Surprising no one, people were being gross about Karen Gillan’s Nebula on the new poster for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Since the photoshopped Nebulas of the other Guardians of the Galaxy movie posters have featured her in the “super heroine” pose that is less conducive to taking on bad guys and more appealing to the male gaze, the new poster made “fans” angry—particularly male fans, and they were being incredibly gross about it.
It was upsetting to see, but as always tends to be the case, Karen Gillan took their grossness in stride and made fun of her pose—not because of its “flattering” angle but instead because of how she randomly has her arm up in the air. Because, as Gillan points out, she’s not wearing any sort of weapons, so it just looks like she’s leaning on the air instead of doing something cool like pulling out her weapon or something else.
In a TikTok that Gillan posted on her own account, she showed the poster in question and then poked fun at the fact that she thought she looked so cool while they were taking the pictures for it and is now looking at it and wondering why she thought her arm in the air was the way to go. (She still looks cool, but if Gillian wants to poke fun at herself, we let her.)
It is, honestly, the only commentary I want to see about this. All the people angry about Nebula’s waist were never fans of this character to begin with. They sexualized her, and that’s it, and now that she’s not fitting into their mold, they’re mad about it. Gillan making fun of herself is one thing; the trolls on the internet are something else entirely.
Nebula can still beat you up
All the angry responses to what Karen Gillan looked like just reminds us that those “fans” don’t want a franchise of badass characters. They want someone they can think is hot and that’s it, and Nebula is hot! She’s just not posed for their benefit in this poster, and it is breaking their brains.
Gillan made fun of the fact that it does look like she’s leaning on the air, and that’s well within Karen Gillan‘s rights. Trolls? Not so much. The poster isn’t bad and it doesn’t look weird. It’s just funny when you zoom in on Nebula and start thinking about what she’s doing, but we all have to remember that Nebula can still beat us all up. If we made fun of her, it’d be the last thing that we did.
I love Nebula very much, and seeing Karen Gillan make fun of herself is one of the reasons that we love her so much as a performer. If she is laughing at her own pose, we can laugh with her. Not you though, trolls. You can go somewhere else and leave Nebula and Karen Gillan alone, please and thank you.
(featured image: Marvel Entertainment)
