The Four Color Media Monitor

Elle's India affiliate listed five comics heroines - and unfortunately, at least one villainess - whose fashions they think could be a great citation for International Women's Day. The decidedly inappropriate choice they added is none other than Harley Quinn, and they put it all across rather confusingly:

She’s the gleeful character who battles villains, while wearing clown makeup, replete with her signature red and black top and shorts with matchy socks. Once just a sidekick-turned-Joker flame, she blazes away at the baddies in her girlish-meets-fierce personality, depicting a sense of complete freedom. Quinn has seen a gamut of style changes — she once wore a jumpsuit, followed by bodice-pants and pigtails, going from blonde to black hair. No one could pull this off better than Margot Robbie! Her punk portrayal of the character in 'Suicide Squad (2016)' makes nasty look cool, with shorts, spikes, graphic tops, dark makeup and differently coloured ponytails. Guess what? Lady Gaga has also channelled Harley Quinn on a number of occasions in her quirky pigtails and leather ensembles.

Gee, Lady Gaga took inspiration from Quinn? That's too bad. HQ may have battled villains not unlike what she herself was characterized as for over 30 years, but the point is, despite what they ambiguously make it sound like here, she's a murderous villainess, and her portrayal as the years went by was nothing short of insulting to the intellect. Maybe if she could be remade as an honest character, or an antiheroine like Catwoman was written as, they'd be getting somewhere. For now, however, HQ remains largely canonized as a lethal lunkhead, and is not a good role model for women and girls at all. If they're alluding to the movie editions, I'm sorry, it's no excuse. Nor is it good to make nastiness look "cool". And what's this about "freedom"? Not if Quinn's still a lethal villainess, and if she was written taking innocent lives, that just makes this all the more problematic.

Interestingly enough, the list doesn't include any Marvel heroines, despite how Invisible Girl could make a good choice, and even Scarlet Witch could, certainly if you don't go by the abominable direction Brian Bendis took her on during the 2000s in Avengers: Disassembled, a characterization that regrettably was employed for TV shows and films like WandaVision and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Storm would make another excellent choice if they wanted to. Why, even the real Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, could've made a great choice, but something tells me they wouldn't even dream of researching her early stories to make that point. All they'd likely care about is the Muslim Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan, despite how politically motivated her creation was, and despite what a failure recent attempts to adapt the character to live action turned out to to be.

And now that I recall, the Birds of Prey movie featuring HQ was also a disaster, so it's hardly new if HQ isn't proving as successful a franchise as the press makes it sound like. For now, it's sad how a character who's often been consistently portrayed as a villainess is made to look like a great choice for stuff where, based on her characterization, she's an inappropriate selection, and is thus an embarrassment to Intl. Women's Day.

Labels: Archie, dc comics, golden calf of villainy, manga and anime, marvel comics, msm propaganda, violence, women of dc, women of marvel, Wonder Woman