June 26, 2013 • 24 mins
For the final Boys of Summer installment, Caroline and Cristen highlight William Moulton Marston, the polyamorous inventor of Wonder Woman and how Marston's feminism influenced the iconic comic book superheroine.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You From House top
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. It's
the fourth and final installment of the Boys of Summer
are Little June series that we're doing highlighting dudes who
(00:24):
did cool stuff for ladies, and today we're talking about
William Moulton Marston, who invented Perfect Doctor to Wonder Woman. Yeah,
this guy is fascinating. He is a regular old renaissance
man in no traditional sense of the word, not at all,
(00:45):
and he was quite a smarty pants. So who was
William Malton Marrison before he invented Wonder Woman because it
was one of the last big things he did before
he died. Um, But he was a Harvard trained lawyer
and side collegists who invented not only Wonder Woman, but
also the first functional lie detector polygraph. Yeah. He created
(01:08):
the DISC model for emotions. If you've ever had to
go on a terrible, terrible work staff development out into
a DISC class, which is kind of like a Briggs
Myers test. Yeah, it's like a personality test where you
determine if you're like, what are they stand for? A dominant?
You know, if you're introverted, submissive, or whatever. Basically like,
if you think you're introverted, good job, you probably are.
(01:30):
Um So anyway, he also authored self help books and
then in the forties created Wonder Woman, Yeah, which is
such a strange grab bag of things too, but he
based her somewhat on his lovely wife, Elizabeth Holloway, so
(01:51):
uh he married her in nineteen fifteen after graduating from Harvard.
She had attended Mount Holyoke, where she got a master's
in psychology, and she blew off going to any more
women's colleges because when her husband went to Harvard, she
ended up uh going to Boston University to get her
law degree, and that was because she would not have
(02:12):
been allowed to go study law at Harvard because it
was boys only, and so Harvard was like, hey, well
you can go to our sister school, Radcliffe, and Holloway
was like, no, no, I'm not going to go to
a to some what did she say, a place? Oh?
She dismissed it as quote lovely law for ladies, which Halloway,
come on, Radcliffe is a very good school. But nevertheless,
she still went to Boston University, paid her own way
(02:36):
through law school and became one of only three women
to graduate from b law in nineteen eighteen. So Holloway
was a groundbreaking lady for her time. Yeah, And just
as just as she dismissed a lovely law for lady,
she also dismissed the entire women's lib movement when it
was in full swing in the seventies. She said, what's
(02:56):
all the fuss about? So she she was a tough cookie.
She was a tough cookie. Which I'm kind of raising
my eyebrow to her saying, what's all the fuss about?
But maybe it's just because she was doing all this
stuff in nineteen eighteen on her own outside of kind
of like a throwback to Margaret Thatcher who had the
same attitude exactly, what's all the false? Well, what I
(03:18):
made a little bit of a fuss about health, Caroline?
How about this for a transition? Was finding out that
William Molton Marston in the early twentieth century. Yes, he
was married to Elizabeth Holloway, but they also were in
a living polyamorous relationship with partner Olive Byrne, who was
later Olive Richard. And he he was married to Elizabeth,
(03:42):
and he had kids, two kids with Elizabeth and two
with Ali and Even after William Molton Marston died, they
continued to live together and raise their kids together. Yeah,
Marston met Olive in the twenties when she was a
student while he was teaching at Tough University, and she,
as well as Elizabeth, later helped him with some of
his psychology and uh polygraph research. And just like Elizabeth
(04:06):
and her tough cookie attitude probably served as inspiration for
Wonder Woman's like rare you know, go get him attitude,
Olive served as the inspiration for her look, with her
black hair, blue eyes and the heavy bracelets she wore
on each wrist. Now, leading up to the creation of
(04:26):
Wonder Woman, it was really Williams interest in psychology that
set the stage for it, because that was what got
him um thinking about how to determine whether a person
is lying or not, and he connected that to blood
pressure rising, and that's how he developed his crude lie
detector while he was at Harvard, and then from there
(04:46):
he studied the concepts of will in a person's sense
of power and the effects of those things on personality
and human behavior, which led to him developing that d
i C. The disc program Um and all of the
sort of snowballs into his concept for wonder Woman and
the need for a strong female character, because obviously he's
(05:11):
a guy who's very interested in human nature. Been one
of the facets of that was his belief that women
were essentially morally superior to men. He truly believed that
at some point our society would become a matriarchy because
in a similar way that the temperance movement was led
(05:34):
by women, because there was this notion that women were
by nature better able to abstain from alcohol. He thought
that by women's nature, we would be better able to
I guess um, make up for men's ruthlessness and their
violent nature and all of that. Right. Yeah. His beliefs
(05:55):
about women as leaders were that eventually we would take
over the whole rule of the country politically, economically, and
in seven he told the New York Times that we
would within the next one hundred years, so by seven
so get ready we would have a nation of amazons.
