![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
On Wonder Woman
Jul. 25th, 2007 12:37 amWonder Woman is a feminist icon, by design.
The "secret origin" of the character is that she comes from Paradise Island, the land of the Amazons, to show us all the way to be.
When an individual reader reads Wonder Woman and says, "a feminist icon shouldn't act that way," what is being discussed is not some peripheral aspect of the character. It's one of the things the character has always been about. That hypothetical reader is doing exactly what he or she is supposed to do.
I want to make this perfectly clear: the character of Wonder Woman was created to "engage with" issues of patriarchy and feminism. Wonder Woman was not somehow appropriated or subverted by a bunch of feminists who had no better right to the character than any other random reader. She is, and has always been, deliberately symbolic.
I mention this because there seems to be, in some quarters, some confusion about this issue.
The "secret origin" of the character is that she comes from Paradise Island, the land of the Amazons, to show us all the way to be.
When an individual reader reads Wonder Woman and says, "a feminist icon shouldn't act that way," what is being discussed is not some peripheral aspect of the character. It's one of the things the character has always been about. That hypothetical reader is doing exactly what he or she is supposed to do.
I want to make this perfectly clear: the character of Wonder Woman was created to "engage with" issues of patriarchy and feminism. Wonder Woman was not somehow appropriated or subverted by a bunch of feminists who had no better right to the character than any other random reader. She is, and has always been, deliberately symbolic.
I mention this because there seems to be, in some quarters, some confusion about this issue.
