Wonder Woman

 

Wonder Woman is the most popular female comic-book superhero of all time. Aside from Superman and Batman, no other comic-book character has lasted as long. Generations of girls have carried their sandwiches to school in Wonder Woman lunchboxes - me included. Like every other superhero, Wonder Woman has a secret identity. Unlike most other superheroes, she has carried the extra burden of holding a mirror along with her lasso.  A mirror that reflects society's ever-shifting view of the role and soul of women.

In February 1941, Dr. William Moulton Marston, a famous psychologist and the inventor of the lie detector test, submitted a draft of his first script for a Wonder Woman comic, explaining the “under-meaning” of Wonder Woman’s Amazonian origins in ancient Greece, where men had kept women in chains, until they broke free and escaped. “The NEW WOMEN thus freed and strengthened by supporting themselves (on Paradise Island) developed enormous physical and mental power.” His comic, he said, was meant to chronicle “a great movement now under way—the growth in the power of women.” 

Wonder Woman officially debuted in 1942 in  All-Star Comics when she appeared on the cover of a new comic book, Sensation Comics.    She wore a golden tiara, a red bustier, blue underpants and knee-high, red leather boots. She’d left Paradise to fight fascism with feminism, in “America, the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women!”  Marston's Wonder Woman had been born Princess Diana on the fictitious all-female island of Themyscira and trained as an Amazon warrior. 

Marston had wanted to create an icon for little girls. "Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, power," he wrote in a 1943 magazine article. "Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weak ones. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." The result was a woman who fought alongside male soldiers and, in 1943, ran for President of the United States—against the Man's World Party—and won.

Her debut was not without controversary.  In March 1942, the National Organization for Decent Literature put the comic on its blacklist of “Publications Disapproved for Youth” for one reason: “Wonder Woman is not sufficiently dressed.”  There was also a great deal of angst and pubic complaint about how often Wonder Woman was tied up or otherwise bound and gagged.  Of course I wouldn’t expect (everyone)  to understand all this,” Marston wrote his publisher at All-American Comics. “After all I have devoted my entire life to working out psychological principles. "The secret of woman’s allure,” he said is that “women enjoy submission—being bound.”

Controversary and interpretation has followed Wonder Woman all along the way.  She has been a suffragist, a sex symbol, a soldier—and President of the United States. Along the way, Wonder Woman changed costumes dozens of times with her hemline higher, lower and then back up again as mores shifted and new writers took up the mantle. It follows her even today when, 75 years after her debut in the comics, Wonder Woman is headlining her first major feature film (Batman and Superman have had 9 and 7 live action films respectively).  

When the United Nations decided to name Wonder Woman an honorary ambassador last year ahead of the film's release. The U.N. named the superhero Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls. The U.N.'s press officers set up a ceremony last October at the organization's New York City headquarters As the actress in the lead role, Gal Gadot, greeted dozens of cheering elementary-school-age girls, the adults sitting behind them raised their fists and turned their backs. Outside, some 100 U.N. staffers gathered in protest. More than 600 of them had signed a petition objecting to "a large-breasted white woman of impossible proportions" and "the epitome of a 'pinup' girl" becoming an official symbol of female power. Two months later, Wonder Woman's ambassadorial privileges were unceremoniously withdrawn—setting off another round of complaints.

After many failed efforts over the years, the first film staring Wonder Woman was released this month.  The film is directed Patty Jenkins—one of the first female directors to command a budget of over $100 million.   Gadot's background is a perfect illustration of the needle Woman Woman has always had to thread.  Gadot competed in a Miss Universe pageant (owned and produced by Donald Trump) and—like her Holocaust-survivor grandfather and parents before her—served in the Israeli military as part of the country's mandatory conscription. 

Jenkins describes the filming this way, "it wasn't just a gathering of beautiful women.  It was exclusively badass, interesting women."  The early returns at the box office are very positive.  The film exceeded expectations on opening weekend, bringing in $103.1 million. That makes Wonder Woman the biggest opening ever for a female director. The previous record holder, "Fifty Shades of Grey," brought in $85.2 million in 2015.  And it was women who helped the film to the top of the box office this weekend.  More than half, 52%, of the film's audience this weekend were female -- a significant number for a genre that has been dominated by men. 

Somehow it seems oddly appropriate that we are asking the original female superhero, flawed an icon as she may be, to break the superhero equivalent of a glass ceiling.  Maybe it is all the more meaningful this year of all years.  

Sources: 

Smithsonian Magazine, 2014

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