November 24, 2010 • 19 mins
In part two of their series, Molly and Cristen take a look at some famous female superheroes, starting with the most iconic female comic book character of all: Wonder Woman.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From House top Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen Christ and
this is part two of our Female Superheroes podcast. Indeed
(00:23):
it is. And um, I thought i'd cheer with you.
One of my most embarrassing moments. Oh, thank god, Yes, small,
it's embarrassing moments. I've been waiting for so long, you know,
And I don't get embarrassed that often, but this was
probably the worst time I've ever fell embarrassed. And maybe
it'll be nothing to you guys, but I was pretty embarrassed.
So I'm five, and I think Nickelodeon used to run
(00:45):
reruns of the old wonder Woman show with Linda Carter
from the seventies, and so one time when I was
out on the playground, I was kind of pretending to
be a wonder Woman in my head, like I wasn't
playing superheroes with anyone else, you know, I don't remember
what I was doing, but all of a sudden, I
was like, Okay, it's time to turn to Wonder Woman,
and uh in the show, she would do that by
spinning around really fast. So I went under this like
(01:08):
enclosed slide area where I thought I had some privacy,
and I started my spin and I was spinning. I mean,
in my head, I was I was converting into to
a powerful, powerful superhero when two boys walked in while
in the middle of my spinning, and it just I mean,
if girls spend all the time. I don't know why
(01:29):
I was so embarrassed, but I felt like they could
see into my soul and know that I was trying
to turn into Wonder Woman and that they were just
mocking me in their heads. No words were exchanged because
I ran out very quickly. Oh they didn't even they
didn't even directly make fun of you. I don't think
they haven't got the chance, because as soon as I
saw them, I was like, ah, so they might not
have even noticed you spinning. There was there was some
(01:49):
noticing of spinning, because I who knows how long I
spun with them standing there. Yeah, that's true. It is
easy to get swept away. But the fact that I
was just spinning around and circled by myself under slide
and and got caught in the act really embarrassed me
for a long time. I think I stopped playing superheroes
after that. Well, Molly, I think that now is time
to heal those emotional scarves by you know, really talking
(02:14):
about Wonder Woman and all of the positive things that
she does represent. Because you know what, Molly, even though
you didn't turn to Wonder Woman that day, you know,
maybe maybe there still a chance. Yes, which is why
I want, I want you to do something. I'm kids, Yes,
I'm I'm going to just spin myself around the chair
and my voice will come around the microphone every every
(02:35):
few words. Um, but yes. The second half of our
Female Superhero podcast deals with the female superheroes themselves. In
part one, we kind of talked about how women in
superhero comics don't usually farewell. No, they tendn't die. Yeah,
they often meet untimely deaths, and a lot of times
when there's a lot of violence involved, it's a lot
(02:56):
of very sexualized violence becauseies women are are generally not
wearing many clothes to begin with, and they have very
pin uppy types of figures. So all in all, not
not that great of a life for comic book superheroes.
But at the same time, there are some standout names
(03:17):
that we really didn't talk about in the last episode
that we need to shine a light on, most notably
wonder Woman, because Wonder Woman was really the face of
second way feminism when she debuted on the cover of
the very first edition of Miss magazine. Um and we
think of her as really embodying you know, uh, strength
(03:40):
and power. And there's this long awaited wonder Woman movie
that that everyone's hoping for. But I think that it's
interesting because in when when something like a female superhero
dies and expectedly all these female comic book readers coming
out of the woodwork and say, I finally had someone
to relate to in this comic and then you killed her.
And I think it'd be interesting to see what longstanding
(04:01):
female heroes we have in comics, And of course wonder
Woman is the most notable. Yeah, I mean, wonder Woman's
really kind of it, and she was created specifically to
appeal to girls and to serve as a positive role model.
