The Four Color Media Monitor

If there's anybody who spoke out against the UN for body-shaming Wonder Woman as a character, it's the actress who's going to play her in next year's upcoming film. In an article Time published about WW's history, she said:

But the woman who now plays her hasn’t gotten used to the vitriol. “There are so many horrible things that are going on in the world, and this is what you’re protesting, seriously?” Gadot asks, reflecting on the U.N. blowback. Warner Bros. cast perhaps the only actor in the world who, like Wonder Woman, is both a model and a soldier: Gadot won the title of Miss Israel in 2004 and served in the Israel Defense Forces. But that doesn’t mean the 31-year-old hasn’t been baffled by persistent debates about Wonder Woman’s looks—and the sexual and anti-Semitic harassment Gadot has received online over the past two years. “When people argue that Wonder Woman should ‘cover up,’ I don’t quite get it,” she says. “They say, ‘If she’s smart and strong, she can’t also be sexy.’ That’s not fair. Why can’t she be all of the above?”

She's correct. The phrase "cover up" sounds so dirty, and not all that far removed from the kind of vitriol you can hear Islamofascists babbling. Yet this is just what today's progressives are all about. Years ago, they knew better than to make issues out of crap like that, and now, they've lost that much too. I would only suggest that if Gadot's baffled about attacks on WW's character design, she should also be feeling the same way about the attacks SJWs have led on many other notable heroines in fiction and such in recent times too, because that's where a lot of this mentality stemmed from. We have Anita Sarkeesian, the Fredric Wertham of video games, to blame for some of the insanity, and since she'd whined at the UN some time ago, it's quite likely what she started there led to some of the body shaming of WW to boot.

The Time article, however, unsurprisingly has some weird propaganda in it that's disrespectful to Siegel/Shuster and Kane/Finger:

To follow Wonder Woman’s evolution is to trace the trajectory of the women’s movement in America. The man who created her in 1941, William Moulton Marston, was a feminist, a psychologist and the inventor of the lie-detector test. Marston conceived Wonder Woman as a parent-friendly comic-book alternative to bellicose male heroes. Batman carried a gun, and Superman was a shade too close to the German Übermensch, the concept that Adolf Hitler used to describe his fantasy of a “biologically superior” Aryan race. What comic books needed, Marston thought, was a hero who would represent America’s position in the war: a patriot motivated to shield the innocent.

Excuse me? I don't agree with that at all. Siegel/Shuster's conception owed more to biblical figures like Samson from the book of Judges, and Batman only carried a gun for a handful of stories before it was abandoned. And both Superman/Batman fought WW2 fascists from Germany and Japan in some way or other. What are they trying to do, embarrass Siegel and Shuster's legacies? Undoubtably.

On the other hand, when they turn again to the issues involving the WW costume, they cite Greg Rucka's apparent inability to appreciate surrealism:

...Greg Rucka, who currently writes one of the Wonder Woman comics, says the character’s outfit has been hotly debated during his tenure at DC. “I get frustrated when I’m given [an illustration of] Diana in three-inch heels, because she can’t fight like that. I have an easier time with her flying than fighting in three-inch heels or dental-floss bottoms,” he says. “I like the costume for the movie because Gal can actually run and jump and kick in that.”

That's still no excuse for dissing what can be overlooked in a surreal world. Point: though not as fast as the Flash, WW can still run at considerable speeds, and it's already legend how she can maneuver her arms quick enough to block bullets with her enchanted bracelets. By the way, why 3-inch and not 5-inch, knowing there's some women's high-heeled shoes that can even be built taller than that? (I think some Italian designers did, calling them Stillettos.) And do I need to point out that unless actually stated, it's not necessarily clear that WW's heels in a drawing are exactly 3-inches? Rucka's a disgrace, and obviously one of the reasons why mainstream superheroes have suffered so badly. (Also notice how no comment's coming from Time about his story where WW broke Max Lord's neck?)

Gadot also brought up her belief about what feminism should be:

She sees her job, partly, as clarifying Wonder Woman’s message of empowerment. “I think people take it the wrong way when I say I’m a feminist,” she says. “Feminism is not about burning bras and hating men. It’s about gender equality. Whoever is not a feminist is a chauvinist.”

