I watch a lot of things that fall under the action/comicbook/sci-fi umbrella, and there are already so many token female/badass seductress characters out there that I can almost see how someone who wasn’t paying any attention might mistake Black Widow for one of them. But the reality is that there’s no point during The Avengers when her looks are even commented on, and nor does she get any tiresome “feminine wiles” scenes. Most complaints or creepy sexist commentary on Black Widow’s costume/body/character say far more about the commenter than about Johansson’s performance itself. It’s almost like people don’t want to believe she’s awesome. I’ve heard lots of people debate the relative hotness of the various male characters, but never to the detriment of those characters, whereas practically every mention of Widow’s/Johansson’s legendary sex-appeal is accompanied by some kind of snide implication that it’s the main reason for her presence in the movie. If you want to be really annoyed, take a gander at this moment in the Avengers press tour (around 3 minutes in), which says a lot about the kind of questions actresses habitually have to answer when promoting their films. While Robert Downey Jr gets a complex question about characterisation, Johansson gets asked what she ate in preparation for her role. Black Widow isn’t just a body. Scarlett Johansson isn’t just a body.