Because in the last episode we made the point that
since comic book readership is largely male, it does make
(04:22):
sense that a lot of the superheroes are these male
figures that they can idealize. But a psychologist named William
Marson said, you know what, little girls needed a hero too, right,
So he created her in nine and Morrison is quite
a character he is. He called himself a feminist, but
it's not a definition of feminism that I tend to
(04:43):
agree with, because it's all about how women are not
just equal but superior to men, and um, we're all
about advocating gender equality, I think with our forms of feminism, Christen,
but he's like, no, I'm going to teach the world
that eventually our country is going to turn back into
a matriarchy or women have all the power and men
do their bidding right. And this whole power dynamic comes
(05:08):
through a lot in early Wonder Woman comics, and I
didn't really think about it at all until, um, until
I started reading about how Marston in his personal life
was very, very intrigued by uh, submission, domination types of
sexual activities. He was actually in a polyamorous relationship and
(05:30):
had um to two wives, and within the context of
that relationship, he was also very interested in sexual bondage,
and so he instill a lot of that imagery into
the Wonder Woman comics, and so what do you know.
Wonder Woman has a truth lasso that she ties men
(05:54):
up with. Wonder Woman herself often gets tied up. Uh
you guys, can you know take it to mayor Well,
you know it's interesting in that laughs makes men tell
the truth. And everyone was like, oh, man, what a
great weapon for a woman to be able to get
a man to tell the truth. Interesting factoid about Old Marson,
He invented the modern day lie detector test, So I
(06:15):
mean he is very interested in truth and ways of
tying you up to get to the truth. So right
around when Wonder Woman is invented, there's also the rise
of other types of super heroines that are collectively known
as the Debutantes. For instance, we have the Phantom Lady,
who came on the scene in the late forties, and
(06:37):
she's sort of like a female Batman. She's wealthy, but
she doesn't have that much to do, so she fights
crime and her spare time. Uh. And you also have
other characters like Missmask or the Red Tornado or the
Spider Widow. Spider Wodo was kind of interesting because she
didn't really even like fighting crime. She was just wealthy
(06:59):
and bore and only did it if she really had to.
It was kind of forced upon her to fight crime.
So and the information about these early superheroes comes from
Mike Madrid who wrote a book called The Supergirl's Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy,
and the History of the Comic Book Heroines, and he
said that these early comic book heroines, he he equated
(07:21):
them to Paris Hilton. He said, essentially in their daily
lives and you know, they are rich, They've got lots
of money. He said that they would kind of be
painted as really shallow and ditzy, and you would never
guess that they were the ones who fought crime. But
he said that he kind of fought that they were
early feminists in a gender equality sense because, uh, when
they put on their costmo around their mask, that was
(07:42):
when they got to be truly free and truly equal
to the crime fighting men. And it was in their
daily lives that they had a lot of obstacles against them,
not you know, when they were facing bad guys. And
he said that, you know, it was fun because they're
really brainy and witty and funny and um, then it
was when they had to go back into their normal
lives they were sort of the uninteresting stay at home
(08:03):
boring types, right, And originally Wonder Woman wasn't even drawn
as a sexy character. Sure she wore the hot pants
and tube top basically, but she she was no She
was no Shena, Queen of the Jungle or a Phantom Lady.
You know, we were other other super heroines associated with
these good girl characters that we talked about in the
(08:27):
last podcast, and that was because she was meant to
appeal to girls. But then after World War Two there's
kind of this decline with the role of females in
comic books, and since Wonder Woman was meant to appeal
to girls, she wasn't drawn like other good girl characters
we talked about in the last episode, like Shena, Queen
(08:48):
of the Jungle or Phantom Lady, who were very voluptuous.
Even though a Wonder Woman did wear hot pants and
a tube top, she was intentionally drawn as not as overtly.
See now, let's talk a little bit about Wonder Woman's
origins because this is part of what changes over the years.
And while she was drun for little girls, we did
read one article the notes that even though she was
(09:10):
drunk for little girls, about nine of one woman's total
readership has always been male, so I think that might
play a factor. And when she gets watered down, but
we'll we'll decide for ourselves. This time goes on. She
first appears in ninety one, and she was an Amazon
princess from the immortal race of female warriors from Greek mythology.
She lived on an island where men could never set foot.
