We met with the prolific Jenna Busch at her booth at Comic Con last week, where we got to talk with her about Star Wars, comics, Pern, cosplay and women in pop-culture.
Jenna is the co-host of “Cocktails with Stan” with Stan Lee, a co-host of Most Craved for CraveOnline, and a writer for Zap2it, After Buzz TV, Fanhattan, Screen Crave, Inside Horror, Huffington Post, AOL, Popeater, Newsarama, JoBlo, Blastr, UGO, IGN, Moviefone, SheKnows, Coming Soon, Screen Junkies, Famous Monsters and Geek Week and Inside Horror. She is also a comic book writer and recently had two stories published in the comic anthology, “Womanthology.”
Earlier this year, Jenna founded Legion of Leia, which encourages and supports girls in their love of pop culture, comics, and sci-fi, both as fans and as future creators.
So clearly, we had some questions!
A sneak peak of Jenna Busch’s Cupcake Quarterly photo shoot.
Q: So, what’s on your schedule for this Comic Con?
A: I am doing so many things. I’m doing on-camera interviews for GeekNation, they’ve been very silly and fun. I’ve interviewed Sam Whitworth, Kelly Hu, Chloe Dykstra and Colin Ferguson. And I’m signing my pin-up magazine, Cupcake Quarterly, and I was on the Most Dangerous Women of Comic Con panel, which talked about women in pop culture. I also moderated Jane Espenson’s and Brad Bell’s Husbands panel, and the Eflquest Panel.
Q. Were you always a geek and then parlayed that into a career?
A. I have been a geek since the very beginning. Really, honestly, with the X-Men comics. I wanted to be Storm because I wanted a snow day. And then Princess Leia, and fantasy novels. Especially Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels. I got into writing and covering the geek world because of friend of mine, Chris, had started the site UGO, and he asked me to interview Jack Nicholson, which isn’t something you say ‘no’ to. And it all ballooned from there.
Q. What do you think the next hurdle for women in pop culture is going to be?
A. I still think it’s the way a lot of characters are drawn. It still seems that a strong woman character is a character that acts like a man. Now, I am all about sword fighting and punching people–I’ve broken noses in the past–and I appreciate that. I think it’s awesome. But I also think that, if we devalue the feminine, than we’re basically saying that the feminine isn’t as important–which is something we talked about on the Husband’s panel as well. I think the most important thing is having a well-rounded character, not just having somebody kick ass.
And it’s interesting, because when I started doing this, I was one of the only women who covered geek. I worked with reporters who were all men, all wonderful, never had a problem with any of them. And even as a kid, I never had a problem, maybe because I grew up on a block with all boys, and they were totally fine. They were like, ‘hey, look, we have a Leia.” I guess I’m known well enough now that nobody really asks me to defend my geekdom, because I am just ridiculously geeky. But I do find that if someone disagrees with me online, the first thing I get are rape threats, ‘this is what you look like’ insults, death threats, you know, that sort of thing.
Q. Do you find, as a woman, that appearance is still the first thing you’re judged on?
A. Absolutely. It’s the first thing that happens. I’m not saying I don’t want to be called pretty, because really, that’s nice. But the first compliment you get is that. And then it’s, ‘you’re smart’, or ‘I love your writing.’ Although, as we’re talking, I’m sitting here signing my pin-up magazine. So there’s nothing wrong with sexuality, I’ve done three pin-up magazines, there’s nothing wrong with that, I love them. I would just like something to be valued above that.
If you dress a certain way, someone’s going to look at you a certain way. That’s just the way it is. So I’m going to dress any damn way I want.
Q. It’s very hard to maintain an ability to be sexual and sensual without being sexualized. How do you deal with that?
A. It’s a difficult thing. Adrianne Curry and I were discussing this on the panel, and part of the reason that I profiled her for Legion of Leia, is because I think it’s really important to own your sexuality. And eventually it will become unacceptable to treat anyone a certain way.
I mean, if you ask any woman to look at a comic book, you can tell the difference between; this chick is sexual, she owns her sexuality, whether overt or not; and you can tell the difference between that, and looking at a drawing that someone did just to create a object for sex. Even if you can’t put your finger on what the difference is, every single person knows it and its intention.
