Do you think that Lynda Carter knew about all this?

They all have impossibly small waists, long legs, breast implants, and.....high heels!  Who wears high heels to perform stunts and acrobatics? That's impractical and insane!

- Fitness expert Laurie Smith

"On Paradise Island where we play many binding games, this is considered the safest method of tying a girl's arms!"

Wonder Woman, Sensation Comics, November 1944

Although in some ways this is a follow up to my last post, which featured Red Sonja braving sub-arctic conditions in a thong, this topic really has its genesis in an exchange of e-mails with Laurie about a month ago.

I was browsing through a fellow blogger's site, one which features comic book scans, and there was a cover image from Lois Lane's comic.  (Yes, Lois had her own comic book for a while.)  I downloaded the JPEG of the cover and e-mailed it to Laurie with the following comment:

Hey look, Lois has acceptable abs. 
- Sid

Little did I realize that I'd immediately be subjected to a quick rant in return:

The helpless heroine....notice the submissive body posture, the wide-eyed "I'm helpless" look.....Such stereotypical gender/role depiction in comics! 
- Laurie

And it's quite true. A quick tour through the Lois Lane comics ("Superman's Girlfriend!") shows Lois repeatedly being saved by Superman, and very often saved from her own poor "feminine" judgement. 

The world of the comic book hero has traditionally been a boy’s club, not only for the heroes and villains, but for the readers as well.  Over the years there have been periods of time when romance comics and female characters have been popular, but the bottom line has always come back to the juvenile male.  On that basis, the treatment suffered by the “weaker sex” is unfortunate but not terribly surprising.

However, Lois Lane doesn't represent the worst representation of womanhood in four-colour web press - sadly, the representation of female heroines is much more distorted and unfortunate than that of the supporting characters.  Now, to be fair, comic books have always been the domain of idealized exaggeration, but when did all the female characters, supporting, heroic and villainous, start to look like exotic dancers?*

If there’s a poster girl for the ridiculous and sexist portrayal of women in comics, it has to be Wonder Woman. Ostensibly intending to offer a positive role model for young women, in actuality William Moulton Marston, who created Wonder Woman in 1941, was a devout fetishist in the area of bondage and domination.  Lest there be any misinterpretation of his views, Marston went on record to his publisher as feeling that:

The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound ... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society ... Giving in to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.

Early issues of Wonder Woman repeatedly feature her being tied up, dominated by men and women, and spanked.  What other female hero came equipped with her own wrist cuffs and rope?  And although over the years her initial bondage roots have diminished, illustrations like this still pop up now and then:

Bound figure, phallic missile, open mouth - as George Carlin used to say, you don't have to be Fellini to figure that out. And as per the opening quote from Laurie, would anyone want to wear those boots for more than ten minutes, let alone fight crime in the damn things?  Ah, but if you look at them as bondage footwear...

Or how about this?

Odd how the captured male superheroes get chairs...

But there’s hope, even for Wonder Woman. In honour of the 600th issue of her comic, Wonder Woman received the new costume shown at the top of this post, a costume which might actually be appropriate for strenuous exercise if not actual combat with the forces of evil.  Sadly, the reaction of the fan community has not been positive.  Come on, people, can’t you at least let the poor woman wear something with a low heel - and shoulder straps?

- Sid

* That was intended to be rhetorical, but if I had to guess, I'd say it starts to become embarrassing in the early 90's, when Marvel Comics was doing swimsuit issues à la Sports Illustrated.