Wonder Woman - an accessible feminist

Reading the Wonder Woman Comics was very conflicting for me- there were moments where she seemed like a nice change from the male superheroes-- 

Does anyone else find it funny how he always comes barging in with the guns - ... held in Wonder Woman's arms? Yes you are so heroic. (Yet is it wrong that he is still the one who drives the plot- and Wonder Woman is left to stand in the background?)

And more than a few moments where once again stereotypes that still exist today carried through:

This never would have happened in Superman. But here Wonder Woman is not portrayed as perfect but someone who women should be able to connect to, criticized for what she wears. I couldn't get past that second panel though.

After reading a section from Jill Lepore's discussion about where exactly Wonder Woman came from (I found the author's story very interesting) I felt I could understand where the tension between feminist and not feminist was coming from: I wasn't the audience intended for Wonder Woman. I think it was intended for men. 

And when I say this I don't mean it because of the tendency to deal with topics like domination, bondage, and power in Wonder Woman. I say this because I think even while Marston thought females would make better leaders, he still believed that most of his readers were male. With Jill Lepore's discussion and the documentary She Makes Comics in mind, I feel like Marston created Wonder Woman for people like himself; people who if they only knew, would also be like Marston. 

In this rather interesting, opinionated article, they quote Marston from his interview with Family Circle: 

But Marston was intent on more than merely fulfilling the fantasies of his male readers. In a letter to comics historian Coulton Waugh, he wrote, "Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world." 

Propaganda mainly for men in Marston's world where women were beginning to fight and protest. To me, I feel like he was trying to change the mind of all those Harvard people who refused a female speaker-- not create a hero for half the world.

Placed in context, the time period, and what it meant to be a feminist during the time, I think I can better forgive Wonder Woman for her stereotypes. Yet there are still some things that strike me as off. Why is Wonder Woman's entire personal mission based on a man? Why does she fall in love with the first man she ever meets? In some cases, Wonder Woman deals with the same issues any woman does: the man gets the credit, people don't expect her to be able to do what she does, etc. Wonder Woman isn't so much a superhero as much as just super-- she has super powers, but that doesn't mean she doesn't face the same problems. In that regard I actually enjoyed Wonder Woman much better than Superman - who didn't face any problems at all.