And the psychological rather than the physical sense. He said
that women are less susceptible to the negative traits of
(06:17):
aggression and acquisitiveness, and we could use our allure to
control men, So we would literally take control in every
possible way. He had an interesting take on feminism and
women and power roles. Yes, and he clearly thought that
there was a connection between not just what what we
(06:39):
could do with our brains, but also with our bodies too,
which is probably you know why Wonder Woman is quite
an attractive lady. But he saw a lot of power
in the medium of comic books, which are really popular
at the time. In three he wrote in The American
Scholar that the picture story fan he cuts loose the
(07:01):
hampering debris of art and artifice and touches the tender
spots of universal human desires and aspirations. And in that
way comics speak without qualm or sophistication, to the innermost
ears of the wishful self. So he thought that by
developing the strong female comic book hero, that it could
(07:23):
be a powerful tool for I guess delivering his message
that women would the girls would, in the words of Beyonce,
run the world at one point, right, I mean, he
he said, look, all of you academics out there, I'm
one of you, but we've got to put our big
boy panties on and accept the fact that pictures tell stories,
(07:45):
especially to children, much more effectively than words do, and so, hey,
if you're going to deliver a message to these kids
in these comic books, that might as well be a
good one, right, that women should rule the world. And
he he kept, you know, writing his opinions, and he
voiced opinion in Family Circle magazine about comics, and was
subsequently offered a position on the editorial advisory board of
(08:06):
the d C and All American Lines, and he got
encouragement from Max Gaines, the head of DC, to create
a female comic hero, and so in nineteen forty one,
Wonder Woman was introduced in an All Star Comics and
he wrote her under his not so clever pseudonym of
(08:26):
Charles Moulton, so he just switched out his first name,
um and for comic buffs out there, Wonder Woman, ak
Diana Prince, came out in the number eight issue of
All Star Comics, and she came with a lasso of
truth bulletproof bracelets in an invisible plane, and she also
(08:47):
had a really lame boyfriend, Steve Trevor. But the background
of Wonder Woman was that she was actually this Amazonian
princess and there were no men on the island at all,
and World War who was going on, and somehow Steve
Trevor's plane crashed on the Amazonian island, and so Diana
(09:09):
Prince took it upon herself to save Steve Trevor. And
then also, I guess go in because a lot of
comics at the time were also very pro America and
pro Allies and all of that with the war, and
so there were lots of wartime story arcs where she
would go and fight against the Axis powers as well. Right, Yeah,
(09:31):
she was sent by Aphrodite because of course, why not
to help the American war effort and to spread the
Amazon's message of love, peace and sexually quality. She was
a hippie, really powerful, hot pants swearing hippie, that's right.
But in seven, just six years after Wonder Woman debut,
Marston dies and after that, Wonder Woman really suffered. And
(09:55):
in nineteen fifty four there was this guy named Dr
fred Rick Wortham who published a book called The Seduction
of the Innocent, and essentially it's set off massive fear
about how comics were just destroying children's brains, that it
was too violent, they were too sexual. It reminds me
(10:16):
a lot of debates that have come up around the
impact of video games on kids developments, but Wortham got
people so worked up over it that a comics code
was developed to crack down on the content. And in
Seduction of the Innocent, he called Wonder Woman a cruel,
phallic woman, and he says that she is the lesbian
(10:38):
counterpart of Batman, and the homosexual connotation of Wonder Woman
is psychologically unmistakable. The Psychiatric quarterly deplored in an editorial
the appearance of an eminent child therapist as the implied
endorser of a series which portrays extremely sadistic hatred of
all males in a framework which is plainly lesbian, plain
(11:00):
plainly lesbian. Yeah, because speaking of Batman, he was worried that,
you know, Batman and Robin had a homeolerotic relationship, that
all these comics we're trying to turn kids into just
a legion of violent homosexuals. I guess. Yeah. And it's
around this time that you know, after Marston dies, after
the war, she really becomes Wonder Woman, really becomes this
more docile figure. You know, she loses a lot of
(11:23):
her powers and it's instead focused on you know, her
boyfriends and and clothes, and she's in all these smart
suits and whatnot. And I'm jumping forward a little bit.