(09:30):
And the whole reason she comes to our country is
because some man lands nearby. So she's going to take
him back to America. And while she's there, she's gonna
teach some some lessons about female empowerment. Uh, since she
did have this, you know, enlightened upbringing with no men.
So the early episodes with One Woman are all about
the Amazonian history, the unique super superpowers, and um, there's
(09:54):
a lot of like we mentioned before, the bondage and
there's a lot of um as one one psychologist put it,
lesbian under tones. And that's when we started getting hild
because this psychologist comes along and writes an article called
Seduction of the Innocent. Yeah, with this paper, he was
basically saying that Wonder Woman was a terrible influence on
(10:14):
children and that she needed to be toned down, and
Wonder Woman a k a. Diana Prince was toned down.
She was lassoed, if you will. By the Comics Code
of nineteen fifty five. It said, hey, you know what,
all of this, this bondage imagery, all of these somewhat
would they perceived to be lesbian undertones. Gotta go, Gotta go,
(10:37):
because not only are the girls getting the wrong message,
the psychologist Frederick Wortham thought that the boys were getting
the wrong message too. He said that boys found Wonder
Woman terrifying, and we can't have a terrifying female figure
on the loose. She's just too strong. She's just too strong.
She'll lasso us and and take away all our powers.
So from then on we see women. They have to
(10:57):
draw more realistically according to the Comics Code. But all
the you know, aside from Wonder Woman, who does get
significantly watered down, they don't really introduce any more new
strong characters. They've got Catwoman, but she's sort of, you know,
more of a bad person who just Batman kind of
likes her, but she's kind of wishy washy. And Supergirl,
(11:18):
who's a female version of Superman, but she was more
of his assistant and helper than equal um. Alasta Girl
gets a lot of credit because she was the strongest
member of the Doom Patrol, but you know, they're always
part of these teams, and sometimes when a female hero
was put on a team, she's the weakest member of
the team. But Alasta Girl was not, though she was
(11:40):
one of the standout characters because she often saved the day.
She could turn into this giant elastic giant, giant elastic giant.
Yeah and uh, and she could hulk smash all of
this stuff. It's pretty She was pretty cool and she
has a pretty cool outfit. I gotta say, are now
(12:01):
in the seventies when we've got second way feminism. Some
of the writers try to incorporate these ideas into their
their female heroes, but it really just kind of makes
the female hero stock characters who run around saying this
is really blatant, like female power, things that are kind
of insulting. I think when you look back on them
in hindsight, they make them very uninteresting characters because they're
(12:22):
never finding crime. There's always saying platitudes about about equality,
and I think that one good example of that would
have been Power Girl, who was created in response to
second way of feminism in a way, she was meant
to embody um those negative stereotypes of feminists at the
time as militant, strident, and angry. So she just didn't
(12:46):
really sit too well with fans. And then uh Matt Madrid,
who you know, who wrote the book he referenced Um
points out Black Widow as a great example though, of
that kind of empowered woman in the seventies. She was
a jet set or, she was rich, she was a
crime fighter. She wasn't anyone's girlfriend, but she did have
relations was some men. She loved him and left him.
(13:09):
Now at the same time, like you said, nineteen seventy two,
we've got one woman on the first cover of Miss
magazine and a lot of bears. Give Choya sign him
this credit for bringing back Wonder Woman to her full powers,
because in all the makeover she underwent, she kind of
became more like a female James Bond. She was maud.
So she gets recreated in the second wave of feminism,
(13:30):
but a lot of her story is significantly watered down.
She's not usually from the Amazon Island anymore, her weapons
don't necessarily mean what they meant, and I mean the
last I just became something to catch men with, not
necessarily a way to make them tell the truth. And
so I think it's interesting how Wonder Woman kind of
got coopted, but a lot of the most out there
aspects of her story don't come with her in this recreation.