That's certainly what it could be, if it hadn't been for how the type that came about in the 1960s was unfortunately riddled with man-hating, and became particularly toxic in the years that followed.

Since we're on the subject, even Lynda Carter spoke up in the following NYT interview:

While some feminists may have felt triumphant when the United Nations announced the end of the Wonder Woman campaign this month (in an earlier Times article, a United Nations spokesman said that the campaign had merely run its course, and that the end had nothing to do with the uproar), one loyalist was not going to sit by as her cape was dragged through the mud: Lynda Carter, the actress who starred in the 1970s television show “Wonder Woman.”

Of the pushback that accompanied the campaign, Ms. Carter believes that some of it may be because “the U.N. didn’t put a woman in there.” The ambassadorship was announced just weeks after the United Nations passed over several women to be secretary-general.

But as I've said before, taking out your frustrations on a fictional character rather than the boards of directors who refused to consider any female candidate for the job is idiotic projection that lets the true culprits off the hook. She went on to take a critical position of the UN staffers' efforts to slut-shame the superheroine:

Q. There seems to be some disagreement about what a feminist icon should look like.

A. What I find interesting is that they didn’t look at the larger picture. I agree that the issue of gender equality is much larger than any character is, and I understand that a comic book character should not be representative of something that is that important. I agree with that. What I disagree with is this idea about Wonder Woman. She’s an iconic defender, she’s archetypal. It’s the ultimate sexist thing to say that’s all you can see, when you think about Wonder Woman, all you can think about is a sex object.

What about those skimpy outfits?

Yeah, so? Superman had a skintight outfit that showed every little ripple, didn’t he? Doesn’t he have a great big bulge in his crotch? Hello! So why don’t they complain about that? And who says Wonder Woman is “white”? I’m half-Mexican. Gal Gadot is Israeli. The character is an Amazonian princess, not “American.” They’re trying to put her in a box, and she’s not in a box.

I can think of a standout example of a male hero who often went bare-chested: Hawkman. Save for the special support belts he wore for the wings, he began as one shirtless superhero in the Golden Age, and I'm wondering why not enough people think to cite Carter Hall to boot. Speaking of which, don't be shocked if the same people shaming WW now would do the same to Shiera Saunders, who wore cleavaged costumes when she became Hawkgirl almost 2 years after Hawkman's debut.

But I have to note that while Lynda Carter is indeed half-Mexican, WW is white, much like a lot of other people of Greek descent. And, so too is Gadot; many Israelis, whether lighter/darker complected, are white/caucasian. Carter is correct though, that WW isn't really American, even if the costume design draws from Old Glory.

Unfortunately, guess who "inspired" Carter for the recent role she had in the Supergirl TV series - at the end of the interview:

This fall, you returned to the small screen playing another female superhero of sorts — the president of the United States — on an episode of “Supergirl.” What was your inspiration for the role?

It was Hillary. I’ve known Hillary Clinton for 35 years. She is the kindest, most wonderful human being, she has an infectious personality and smile and warmth and personality and true nature. She grew up in a time where you had a be a certain way to be taken seriously. Now you can be whoever you want. You don’t have to be serious. You can be feminine and powerful at the same time.

I hate to say this, but she has ruined much of the impact of her argument, for anybody who knows Clinton defended a child rapist in 1975, and that she even visited an island resort owned by a pedophile named Jeffrey Epstein at least 6 times. Some of the emails Clinton was negligent with mentioned this too. And what about Hillary's tolerance of Bill's own terrible acts? Hello! Even the Time article has some apologia for Clinton only makes things worse. That Carter would throughly whitewash Hillary's record is atrocious and does a terrible disfavor to sexual abuse victims. I'm not kidding. Lest we forget that Carter also turned against Sarah Palin, and I've often been skeptical her criticism was for altruistic reasons.

Gadot's own criticism of the UN works better because as far as I know, she hasn't made the exact same mistakes as Carter is. But admittedly, if she too puts forth tasteless examples as her inspirations, then I'm going to have to wonder what's going on here. The arguments about the UN's revolting attack on WW's character design are valid in themselves, but Carter's ignorance of Clinton's hypocrisy takes away the impact of her own positions.

Labels: censorship issues, dc comics, misogyny and racism, politics, Wonder Woman