But after you know, she goes through all this stuff
and she's worried about clothes and she gets makeovers and
all that stuff. She had a very powerful ally in
the women's movement who said, Wonder Woman needs her powers back. Yeah,
(11:47):
Gloria Steinham and her cohorts put Wonder Woman intentionally, very
intentionally on the first cover of Miss magazine that came
out in nineteen seventy two, and it's an image of
Wonder Woman and it says Wonder Woman for President. And
they actually lobbied the comic book to bring Wonder Woman's
(12:09):
powers back because she had been there. There was a
story arc where she is stripped of her powers, and
like you said, she really just cares about trying to
get Steve Trevor, her lame boyfriend too, and I stay
lame just because he's kind of like yeah. And uh So,
in nineteen seventy three, the comic book finally capitulated and
(12:31):
they were like glory sign of just leave my office please,
and they restored her power. And but still ever since then,
she's kind of been on rocky ground. I mean, there
was the amazing nineteen seventies Wonder Woman live action series
on television starring Linda Carter, who I remember watching that
(12:52):
on TV Land when I was a kid and I
was I was a big fan, and I really, I
really wanted that outfit of her, such tiny outfit that
she would run around in. I was not I was
not a Wonder Woman watcher. I don't even remember being
that aware of Wonder Woman. I was. I was obsessed
with Superman, though I had a capet. Yeah, there was
(13:12):
a PPS recently came out with a documentary on Wonder
Woman and also female superheroes or the lack thereof, and
they interviewed Linda Carter at one point and she talked
about how even though the show was pretty hokey, it
was significant at the time for portraying on TV a
female superhero. And that was also around the time that
(13:34):
you have the Bionic Woman coming out and Charlie's Angels,
and there was all of this movement in the seventies
that was kind of flash in the pan. Because even today,
with all of the comic movie adaptations that we've had,
Wonder Woman cannot seem to get on the big screen,
which I think is unfortunate. At first, Josh Wheaton was
(13:56):
supposed to do a wonder Woman movie and I don't
know what happened, but seems like production has been shuddered.
And during a Reddit asked me anything session with the
go to d C comics adaptation guy, the the screenwriter
David Escoire. He said, in response to someone asked him
why Wonder Woman had not made that leap to a movie,
(14:17):
he said, quote, I think Wonder Woman is a very
difficult character to crack, more difficult than Superman, who is
also more difficult than Batman. And a lot of people
in Hollywood believe that it's hard to do a big
action movie with a female lead. Now he disagreed with that,
but that is still the state of affairs. So the
fact that wonder Woman debuted in there had been some
(14:40):
other female heroes in comics, but none like wonder Woman,
none who had the biggest impact of Amazonian Princess Diana Prunes. Yeah,
and and Marston really wanted her to have an effect.
I mean, like we mentioned, you know, he said, let's
give this good message to kids that girls can be powerful.
And he really saw a vacuum. He saw a really
(15:01):
a hole that needed to be filled as far as
getting a female role model out there, and he said, listen,
not even girls want to be girls so long as
our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. So let's
make girls be proud to be girls. Now, what I
would propose for a movie? What I would like to see. Yes,
I would love to see a wonder Woman movie. But
(15:23):
I say take it bigger, Hollywood, and you do an
Avengers like ensemble with not only Wonder Woman but also
old school female crime fighters, Phantom Lady, missmask Red Tornado
who apparently, at one point in one comic book, whipped
herself into her tornado to clean the house. Hey, some
(15:43):
people take adderall some people turn into tornadoes and people
have room bas and also Lady Look and Spider Widow.
I would go see that in the Heartbury. Let's have
a women's Avengers. Can it not be a Michael Bay movie? Please? Well, Josh,
Josh Weeden was the one who supposed to do Wonder Woman.
To come on back, Joss, I got an idea for you.
(16:03):
I will sell it to you for lots of millions.
Well he's kind of yeah, he is busy making the
Avengers too, he just got done making much ado about
nothing over the course of two weeks in his house. Wow. Yeah,
it was his version of a vacation between Avengers one
and Avengers Too. So maybe he wants and in the
next ten years, when he's done making Avengers movies, maybe
(16:26):
he can turn his attention to Wonder Woman again. And
if that ever happens, though, if we ever can see
hopefully Wonder Woman in theaters, we have William Moulton Marson
to thank for it, who had some kind of cookie
ideas about feminism. It was a bit extreme, um, and
there were some ideas about bondage. A lot of people
(16:48):
like that that one author worth them. We're very concerned
about the lasso and the bondage. Although you know, it
was Marston's point, like he's not going to use violence.
You know, she's not going to be shooting people in
the face. No, no, no, not and then he bombs off.
She's going to last at them and be chained up. Yeah.
And and part of the reason why Wonder Woman was
often tied up was not to just bind her down
(17:10):
so that she was a submissive, but also to show
her breaking the chains, breaking the ropes, demonstrating her feminine
muscular strength, right, yeah, all and all inspired by Elizabeth
and all of his partners. Yeah, and I just want
to know more about their polyamorous relationship and like nineteen thirty. Yeah,
(17:32):
And it's funny to kind of think because Elizabeth was
so like whatever, it's kind of funny to think, like
how William Bridge the subject? Like, I have this student here,
she's like whatever? To bring her home? What's her name?
What's her name? Well, Pimento alive, I don't know, Martini
bring her over? But no, but still that they I
think they pretty much lived the rest of their lives together.