(13:52):
So in thinking about the evolution of Wonder Woman and
how she started out and all of the makeovers that
she god, I mean, she she just recently got a
new outfit that is a little more um modest. She's
wearing pants now she wearing pants, um. So I guess
it just brings up the question of since Wonder Woman
(14:13):
is the most prominent female superhero, the most long lasting,
I mean, we have more recent um female superheroes that
have come up, such as the Bad Girls of the
nineties that we talked about in the first, um, the
preceding episode, and then we also have comics such as
Birds of Prey that feature all female cats. But wonder
(14:33):
Woman to me really embodies, uh, you know, the history
of women's superheroes, and it really brings up the question of, well,
what do we want from a female superhero and should
we even be concerned about how women are portrayed in comics?
I mean, if these are just fantasy outlets directly marketed
(14:55):
to little boys, you know, should we as women be
that concerned about it? Like what to see from a superhero?
And even though this isn't specifically comic book oriented, there
was a really interesting article about the Powerpuff Girls and
the success that they were having in terms of being
popular with both genders, these little girls who fight crime.
But but the writer Heather have have r Levski makes
the point that can we only accept a strong female,
(15:18):
you know, superhero when she's five and really cute? And
another article made the point that but when from Sex
in the City, are more are our superhero outlets because
they live in kind of a fantasy world. I mean,
there's no way Carrie could afford that apartment, and their
issues of fighting crime or more issues of you know,
Canni woman still be sexy when she's over forty, you
(15:40):
know Canni women find husband, and all these writers are
making the point that maybe we don't need a superhero
that fights crime. Maybe are maybe our obstacles are different
than that. And I think one thing we have to
acknowledged to and we're comparing male and female superheroes, is that, yes,
a lot of the females who end up in mix
(16:00):
are hyper sexual lives. They have enormous breasts and tiny
waists and legs for days. At the same time, a
lot of the male superheroes are these hyper masculine figures
who have rippling muscles and you know, just overt kind
of sexual appeal to women. So are those portrayals of
(16:23):
male superheroes as kind of deluded as the female superheroes
they're fighting with? But if we're gonna have the most
deluded version of a female superhero who can make you
feel excited to pick up a comic with her adventures
in it, Like, just off the top of your head, Christen,
what would she be like? Well, sause for me would
be you, it would be it would be me. I
(16:45):
was gonna say that too. Um. And you know, there
was some evidence that girls are age and younger like
real life superheroes better. Um, there's this new series of
comic books that features them in like Hillary Clinton and
Sarah Palin, women who you know in our real lives
are out there making a difference. Do we look as
(17:05):
women towards real life superheroes or is there someone in
that fantasy world who could fit our mold. Well, I
think that's the question that we will have to turn
over to our listeners because you know what, Molly, I'll
be honest with you, I don't know the answer exactly.
I don't either, So that's why we want to hear
from you on what the perfect female superhero would look like,
whether we still need superheroes, whether it's just a difference
(17:27):
of boys like superheroes and girls like something else. And
we should also ask for examples of great female characters
in comics, because I know that we talked a lot
about Wonder Woman and throughout some other names, but there
are scores of women in comics that we didn't bring up.
So we were pretty focused on superheroes. But we know
actually that we have listeners out there who do their
(17:48):
own comics. We'd love to hear from all of you
guys and broaden this comics conversation up with your help,
So right to us it's mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com, and share it with other listeners on Facebook.
But in the meantime, let's read an email. I have
one here from our listener Alexa, who writes, I'm fourteen
(18:09):
years old and this year for Halloween, I am as
Velma from the Scooby Doo cartoons, but I was looking
for the perfect Velma clothing items. My own mother even
suggested a fairly low cut armed shirt so that I
could be sexy Velma. I had to point out for
her that Velma doesn't care about looking sexy and that
she was always my favorite on the show because she
is comfortable with herself, including her flaws. And it's smart
because after all, that's how she always solved the mystery.
(18:31):
And Alexa did send us the most adorable photo of
herself as Velma. It was pretty pretty great costume, it
was really great. Um So again, if you'd like to
email us, send us photos of you dressed up like
your favorite superhero. I'd love to see that. It's Mom's
Stuff at how Stuffworks dot com Again. You can like
us on Facebook and share your thoughts on our wall,
(18:54):
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(19:18):
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you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From House top Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen Christ and
this is part two of our Female Superheroes podcast. Indeed
(00:23):
it is. And um, I thought i'd cheer with you.
