the beauty of the dresses comes from what isn’t there. They always seem like
comic opera Valkyrie outfits, which brings to mind a good quote from Isaac
Asimov: “history is the trade secret of science fiction.”

We
often have a good chuckle out of implausible and scanty women’s spacesuits, but
the trend in technology is to make something bulky less conspicuous, less
obvious, smaller and more miniaturized. Eventually, a spacesuit would not be
that all that different from normal clothing. The trouble with so much science
fiction is, it’s visions are too conservative.

Although
whether something is plausible or not may be asking the wrong question when it
comes to certain artists. The point isn’t practicality, and asking they be that
way is a little like asking why anime and manga characters have impossible
hair. It’s all a question of stylization, not representational realism.

We
haven’t seen a lot of the sexy spacesuit of late, and I think it’s because,
sometime in between 2008-2014, male geeks started to believe liking sex and
looking at women was bad. Take the different reaction to Sin City and Sin City
2, which is interesting because they’re a near-perfect science experiment in
variable control: they are the exact same movie, made with the exact same
creative team. The only difference is one came out in a different time.

For me, I think the problem arises when men and women are clearly treated differently in the same setting, especially a setting we’re supposed to otherwise take ‘seriously’.  For example, in a fantasy world where we see lots of knights riding into battle donned in full plate, then we’re introduced to a women who is supposed to be an experienced fighter/warrior but she spends all her time fighting in a leather bikini… it kind of detracts from her credibility as a character.  Or indeed, you have a society with advanced enough technology that they can wear protection you don’t even know is there, but for some reason only women avail themselves of this while men still stomp around in bulky spacesuits… it’s just inconsistent and immersion breaking.