(17:54):
The kids, so an unlikely friendship. Maybe we should do
a YouTube video on hell list it and olive all
of us. Also the name of a cat I had,
so now I'm thinking of cats. And with that, right
to us about wonder Woman. Wonder Woman fans out there,
let us know all of your thoughts. Did you watch
Wonder Woman when you were a kid? Is wonder Woman
(18:16):
in inspiration to you? If there is a wonder Woman movie,
who should play her? I am a brunette just saying
can I be a sidekick? Yeah? Do you want? You
could be red Tornado whipping around, I would have an
excuse to tie my hair. Read again, there we go. Well.
Our email addresses mom Stuff at Discovery dot com. You
(18:37):
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and hit
us up on Facebook. Not back to our letters. Okay,
I have a letter here from Bernadette about our Fitspo episode.
She said, I'm myself am a fit blogger, and I
personally find it can be both motivating and damaging. But
(18:58):
the hardcore motivation and examples you cited on the podcast,
pain is reward or something to that effect are slogans
that have been part of the gym culture for a
very long time. Fits FO to me seems like a
feminization of jim culture. It is a way to encourage
women to lift heavy and see the benefits of it,
whereas for years most women have been and most unfortunately
still are afraid of bulking up from lifting. I agree
(19:22):
can have an unhealthy side to it, but it can
be extremely empowering from a feminist perspective if you have
media savvy goggles on. I agree. Granadette Fitzpo personally helped
me by realizing there is a community of lady lifters
out there and that trying something that is traditionally male
dominated wasn't as scary as I thought. Any who, that's
just my two cents. Keep up the good work, ladies, Bernadette.
(19:44):
I agree with you. I I think you know, getting
women to break out of their comfort zone and get
fit and get healthy is great. I do worry about
those people who don't, however, have their media savvy goggles
on like you do. So thank you for writing. Well,
I've got one here from Ryan. And Ryan I think
we've read one of your emails before, so gold stark
(20:05):
for you, um, but he took a little more critical
approach with the Fitzbo episode, and we have gotten a
little bit of criticism of being so negative towards fitz
Bo and those extreme messages in particular that we saw
in the disembodied uh abs that you see over and
(20:28):
over again. But Ryan writes here we go. He says,
I support a grassroots effort to fight eating disorders and
fine thinspo harmful, and if these social sites willingly censor
on their own accord, I applaud them. But the comment
you made about Twitter not censoring seems ridiculous to me.
How many billion tweets are there a day? Blame culture
(20:49):
not the free media it uses to express itself, and
as to Fitsbo, it is admittedly messy, but you can't
get to a new place in any area of your life, physical, educational, occupational,
with cetera. Without first being dissatisfied with where you are.
Some people need affirmation motivation and others need a drill instructor.
I work out or run four to six times per
week and need both kinds of inspiration from time to
(21:12):
time to keep on track with my goals, and the
same goes for me at work. And so he asked,
where are, for example, the cultural elites fighting the porn industry,
or who's fighting all the social sites for posts about
being drunk or drinking heavily when alcohol causes thousands of
deaths every year, to which I say, there are lots
of people fighting the porn industry for the overwhelming quantity
(21:34):
of glossy, glamorous shots of nasty food we have in
this inarguably obese culture. A few pictures of people with
self control and determination shouldn't make us think that the
sky is following. At some point we need to realize
that some people are examples for the rest of us, physically, emotionally, athletically, mentally, professional, relationally,
and that's okay, he says. Ps I dare a media
(21:55):
person to walk up to one of the many CrossFit
female athletes who's images are online or another advertising and
tell them that they're surgically enhanced or air brushed. My
former personal trainer wasn't, and I'd be fearful to accuse
her of that. And to that last point though, with
the air brushing, it's not accusing the person, the athlete,
(22:17):
the woman of air brushing herself. It's more of if
a picture has taken up her and put in an advertisement,
there is a very good chance and that she will
be photoshop correct. And that's just I mean, that's for anything. Yeah.
I mean, my my good friend Emily is bigging across
bit and that girl is ripped, and I'm glad I'm
(22:39):
on her side and she's on my side because I
don't want her to beat me up. Um, But yeah,
I mean as yeah, I mean, we're not accusing the
people themselves, right, And I completely understand and I think
that we made that clear in that podcast that there
is good fitness inspiration out there. There is absolutely nothing
wrong with taking encouragement from more devational slogans and images
(23:03):
and all of that. It's more when you just I'm serious,
people just put fits bow or fitspiration into Pinterests and
scroll for a while and see what you come up with.