One of my most embarrassing moments. Oh, thank god, Yes, small,
it's embarrassing moments. I've been waiting for so long, you know,
And I don't get embarrassed that often, but this was
probably the worst time I've ever fell embarrassed. And maybe
it'll be nothing to you guys, but I was pretty embarrassed.
So I'm five, and I think Nickelodeon used to run
(00:45):
reruns of the old wonder Woman show with Linda Carter
from the seventies, and so one time when I was
out on the playground, I was kind of pretending to
be a wonder Woman in my head, like I wasn't
playing superheroes with anyone else, you know, I don't remember
what I was doing, but all of a sudden, I
was like, Okay, it's time to turn to Wonder Woman,
and uh in the show, she would do that by
spinning around really fast. So I went under this like
(01:08):
enclosed slide area where I thought I had some privacy,
and I started my spin and I was spinning. I mean,
in my head, I was I was converting into to
a powerful, powerful superhero when two boys walked in while
in the middle of my spinning, and it just I mean,
if girls spend all the time. I don't know why
(01:29):
I was so embarrassed, but I felt like they could
see into my soul and know that I was trying
to turn into Wonder Woman and that they were just
mocking me in their heads. No words were exchanged because
I ran out very quickly. Oh they didn't even they
didn't even directly make fun of you. I don't think
they haven't got the chance, because as soon as I
saw them, I was like, ah, so they might not
have even noticed you spinning. There was there was some
(01:49):
noticing of spinning, because I who knows how long I
spun with them standing there. Yeah, that's true. It is
easy to get swept away. But the fact that I
was just spinning around and circled by myself under slide
and and got caught in the act really embarrassed me
for a long time. I think I stopped playing superheroes
after that. Well, Molly, I think that now is time
to heal those emotional scarves by you know, really talking
(02:14):
about Wonder Woman and all of the positive things that
she does represent. Because you know what, Molly, even though
you didn't turn to Wonder Woman that day, you know,
maybe maybe there still a chance. Yes, which is why
I want, I want you to do something. I'm kids, Yes,
I'm I'm going to just spin myself around the chair
and my voice will come around the microphone every every
(02:35):
few words. Um, but yes. The second half of our
Female Superhero podcast deals with the female superheroes themselves. In
part one, we kind of talked about how women in
superhero comics don't usually farewell. No, they tendn't die. Yeah,
they often meet untimely deaths, and a lot of times
when there's a lot of violence involved, it's a lot
(02:56):
of very sexualized violence becauseies women are are generally not
wearing many clothes to begin with, and they have very
pin uppy types of figures. So all in all, not
not that great of a life for comic book superheroes.
But at the same time, there are some standout names
(03:17):
that we really didn't talk about in the last episode
that we need to shine a light on, most notably
wonder Woman, because Wonder Woman was really the face of
second way feminism when she debuted on the cover of
the very first edition of Miss magazine. Um and we
think of her as really embodying you know, uh, strength
(03:40):
and power. And there's this long awaited wonder Woman movie
that that everyone's hoping for. But I think that it's
interesting because in when when something like a female superhero
dies and expectedly all these female comic book readers coming
out of the woodwork and say, I finally had someone
to relate to in this comic and then you killed her.
And I think it'd be interesting to see what longstanding
(04:01):
female heroes we have in comics, And of course wonder
Woman is the most notable. Yeah, I mean, wonder Woman's
really kind of it, and she was created specifically to
appeal to girls and to serve as a positive role model.
