I’ve always taken issue
with a lot of the costumes female superheroes wear. To begin, a lot of female
superheroes, like Wonder Woman, wear high heels. As for me, trying to run in
high heels sounds like a great way to break an ankle and not catch the bad guy.
Also, particularly for Wonder Woman, wearing a strapless top seems uncomfortable
and distracting, as, at least in my experience, strapless tops are always in
danger of potentially falling down. In a lot of cases, the costumes female superheroes run around in feel to me to be more about delighting the
sexual fantasies of the young boy readers rather than for the purposes of
actually fighting crime. So, I went into reading Wonder Woman with my already
biased views on how costumes are a tool of objectification. I was surprised
then how my views began to shift while I read the early comics (although I
still definitely have my hesitations on the subject). With Wonder Woman’s costume,
it felt to me as she walked amidst the judgmental views and comments of people on
the street that she was defiant. Wonder Woman isn’t one to be told what she can
or can’t wear by a society that wants to control what is acceptable for women
in dress or behavior. Wearing her little outfit, I began to see Wonder Woman as
a rebel who challenged the norms. Wonder Woman isn’t limited by excess fabric
or shame of her body and in many ways I see this as empowering. While I wouldn’t
say Wonder Woman’s costume isn’t without problems, I also can see the ways it can
be a source of strength that sets her apart.
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ReplyDeleteWhile I do agree to an extent that Wonder Woman's outfit helps defy social norms and expectations for women, I also think this is such a great example of how Wonder Woman, at least on some level, was written by men, for men. There are so many aspects to Wonder Woman that I found myself unable to identify with, including the shoes as well as whenever she talks about her female sensibilities. It's almost as if Moulton put pieces like that in his work in order to balance out the feminist message and retain the broader male audience. Of course, it could also be a product of his early 1900s upbringing, which despite Moulton's professed admiration of the feminist ideal, cannot be discounted as a strong influence in the Wonder Woman comics.
ReplyDeleteYou're definitely right in how females in comics (regardless of whether they are the superhero or not) are so sexualized that it doesn't matter what they are doing, so matter as it looks good. Yes women should be able to wear what they want, but there is still that undertone of objectification and sexualization that makes it hard for me to get behind Wonder Woman's costume. Your post also made me think of female portrayal in video games-- and how perhaps video games are the new comics that almost entirely objectifies and sexualizes every female character, and almost always geared towards guys even though there is a strong female group who are also a part of it.
ReplyDeleteYour comments on Wonder Woman's uniform were hilarious! If you want to really get a knot in your stomach, checkout this link: http://www.craveonline.com/art/144250-top-10-greatest-racks-in-comic-books#/slide/1. As you can tell by the hyperlink, its a list of the 10 best chests (the article is much more crudely titled), and it was one of the first links that came up when I googled Wonder Woman (by the way, she ranked 7th on the List). Isn't it also perplexing that WW's costume is adorned with the colors and insignia of America when neither her or her mom have visited the country before? I could even make the argument that all superhero costumes are nonsensical. Why do heros fight is spandex at all...? Can superman effectively fight crime with skin tight morphsuits and a cape...?
ReplyDeleteMy money is on Luther in real life.