Because it is for as much healthy stuff is out there,
there's a lot of unhealthy stuff out there, and all
we are advocating for is what if the what did
(23:24):
Burnadette call it? Putting on media savvy goggles? Correct? So
we appreciate all of your comment so positive negative otherwise,
because we wanted to start a discussion and I think
we did, so keep it coming. Mom Stuff at discovery
dot com is where you can send your letters. You
can also comment on Facebook or messages there, or tweet
(23:44):
us at Mom's Stuff podcast, and you can also follow
us on Tumbler at stuff Mom Never Told You dot
tumbler dot com and watch us as well. We come
out with a new video every single Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Over on YouTube. It's YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom
Never Told You. Go on over now and subscribe for
(24:06):
more on this and boutsands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You From House top
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. It's
the fourth and final installment of the Boys of Summer
are Little June series that we're doing highlighting dudes who
(00:24):
did cool stuff for ladies, and today we're talking about
William Moulton Marston, who invented Perfect Doctor to Wonder Woman. Yeah,
this guy is fascinating. He is a regular old renaissance
man in no traditional sense of the word, not at all,
(00:45):
and he was quite a smarty pants. So who was
William Malton Marrison before he invented Wonder Woman because it
was one of the last big things he did before
he died. Um, But he was a Harvard trained lawyer
and side collegists who invented not only Wonder Woman, but
also the first functional lie detector polygraph. Yeah. He created
(01:08):
the DISC model for emotions. If you've ever had to
go on a terrible, terrible work staff development out into
a DISC class, which is kind of like a Briggs
Myers test. Yeah, it's like a personality test where you
determine if you're like, what are they stand for? A dominant?
You know, if you're introverted, submissive, or whatever. Basically like,
if you think you're introverted, good job, you probably are.
(01:30):
Um So anyway, he also authored self help books and
then in the forties created Wonder Woman, Yeah, which is
such a strange grab bag of things too, but he
based her somewhat on his lovely wife, Elizabeth Holloway, so
(01:51):
uh he married her in nineteen fifteen after graduating from Harvard.
She had attended Mount Holyoke, where she got a master's
in psychology, and she blew off going to any more
women's colleges because when her husband went to Harvard, she
ended up uh going to Boston University to get her
law degree, and that was because she would not have
(02:12):
been allowed to go study law at Harvard because it
was boys only, and so Harvard was like, hey, well
you can go to our sister school, Radcliffe, and Holloway
was like, no, no, I'm not going to go to
a to some what did she say, a place? Oh?
She dismissed it as quote lovely law for ladies, which Halloway,
come on, Radcliffe is a very good school. But nevertheless,
she still went to Boston University, paid her own way
(02:36):
through law school and became one of only three women
to graduate from b law in nineteen eighteen. So Holloway
was a groundbreaking lady for her time. Yeah, And just
as just as she dismissed a lovely law for lady,
she also dismissed the entire women's lib movement when it
was in full swing in the seventies. She said, what's
(02:56):
all the fuss about? So she she was a tough cookie.
She was a tough cookie. Which I'm kind of raising
my eyebrow to her saying, what's all the fuss about?
But maybe it's just because she was doing all this
stuff in nineteen eighteen on her own outside of kind
of like a throwback to Margaret Thatcher who had the
same attitude exactly, what's all the false? Well, what I
(03:18):
made a little bit of a fuss about health, Caroline?
How about this for a transition? Was finding out that
William Molton Marston in the early twentieth century. Yes, he
was married to Elizabeth Holloway, but they also were in
a living polyamorous relationship with partner Olive Byrne, who was
later Olive Richard. And he he was married to Elizabeth,
(03:42):
and he had kids, two kids with Elizabeth and two
with Ali and Even after William Molton Marston died, they
continued to live together and raise their kids together. Yeah,
Marston met Olive in the twenties when she was a
student while he was teaching at Tough University, and she,
as well as Elizabeth, later helped him with some of
his psychology and uh polygraph research. And just like Elizabeth
(04:06):
and her tough cookie attitude probably served as inspiration for
Wonder Woman's like rare you know, go get him attitude,
Olive served as the inspiration for her look, with her
black hair, blue eyes and the heavy bracelets she wore
on each wrist. Now, leading up to the creation of
(04:26):
Wonder Woman, it was really Williams interest in psychology that
set the stage for it, because that was what got
him um thinking about how to determine whether a person
is lying or not, and he connected that to blood
pressure rising, and that's how he developed his crude lie
detector while he was at Harvard, and then from there
(04:46):
he studied the concepts of will in a person's sense
of power and the effects of those things on personality
and human behavior, which led to him developing that d
i C. The disc program Um and all of the
sort of snowballs into his concept for wonder Woman and
the need for a strong female character, because obviously he's
(05:11):
a guy who's very interested in human nature. Been one
of the facets of that was his belief that women
were essentially morally superior to men. He truly believed that
at some point our society would become a matriarchy because
in a similar way that the temperance movement was led
(05:34):
by women, because there was this notion that women were
by nature better able to abstain from alcohol. He thought
that by women's nature, we would be better able to
I guess um, make up for men's ruthlessness and their
violent nature and all of that. Right. Yeah. His beliefs
(05:55):
about women as leaders were that eventually we would take
over the whole rule of the country politically, economically, and
in seven he told the New York Times that we
would within the next one hundred years, so by seven
so get ready we would have a nation of amazons.