Because in the last episode we made the point that
since comic book readership is largely male, it does make
(04:22):
sense that a lot of the superheroes are these male
figures that they can idealize. But a psychologist named William
Marson said, you know what, little girls needed a hero too, right,
So he created her in nine and Morrison is quite
a character he is. He called himself a feminist, but
it's not a definition of feminism that I tend to
(04:43):
agree with, because it's all about how women are not
just equal but superior to men, and um, we're all
about advocating gender equality, I think with our forms of feminism, Christen,
but he's like, no, I'm going to teach the world
that eventually our country is going to turn back into
a matriarchy or women have all the power and men
do their bidding right. And this whole power dynamic comes
(05:08):
through a lot in early Wonder Woman comics, and I
didn't really think about it at all until, um, until
I started reading about how Marston in his personal life
was very, very intrigued by uh, submission, domination types of
sexual activities. He was actually in a polyamorous relationship and
(05:30):
had um to two wives, and within the context of
that relationship, he was also very interested in sexual bondage,
and so he instill a lot of that imagery into
the Wonder Woman comics, and so what do you know.
Wonder Woman has a truth lasso that she ties men
(05:54):
up with. Wonder Woman herself often gets tied up. Uh
you guys, can you know take it to mayor Well,
you know it's interesting in that laughs makes men tell
the truth. And everyone was like, oh, man, what a
great weapon for a woman to be able to get
a man to tell the truth. Interesting factoid about Old Marson,
He invented the modern day lie detector test, So I
(06:15):
mean he is very interested in truth and ways of
tying you up to get to the truth. So right
around when Wonder Woman is invented, there's also the rise
of other types of super heroines that are collectively known
as the Debutantes. For instance, we have the Phantom Lady,
who came on the scene in the late forties, and
(06:37):
she's sort of like a female Batman. She's wealthy, but
she doesn't have that much to do, so she fights
crime and her spare time. Uh. And you also have
other characters like Missmask or the Red Tornado or the
Spider Widow. Spider Wodo was kind of interesting because she
didn't really even like fighting crime. She was just wealthy
(06:59):
and bore and only did it if she really had to.
It was kind of forced upon her to fight crime.
So and the information about these early superheroes comes from
Mike Madrid who wrote a book called The Supergirl's Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy,
and the History of the Comic Book Heroines, and he
said that these early comic book heroines, he he equated
(07:21):
them to Paris Hilton. He said, essentially in their daily
lives and you know, they are rich, They've got lots
of money. He said that they would kind of be
painted as really shallow and ditzy, and you would never
guess that they were the ones who fought crime. But
he said that he kind of fought that they were
early feminists in a gender equality sense because, uh, when
they put on their costmo around their mask, that was
(07:42):
when they got to be truly free and truly equal
to the crime fighting men. And it was in their
daily lives that they had a lot of obstacles against them,
not you know, when they were facing bad guys. And
he said that, you know, it was fun because they're
really brainy and witty and funny and um, then it
was when they had to go back into their normal
lives they were sort of the uninteresting stay at home
(08:03):
boring types, right, And originally Wonder Woman wasn't even drawn
as a sexy character. Sure she wore the hot pants
and tube top basically, but she she was no She
was no Shena, Queen of the Jungle or a Phantom Lady.
You know, we were other other super heroines associated with
these good girl characters that we talked about in the
(08:27):
last podcast, and that was because she was meant to
appeal to girls. But then after World War Two there's
kind of this decline with the role of females in
comic books, and since Wonder Woman was meant to appeal
to girls, she wasn't drawn like other good girl characters
we talked about in the last episode, like Shena, Queen
(08:48):
of the Jungle or Phantom Lady, who were very voluptuous.
Even though a Wonder Woman did wear hot pants and
a tube top, she was intentionally drawn as not as overtly.
See now, let's talk a little bit about Wonder Woman's
origins because this is part of what changes over the years.
And while she was drun for little girls, we did
read one article the notes that even though she was
(09:10):
drunk for little girls, about nine of one woman's total
readership has always been male, so I think that might
play a factor. And when she gets watered down, but
we'll we'll decide for ourselves. This time goes on. She
first appears in ninety one, and she was an Amazon
princess from the immortal race of female warriors from Greek mythology.
She lived on an island where men could never set foot.
(09:30):
And the whole reason she comes to our country is
because some man lands nearby. So she's going to take
him back to America. And while she's there, she's gonna
teach some some lessons about female empowerment. Uh, since she
did have this, you know, enlightened upbringing with no men.
