Tamara, I definitely don't think you're at all thick, and I'm sure that a lot of people don't consciously go there when they look at the image. That's pretty much why I wanted to unpack my visceral response to the poster a little.

But as to whether it was the intention - yeah, I kind of think it was. I don't think they will have parsed it the way I did, but I do think that this image is consciously pitched at that 18-30 male demographic, making sure that they aren't put off watching a Terminator vehicle just because the titular protagonist is a woman.

They've intentionally turned the ass-kicking super robot into a vulnerable sexbot for that advert, to make sure that the boys associate T:TSCC with fuckable babes rather than scary ballbreakers, and are thus more inclined to tune in.

Except the show hasn't even managed to show any strong, intelligent characters, male or female. IMO, Lena Headey's Sarah Connor would fit right in at Torchwood. She and John have been incompetent morons the entire season, and they've miraculously survived only because the show's about them.

Well, you have the advantage of me in having watched the entire season - my last DVD was scratched, so I've not seen all of it yet. Clearly we have very different takes on Lena Headey's performance and/or Sarah's character, however. Or possibly on the quality of Torchwood.

Like I said, I get your point and I agree completely with your point that they positioned the advertising to show a hot babe so that the boys aren't turned off by a show with a female protagonist. What I don't see is how a robot torso is seen as fuckable. Interesting and disturbing in an offputting but attractive alien way, but not fuckable.

It's the hair across the boob that screams sex toy to me.

They've intentionally turned the ass-kicking super robot into a vulnerable sexbot for that advert, to make sure that the boys associate T:TSCC with fuckable babes rather than scary ballbreakers, and are thus more inclined to tune in.

Yup. This.

And Tamara, as ita says, it's the boobs, and being naked. Even with only half a torso, she's still a sex object.

Invisible Green, I think I understand your point, but I still disagree with you. The writing is not what it could be, plot-wise. But I don't think that makes Sarah less an agent in her own life: she's the one who gives the orders and makes the decisions here, she's the one who's driving the bus. Even if not all her decisions are wise, she's operating with less information than the viewer is, and at least she is operating.

I'm damned sick of female characters who do nothing but be objects for the men's angst; or are evil or dead (or both). (Yeah, I've been watching SPN.) So I'll take Sarah Connor gladly, and Cameron, too.

It's the hair across the boob that screams sex toy to me.

Yeah, that's what pinged me as well. And I'm generally unpingable.

What I don't see is how a robot torso is seen as fuckable. Interesting and disturbing in an offputting but attractive alien way, but not fuckable.

Okay, I get that to you, it isn't a sexual image. Fair enough. But I'd argue that on Doctor Who (and this was not one of their finest moments) they managed to give "a sex life" (and I'm using the quotation marks advisedly) to a woman's disembodied face trapped in a paving stone. Cameron retains an orifice and a pair of tits - and although she is notably sans ladygarden in the poster (sorry, I just love that term - it cracks me up), there's still almost as much female body there as you get with your average mermaid - long-established avatars of female sexuality. Just without any pesky arms to push away a wandering hand. Or any means of swimming away.

Plus that whole soft porn hair-over-boobs thing. I mean, actually, if they weren't going for cheesecake, there's no reason she should be naked.

But I don't think that makes Sarah less an agent in her own life: she's the one who gives the orders and makes the decisions here, she's the one who's driving the bus. Even if not all her decisions are wise, she's operating with less information than the viewer is, and at least she is operating.

This is true: I can give her credit for being independent, powerful, and respected by others.

Ok, I get the hair over the naked boobs thing as being over sexualized. She didn't need to be naked for the purposefully disturbing image of what is alien and unknowable about this robot to work. There is some other (non-sexualized and really non female) power that I feel from that image that I have a hard time articulating. It really drives home the feeling that Cameron is beyond and apart and foreign. To me, Cameron isn't female. She is pure other. That is powerful.

I'm not able to make words say what I mean, but I think that an overly knee-jerk feminist response to this image is almost too easy. There is more there than that to me. Obviously other MMV.

I think that it's worth mentioning that the otherness could have been conveyed in many ways besides using a bare torso. She could have been fully dressed, holding an arm in one hand, or her head under her arm.

Ok, I get the hair over the naked boobs thing as being over sexualized. She didn't need to be naked for the purposefully disturbing image of what is alien and unknowable about this robot to work. There is some other (non-sexualized and really non female) power that I feel from that image that I have a hard time articulating. It really drives home the feeling that Cameron is beyond and apart and foreign. To me, Cameron isn't female. She is pure other. That is powerful.

I can respect that the image does not trigger your squick, Tamara. But in my mind, the depth of the truth in the first part of your paragraph distinctly tells against saying that she isn't female. What if the image had been not of bare skin but of metal exoskeleton or of pastel green latex? Would be a totally different feeling. She is quite distinctly portrayed as female - and I feel the "powerless nekked female" much sooner than I feel the "Other" of the dangling wires. What I see is Naked Female => Disembodied Torso => Dangling Wires => Not Human. I'm guessing you are seeing Dangling Wires => Other In Assumed Female Form. For me, there was a visceral and massive squick due to the visual shorthand for woman equals not human - that Fay has articulated in a way I could not. All I had was squick. We don't have soft-porn images of giant squid, or vultures, or Roomba vacuums - and they are Other in the real world, without being sex objects (goat-se notwithstanding). The other Cameron poster, with the metal robot skeleton and human face turned away, I think, does a far better job of portraying Other In Assumed Female Form without turning her into a powerless sexbot. And maybe I don't really get to have an opinion because my squick was so great from the Torso image, that I could not bring myself to watch the show. That was kind of a disappointment because I thought the idea of the show was great, and I had been looking forward to it.

Were any of the male-form Terminators shown in similar fashion? I have a vague memory of the shiny-melty-metal shapeshifting back into the male body, briefly bare, until it had the chance to reform the outer-layer clothing, in a commercial. Were stills of the briefly bare bit used for publicity, or stills of the shiny metal male form? What sticks in my mind is the melty metal form.

If the Cameron torso poster were the only boob shot of the lot, it might be easier for me to think it was less intentional. But hey, at least Cameron gets to have a head and face there, whereas Sarah Conner gets the privilege of being reduced to a soft swell of nipple-showing tank top covered breasts.

Are there similar "sexy" adverts of the male characters' body parts?

Mind you, any antagonism that I feel is solely directed at them that made the images, and not at all at you, Tamara.