And the psychological rather than the physical sense. He said
that women are less susceptible to the negative traits of
(06:17):
aggression and acquisitiveness, and we could use our allure to
control men, So we would literally take control in every
possible way. He had an interesting take on feminism and
women and power roles. Yes, and he clearly thought that
there was a connection between not just what what we
(06:39):
could do with our brains, but also with our bodies too,
which is probably you know why Wonder Woman is quite
an attractive lady. But he saw a lot of power
in the medium of comic books, which are really popular
at the time. In three he wrote in The American
Scholar that the picture story fan he cuts loose the
(07:01):
hampering debris of art and artifice and touches the tender
spots of universal human desires and aspirations. And in that
way comics speak without qualm or sophistication, to the innermost
ears of the wishful self. So he thought that by
developing the strong female comic book hero, that it could
(07:23):
be a powerful tool for I guess delivering his message
that women would the girls would, in the words of Beyonce,
run the world at one point, right, I mean, he
he said, look, all of you academics out there, I'm
one of you, but we've got to put our big
boy panties on and accept the fact that pictures tell stories,
(07:45):
especially to children, much more effectively than words do, and so, hey,
if you're going to deliver a message to these kids
in these comic books, that might as well be a
good one, right, that women should rule the world. And
he he kept, you know, writing his opinions, and he
voiced opinion in Family Circle magazine about comics, and was
subsequently offered a position on the editorial advisory board of
(08:06):
the d C and All American Lines, and he got
encouragement from Max Gaines, the head of DC, to create
a female comic hero, and so in nineteen forty one,
Wonder Woman was introduced in an All Star Comics and
he wrote her under his not so clever pseudonym of
(08:26):
Charles Moulton, so he just switched out his first name,
um and for comic buffs out there, Wonder Woman, ak
Diana Prince, came out in the number eight issue of
All Star Comics, and she came with a lasso of
truth bulletproof bracelets in an invisible plane, and she also
(08:47):
had a really lame boyfriend, Steve Trevor. But the background
of Wonder Woman was that she was actually this Amazonian
princess and there were no men on the island at all,
and World War who was going on, and somehow Steve
Trevor's plane crashed on the Amazonian island, and so Diana
(09:09):
Prince took it upon herself to save Steve Trevor. And
then also, I guess go in because a lot of
comics at the time were also very pro America and
pro Allies and all of that with the war, and
so there were lots of wartime story arcs where she
would go and fight against the Axis powers as well. Right, Yeah,
(09:31):
she was sent by Aphrodite because of course, why not
to help the American war effort and to spread the
Amazon's message of love, peace and sexually quality. She was
a hippie, really powerful, hot pants swearing hippie, that's right.
But in seven, just six years after Wonder Woman debut,
Marston dies and after that, Wonder Woman really suffered. And
(09:55):
in nineteen fifty four there was this guy named Dr
fred Rick Wortham who published a book called The Seduction
of the Innocent, and essentially it's set off massive fear
about how comics were just destroying children's brains, that it
was too violent, they were too sexual. It reminds me
(10:16):
a lot of debates that have come up around the
impact of video games on kids developments, but Wortham got
people so worked up over it that a comics code
was developed to crack down on the content. And in
Seduction of the Innocent, he called Wonder Woman a cruel,
phallic woman, and he says that she is the lesbian
(10:38):
counterpart of Batman, and the homosexual connotation of Wonder Woman
is psychologically unmistakable. The Psychiatric quarterly deplored in an editorial
the appearance of an eminent child therapist as the implied
endorser of a series which portrays extremely sadistic hatred of
all males in a framework which is plainly lesbian, plain
(11:00):
plainly lesbian. Yeah, because speaking of Batman, he was worried that,
you know, Batman and Robin had a homeolerotic relationship, that
all these comics we're trying to turn kids into just
a legion of violent homosexuals. I guess. Yeah. And it's
around this time that you know, after Marston dies, after
the war, she really becomes Wonder Woman, really becomes this
more docile figure. You know, she loses a lot of
(11:23):
her powers and it's instead focused on you know, her
boyfriends and and clothes, and she's in all these smart
suits and whatnot. And I'm jumping forward a little bit.