So the early episodes with One Woman are all about
the Amazonian history, the unique super superpowers, and um, there's
(09:54):
a lot of like we mentioned before, the bondage and
there's a lot of um as one one psychologist put it,
lesbian under tones. And that's when we started getting hild
because this psychologist comes along and writes an article called
Seduction of the Innocent. Yeah, with this paper, he was
basically saying that Wonder Woman was a terrible influence on
(10:14):
children and that she needed to be toned down, and
Wonder Woman a k a. Diana Prince was toned down.
She was lassoed, if you will. By the Comics Code
of nineteen fifty five. It said, hey, you know what,
all of this, this bondage imagery, all of these somewhat
would they perceived to be lesbian undertones. Gotta go, Gotta go,
(10:37):
because not only are the girls getting the wrong message,
the psychologist Frederick Wortham thought that the boys were getting
the wrong message too. He said that boys found Wonder
Woman terrifying, and we can't have a terrifying female figure
on the loose. She's just too strong. She's just too strong.
She'll lasso us and and take away all our powers.
So from then on we see women. They have to
(10:57):
draw more realistically according to the Comics Code. But all
the you know, aside from Wonder Woman, who does get
significantly watered down, they don't really introduce any more new
strong characters. They've got Catwoman, but she's sort of, you know,
more of a bad person who just Batman kind of
likes her, but she's kind of wishy washy. And Supergirl,
(11:18):
who's a female version of Superman, but she was more
of his assistant and helper than equal um. Alasta Girl
gets a lot of credit because she was the strongest
member of the Doom Patrol, but you know, they're always
part of these teams, and sometimes when a female hero
was put on a team, she's the weakest member of
the team. But Alasta Girl was not, though she was
(11:40):
one of the standout characters because she often saved the day.
She could turn into this giant elastic giant, giant elastic giant.
Yeah and uh, and she could hulk smash all of
this stuff. It's pretty She was pretty cool and she
has a pretty cool outfit. I gotta say, are now
(12:01):
in the seventies when we've got second way feminism. Some
of the writers try to incorporate these ideas into their
their female heroes, but it really just kind of makes
the female hero stock characters who run around saying this
is really blatant, like female power, things that are kind
of insulting. I think when you look back on them
in hindsight, they make them very uninteresting characters because they're
(12:22):
never finding crime. There's always saying platitudes about about equality,
and I think that one good example of that would
have been Power Girl, who was created in response to
second way of feminism in a way, she was meant
to embody um those negative stereotypes of feminists at the
time as militant, strident, and angry. So she just didn't
(12:46):
really sit too well with fans. And then uh Matt Madrid,
who you know, who wrote the book he referenced Um
points out Black Widow as a great example though, of
that kind of empowered woman in the seventies. She was
a jet set or, she was rich, she was a
crime fighter. She wasn't anyone's girlfriend, but she did have
relations was some men. She loved him and left him.
(13:09):
Now at the same time, like you said, nineteen seventy two,
we've got one woman on the first cover of Miss
magazine and a lot of bears. Give Choya sign him
this credit for bringing back Wonder Woman to her full powers,
because in all the makeover she underwent, she kind of
became more like a female James Bond. She was maud.
So she gets recreated in the second wave of feminism,
(13:30):
but a lot of her story is significantly watered down.
She's not usually from the Amazon Island anymore, her weapons
don't necessarily mean what they meant, and I mean the
last I just became something to catch men with, not
necessarily a way to make them tell the truth. And
so I think it's interesting how Wonder Woman kind of
got coopted, but a lot of the most out there
aspects of her story don't come with her in this recreation.
(13:52):
So in thinking about the evolution of Wonder Woman and
how she started out and all of the makeovers that
she god, I mean, she she just recently got a
new outfit that is a little more um modest. She's
wearing pants now she wearing pants, um. So I guess
it just brings up the question of since Wonder Woman
(14:13):
is the most prominent female superhero, the most long lasting,
I mean, we have more recent um female superheroes that
have come up, such as the Bad Girls of the
nineties that we talked about in the first, um, the
preceding episode, and then we also have comics such as
Birds of Prey that feature all female cats. But wonder
(14:33):
Woman to me really embodies, uh, you know, the history
of women's superheroes, and it really brings up the question of, well,
what do we want from a female superhero and should
we even be concerned about how women are portrayed in comics?