Q. Let’s talk about Cosplay, which is a hot button topic in regards to women, pop culture, and sexual awareness.
A. I love it. One year for Halloween my whole costume was ‘sexy in red.’ Because, once again, I don’t think there’s a problem with any of it. So, say I decide to cosplay Sexy Robin, you still don’t get to grope me on the floor, and at the end of the day, that costume is my interpretation of Robin, so who’s to judge that?
I mean, it’s a weird thing to navigate. If you dress a certain way, someone’s going to look at you a certain way. That’s just the way it is. So I’m going to dress any damn way I want. And trying to make a divide between ‘real’ girl geeks and the ‘sexy cosplay’ girls doesn’t help. You can’t win anything that way. And in the end, you defend your sisters. And that’s really, really important. Because we’re not getting anywhere if we don’t.
Q. So what did you think about the Marvel announcement about a woman Thor?
A. I think it’s really cool, that we’re part of that story line. I think that’s really great. However, I don’t like that they used it as a marketing technique. I understand why, but when they put it out on The View, it bothered me because, I knew what the intention was–though people get into comics for all different reasons, and maybe somebody who had never been interested in comics before saw that on The View and thought, ‘Hey, that looks interesting.’ But the fact that it was only on The View points to a ‘this targets women’ mindset.
It also bothers me because we know it’s not going to be a permanent change. And it’s not her name, and I know retconning happens all the time, but it wasn’t Freya or Sif, it was Thor. That being said, the character design looks awesome.
Q. You founded Legion of Leia. What started that? What do you hope to achieve with it?
With Legion of Leia, the whole point was that I wanted to do something positive, instead of just complaining. I wanted to do something that would support women in sci-fi, so we do a profile every week with celebrities, non-celebrities. Right now we’re doing a focus on character design, and eventually we’d like to be able to fund young women’s projects. And I’m hoping that all the celebrities we’ve profiled might become mentors further down the line.
I just did a signing for it, and a woman came up to me with her, like, 11-year-old son. And she told me, ‘I brought my son over because I want him to have positive female role models too.’ And I was like, ‘I’m going to cry now, and that’s going to be fine!’
It partially came out of the Star Wars casting. One new woman, but tons of men. And I wrote on my blog that my niece is going to have one woman to look up to. And my nephew will have tons of male role models. Now since then, there have been a lot of women added to that cast. I don’t know if they gender-swapped Gwendolyn Christie’s character in reaction to fans saying there needed to be more women or not. But the fact that the rumor is out there, says something good to me. I think its wonderful that they’re doing it, that they’re adding more people in.
And then I was having lunch with my friend, and I was talking about this picture I had of me dressed as Leia as a kid. And she said ‘Oh, I have the same thing.’ And I wondered how many of our friends had dressed up a Leia as kids? So on May 4th, which is Star Wars day, we asked everyone to change their profile picture to Leia. And we had so many people participate. It was thousands and thousands of people, celebrities like Jane Epsenson, Adrianne Curry, everyone did it, and we thought, ‘Oh, this is way bigger than we thought it was.’ So we set up a website, and a Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, everything. And all of these people are responding to it. Jane [Epsenson] had a profile, Clare Kramer. We’re hoping Gale Anne Hurd, producer of The Walking Dead and all things cool, will do one. So a lot of people are starting to respond to it.
The other thing that sparked it, is that I had two comics that I wrote get published in an anthology, and I was at a booth a few years ago showing the book, all excited because it was the first time I’d been published in printed form, and this little girl came over and asked me if she could hug me. And her mom explained that the little girl had always wanted to make comic books but she didn’t think girls could do that. And it sparked something, because I want little girls to know that girls can do something like this.
Q. So what would you say to a young woman, right now, who was looking at getting into this business? What can they do to prepare themselves?
A. I think they need to read as much as possible. From everybody. Women creators, men creators. They need to look at different art and find their style. And then ignore it when people tell them no. Because they will get kickback. And you’ll get kickback as guy too, but you’ll get a little extra kickback as girl. But just keep pushing and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do it.
It would be great if we could get to a place where we’d just refer to someone as an astronaut, not a female astronaut–unless the story was somehow specifically about her being a woman. That we talk about a writer, not a female writer, or a chef, not a female chef. But the more we’re out there, the more people see women in these fields–eventually it becomes accepted.
You can find Jenna on Twitter or follow her on her Blog.