But after you know, she goes through all this stuff
and she's worried about clothes and she gets makeovers and
all that stuff. She had a very powerful ally in
the women's movement who said, Wonder Woman needs her powers back. Yeah,
(11:47):
Gloria Steinham and her cohorts put Wonder Woman intentionally, very
intentionally on the first cover of Miss magazine that came
out in nineteen seventy two, and it's an image of
Wonder Woman and it says Wonder Woman for President. And
they actually lobbied the comic book to bring Wonder Woman's
(12:09):
powers back because she had been there. There was a
story arc where she is stripped of her powers, and
like you said, she really just cares about trying to
get Steve Trevor, her lame boyfriend too, and I stay
lame just because he's kind of like yeah. And uh So,
in nineteen seventy three, the comic book finally capitulated and
(12:31):
they were like glory sign of just leave my office please,
and they restored her power. And but still ever since then,
she's kind of been on rocky ground. I mean, there
was the amazing nineteen seventies Wonder Woman live action series
on television starring Linda Carter, who I remember watching that
(12:52):
on TV Land when I was a kid and I
was I was a big fan, and I really, I
really wanted that outfit of her, such tiny outfit that
she would run around in. I was not I was
not a Wonder Woman watcher. I don't even remember being
that aware of Wonder Woman. I was. I was obsessed
with Superman, though I had a capet. Yeah, there was
(13:12):
a PPS recently came out with a documentary on Wonder
Woman and also female superheroes or the lack thereof, and
they interviewed Linda Carter at one point and she talked
about how even though the show was pretty hokey, it
was significant at the time for portraying on TV a
female superhero. And that was also around the time that
(13:34):
you have the Bionic Woman coming out and Charlie's Angels,
and there was all of this movement in the seventies
that was kind of flash in the pan. Because even today,
with all of the comic movie adaptations that we've had,
Wonder Woman cannot seem to get on the big screen,
which I think is unfortunate. At first, Josh Wheaton was
(13:56):
supposed to do a wonder Woman movie and I don't
know what happened, but seems like production has been shuddered.
And during a Reddit asked me anything session with the
go to d C comics adaptation guy, the the screenwriter
David Escoire. He said, in response to someone asked him
why Wonder Woman had not made that leap to a movie,
(14:17):
he said, quote, I think Wonder Woman is a very
difficult character to crack, more difficult than Superman, who is
also more difficult than Batman. And a lot of people
in Hollywood believe that it's hard to do a big
action movie with a female lead. Now he disagreed with that,
but that is still the state of affairs. So the
fact that wonder Woman debuted in there had been some
(14:40):
other female heroes in comics, but none like wonder Woman,
none who had the biggest impact of Amazonian Princess Diana Prunes. Yeah,
and and Marston really wanted her to have an effect.
I mean, like we mentioned, you know, he said, let's
give this good message to kids that girls can be powerful.
And he really saw a vacuum. He saw a really
(15:01):
a hole that needed to be filled as far as
getting a female role model out there, and he said, listen,
not even girls want to be girls so long as
our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. So let's
make girls be proud to be girls. Now, what I
would propose for a movie? What I would like to see. Yes,
I would love to see a wonder Woman movie. But
(15:23):
I say take it bigger, Hollywood, and you do an
Avengers like ensemble with not only Wonder Woman but also
old school female crime fighters, Phantom Lady, missmask Red Tornado
who apparently, at one point in one comic book, whipped
herself into her tornado to clean the house. Hey, some
(15:43):
people take adderall some people turn into tornadoes and people
have room bas and also Lady Look and Spider Widow.
I would go see that in the Heartbury. Let's have
a women's Avengers. Can it not be a Michael Bay movie? Please? Well, Josh,
Josh Weeden was the one who supposed to do Wonder Woman.
To come on back, Joss, I got an idea for you.
(16:03):
I will sell it to you for lots of millions.
Well he's kind of yeah, he is busy making the
Avengers too, he just got done making much ado about
nothing over the course of two weeks in his house. Wow. Yeah,
it was his version of a vacation between Avengers one
and Avengers Too. So maybe he wants and in the
next ten years, when he's done making Avengers movies, maybe
(16:26):
he can turn his attention to Wonder Woman again. And
if that ever happens, though, if we ever can see
hopefully Wonder Woman in theaters, we have William Moulton Marson
to thank for it, who had some kind of cookie
ideas about feminism. It was a bit extreme, um, and
there were some ideas about bondage. A lot of people
(16:48):
like that that one author worth them. We're very concerned
about the lasso and the bondage. Although you know, it
was Marston's point, like he's not going to use violence.
You know, she's not going to be shooting people in
the face. No, no, no, not and then he bombs off.
She's going to last at them and be chained up. Yeah.
And and part of the reason why Wonder Woman was
often tied up was not to just bind her down
(17:10):
so that she was a submissive, but also to show
her breaking the chains, breaking the ropes, demonstrating her feminine
muscular strength, right, yeah, all and all inspired by Elizabeth
and all of his partners. Yeah, and I just want
to know more about their polyamorous relationship and like nineteen thirty. Yeah,
(17:32):
And it's funny to kind of think because Elizabeth was
so like whatever, it's kind of funny to think, like
how William Bridge the subject? Like, I have this student here,
she's like whatever? To bring her home? What's her name?
What's her name? Well, Pimento alive, I don't know, Martini
bring her over? But no, but still that they I
think they pretty much lived the rest of their lives together.
(17:54):
The kids, so an unlikely friendship. Maybe we should do
a YouTube video on hell list it and olive all
of us. Also the name of a cat I had,
so now I'm thinking of cats. And with that, right
to us about wonder Woman. Wonder Woman fans out there,
let us know all of your thoughts. Did you watch
Wonder Woman when you were a kid? Is wonder Woman
(18:16):
in inspiration to you? If there is a wonder Woman movie,
who should play her? I am a brunette just saying
can I be a sidekick? Yeah? Do you want? You
could be red Tornado whipping around, I would have an
excuse to tie my hair. Read again, there we go. Well.