I mean, if these are just fantasy outlets directly marketed
(14:55):
to little boys, you know, should we as women be
that concerned about it? Like what to see from a superhero?
And even though this isn't specifically comic book oriented, there
was a really interesting article about the Powerpuff Girls and
the success that they were having in terms of being
popular with both genders, these little girls who fight crime.
But but the writer Heather have have r Levski makes
the point that can we only accept a strong female,
(15:18):
you know, superhero when she's five and really cute? And
another article made the point that but when from Sex
in the City, are more are our superhero outlets because
they live in kind of a fantasy world. I mean,
there's no way Carrie could afford that apartment, and their
issues of fighting crime or more issues of you know,
Canni woman still be sexy when she's over forty, you
(15:40):
know Canni women find husband, and all these writers are
making the point that maybe we don't need a superhero
that fights crime. Maybe are maybe our obstacles are different
than that. And I think one thing we have to
acknowledged to and we're comparing male and female superheroes, is that, yes,
a lot of the females who end up in mix
(16:00):
are hyper sexual lives. They have enormous breasts and tiny
waists and legs for days. At the same time, a
lot of the male superheroes are these hyper masculine figures
who have rippling muscles and you know, just overt kind
of sexual appeal to women. So are those portrayals of
(16:23):
male superheroes as kind of deluded as the female superheroes
they're fighting with? But if we're gonna have the most
deluded version of a female superhero who can make you
feel excited to pick up a comic with her adventures
in it, Like, just off the top of your head, Christen,
what would she be like? Well, sause for me would
be you, it would be it would be me. I
(16:45):
was gonna say that too. Um. And you know, there
was some evidence that girls are age and younger like
real life superheroes better. Um, there's this new series of
comic books that features them in like Hillary Clinton and
Sarah Palin, women who you know in our real lives
are out there making a difference. Do we look as
(17:05):
women towards real life superheroes or is there someone in
that fantasy world who could fit our mold. Well, I
think that's the question that we will have to turn
over to our listeners because you know what, Molly, I'll
be honest with you, I don't know the answer exactly.
I don't either, So that's why we want to hear
from you on what the perfect female superhero would look like,
whether we still need superheroes, whether it's just a difference
(17:27):
of boys like superheroes and girls like something else. And
we should also ask for examples of great female characters
in comics, because I know that we talked a lot
about Wonder Woman and throughout some other names, but there
are scores of women in comics that we didn't bring up.
So we were pretty focused on superheroes. But we know
actually that we have listeners out there who do their
(17:48):
own comics. We'd love to hear from all of you
guys and broaden this comics conversation up with your help,
So right to us it's mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com, and share it with other listeners on Facebook.
But in the meantime, let's read an email. I have
one here from our listener Alexa, who writes, I'm fourteen
(18:09):
years old and this year for Halloween, I am as
Velma from the Scooby Doo cartoons, but I was looking
for the perfect Velma clothing items. My own mother even
suggested a fairly low cut armed shirt so that I
could be sexy Velma. I had to point out for
her that Velma doesn't care about looking sexy and that
she was always my favorite on the show because she
is comfortable with herself, including her flaws. And it's smart
because after all, that's how she always solved the mystery.
(18:31):
And Alexa did send us the most adorable photo of
herself as Velma. It was pretty pretty great costume, it
was really great. Um So again, if you'd like to
email us, send us photos of you dressed up like
your favorite superhero. I'd love to see that. It's Mom's
Stuff at how Stuffworks dot com Again. You can like
us on Facebook and share your thoughts on our wall,
(18:54):
or you can follow us on Twitter at Mom's Stuff Podcast,
And then, of course you can always head over to
our blog It's Stuff Mom Never told You and It's
how stuff Works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot com,
the house, stuff Works dot com. My phone app is
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(19:18):
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