Hi, all! Per usual, I hope everyone is having a great week.
During class, Professor Serrano posed a question about the significance of Wonder Woman's masculine physique. It got me to thinking: why is it exactly that Marston chose to portray Wonder Woman as having extremely provocative and feminine clothing, yet a highly masculine physique?
The more I think about it, the more it perplexes me. I'm wondering if perhaps Marston is stripping Wonder Woman's feminine physical features in order to subtly suggest strength and power. In other words, did Marston feel as though Wonder Woman needed to be dressed in extremely feminine clothing so as to represent the "female ideal", yet have a more masculine body to suggest more strength, power, and "super-hero-ness"? If so, that bothers me greatly.
Don't get me wrong - I think Wonder Woman was very progressive for its time and undoubtedly resonated with and affected the lives of countless people - the fact that women now had media representation in the super hero comics world is incredibly important and shouldn't be dismissed. That being said, the fact that Marston felt as though he had to make Wonder Woman physically different from your everyday ... well... woman in order to validate her as a super hero is also quite sad.
I was also very interested by Marston's choice to depict Wonder Woman in this way, as well as contrasted Marston's Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter's more feminine physique. You argue that Marston likely depicted her in this way as a means of blending in a sense of masculine power with feminine dress, something I had not previously considered. To play devil's advocate, perhaps Marston believed that without depicting Wonder Woman with a masculine figure her physically strong and athletics attributes would be rendered invalid by his immediate viewership, and perhaps Wonder Woman would have never became a success without first establishing (at least somewhat) believable qualities?
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