Our email addresses mom Stuff at Discovery dot com. You
(18:37):
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and hit
us up on Facebook. Not back to our letters. Okay,
I have a letter here from Bernadette about our Fitspo episode.
She said, I'm myself am a fit blogger, and I
personally find it can be both motivating and damaging. But
(18:58):
the hardcore motivation and examples you cited on the podcast,
pain is reward or something to that effect are slogans
that have been part of the gym culture for a
very long time. Fits FO to me seems like a
feminization of jim culture. It is a way to encourage
women to lift heavy and see the benefits of it,
whereas for years most women have been and most unfortunately
still are afraid of bulking up from lifting. I agree
(19:22):
can have an unhealthy side to it, but it can
be extremely empowering from a feminist perspective if you have
media savvy goggles on. I agree. Granadette Fitzpo personally helped
me by realizing there is a community of lady lifters
out there and that trying something that is traditionally male
dominated wasn't as scary as I thought. Any who, that's
just my two cents. Keep up the good work, ladies, Bernadette.
(19:44):
I agree with you. I I think you know, getting
women to break out of their comfort zone and get
fit and get healthy is great. I do worry about
those people who don't, however, have their media savvy goggles
on like you do. So thank you for writing. Well,
I've got one here from Ryan. And Ryan I think
we've read one of your emails before, so gold stark
(20:05):
for you, um, but he took a little more critical
approach with the Fitzbo episode, and we have gotten a
little bit of criticism of being so negative towards fitz
Bo and those extreme messages in particular that we saw
in the disembodied uh abs that you see over and
(20:28):
over again. But Ryan writes here we go. He says,
I support a grassroots effort to fight eating disorders and
fine thinspo harmful, and if these social sites willingly censor
on their own accord, I applaud them. But the comment
you made about Twitter not censoring seems ridiculous to me.
How many billion tweets are there a day? Blame culture
(20:49):
not the free media it uses to express itself, and
as to Fitsbo, it is admittedly messy, but you can't
get to a new place in any area of your life, physical, educational, occupational,
with cetera. Without first being dissatisfied with where you are.
Some people need affirmation motivation and others need a drill instructor.
I work out or run four to six times per
week and need both kinds of inspiration from time to
(21:12):
time to keep on track with my goals, and the
same goes for me at work. And so he asked,
where are, for example, the cultural elites fighting the porn industry,
or who's fighting all the social sites for posts about
being drunk or drinking heavily when alcohol causes thousands of
deaths every year, to which I say, there are lots
of people fighting the porn industry for the overwhelming quantity
(21:34):
of glossy, glamorous shots of nasty food we have in
this inarguably obese culture. A few pictures of people with
self control and determination shouldn't make us think that the
sky is following. At some point we need to realize
that some people are examples for the rest of us, physically, emotionally, athletically, mentally, professional, relationally,
and that's okay, he says. Ps I dare a media
(21:55):
person to walk up to one of the many CrossFit
female athletes who's images are online or another advertising and
tell them that they're surgically enhanced or air brushed. My
former personal trainer wasn't, and I'd be fearful to accuse
her of that. And to that last point though, with
the air brushing, it's not accusing the person, the athlete,
(22:17):
the woman of air brushing herself. It's more of if
a picture has taken up her and put in an advertisement,
there is a very good chance and that she will
be photoshop correct. And that's just I mean, that's for anything. Yeah.
I mean, my my good friend Emily is bigging across
bit and that girl is ripped, and I'm glad I'm
(22:39):
on her side and she's on my side because I
don't want her to beat me up. Um, But yeah,
I mean as yeah, I mean, we're not accusing the
people themselves, right, And I completely understand and I think
that we made that clear in that podcast that there
is good fitness inspiration out there. There is absolutely nothing
wrong with taking encouragement from more devational slogans and images
(23:03):
and all of that. It's more when you just I'm serious,
people just put fits bow or fitspiration into Pinterests and
scroll for a while and see what you come up with.
Because it is for as much healthy stuff is out there,
there's a lot of unhealthy stuff out there, and all
we are advocating for is what if the what did
(23:24):
Burnadette call it? Putting on media savvy goggles? Correct? So
we appreciate all of your comment so positive negative otherwise,
because we wanted to start a discussion and I think
we did, so keep it coming. Mom Stuff at discovery
dot com is where you can send your letters. You
can also comment on Facebook or messages there, or tweet
(23:44):
us at Mom's Stuff podcast, and you can also follow
us on Tumbler at stuff Mom Never Told You dot
tumbler dot com and watch us as well. We come
out with a new video every single Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Over on YouTube. It's YouTube dot com slash stuff Mom
Never Told You. Go on over now and subscribe for
(24:06):
more on this and boutsands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com
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