Paper #3 Student Sample
“Sex Sells” Grinley/Clapp
Our Superheroines, Ourselves
When William Marsdon created Wonder Woman in 1952, she burst out onto the page ready to “fight for
liberty and freedom and all womankind” (“Introducing” 15). About time, too. Up until that point, women in comic
books were generally pushed to the villain side of the story, leaving the men to swoop, swing or crash in to save
the day. Wonder Woman promised to bring the dawn of a new era of superheroines, able to fight alongside the
boys and, in her own right, bring justice to humankind. A nice idea, except that deeper examination of Wonder
Woman reveals a scantily clad Amazonian living under her mother’s thumb, who graces the covers of her own
comic books in situations that evoke imagery of bondage, with phallic rockets pointed at her various orifices.
Entirely replaceable, Diana Prince was only allowed to be Wonder Woman as long as she didn’t step out of line,
lest she be replaced by one of her equally naked sisters. A harsh criticism, yes, but the glorification of Wonder
Woman and her example of the type of superhero that women are allowed to be illustrates the straws women
grasp at to see representations of themselves in pop culture. And really, the straws are not so slippery.
Female superheroes, in spite of their superhuman strength and abilities, exemplify the struggles women
experience in navigating their roles in society. Over the last decades in which the rise of the feminist movement
made it possible for women to be more than barefoot and pregnant, so did rise the subtle societal opposition
that told women that to embrace their power is to risk losing the other parts of them that made them whole.
Using the examples of Catwoman, Elektra and X-Men’s Jean Grey and Rogue, it is revealed that, unlike revered,
larger-than-life heroes such as Batman, women are only able to realize themselves as superhuman as much as
they are willing to shrink down to small, hypersexalized boxes. Female superheroes represent the encapsulated
place women hold in society; unable to be whole, complex characters, in they end they are relegated to the
edges of society, stripped of their power or killed.
The most instantly recognizable trait of a superhero is the costume. Serving to both trademark and
protect the hero, the costume is the most instrumental factor in battle; when it comes to the climax in superhero
films, often it’s only a hero and villain, weaponless, in a fight to the death. Female superheroes however, rather
than looking ready for battle often look more ready for a night out clubbing. Patience Philips realizes herself as
Catwoman by chopping off her hair and donning a leather outfit that serves no instrumental function. Unlike
Batman, whose outfit is designed to protect him from injury, Catwoman’s sports leather pants clawed all the way
up to her rear, and is topless save for a bra that pushes her breasts out and leaves her stomach exposed. The
outfit it completed by a whip and a pair of stiletto heels, the obvious chosen footwear for anyone who needing to
engage in hand-to-hand combat. Elektra’s costume is hardly any better: a two piece silk bustier, matching silk
pants and high heeled stiletto boots, all colored a fire engine red that does nothing to camouflage a hired killer
concerned with stealth. Her long hair hangs down and often her face, blown every which way by a magical,
unseen wind machine that seems to follow her around in battle. She accessorizes with long red ribbons that hang
from her wrist and serve to both visually appeal and apparently give one’s opponent something easy to grab
onto. Grey and Rogue’s full body suits appear to be bit more battle-sensible, though the skin tight leather and the
zipper down to the cleavage make up for the lack of visible skin. The styling of these outfits begs the question: for
whom these women are dressing? If female superheroes aim to empower women, how it is explained that they
are depicted in clothing that most women would decidedly not choose for hand to hand to combat? It is a more
likely explanation that these superheroines, “poured into tight dresses and jacked up onto high heels so they ban
barely move much less run,” illustrate the struggles women deal with to be taken seriously as humans while still
dressing in a sexually appealing manner (Johnson 198). Though these superheroines are meant to portray
powerful, independent women, their costuming that lacks instrumentality imposes the idea that even when
asserting power women still need to present a beautiful, sexualized face. The way that Ginger Rogers did it all
backwards and in heels, these women are doing it in restrictive leather and stiletto boots.
It’s not only the outfits that are hypersexualized – in all of the women lies a strong undercurrent of
sexuality, not necessarily seen in their male counterparts. At the start of Catwoman, the aptly named Patience
Phillips is depicted as a shy, timid woman, unable to stand up to multitudes of men who overpower her. After
being murdered however, she is brought back to life by the breath of a magical cat named Midnight, though she
is not merely brought back to life as Patience: now she is a catwoman. However, rather than give the viewers
their first taste of their heroine’s new powers by leaping over buildings a la Spiderman, the filmmakers instead
chose to nail the feline point home by showing Patience playing with string and fervently sniffing at catnip toys.
She is literally reduced to less than human, an animal helpless to her carnal desires. In his “wild man/wild
woman” arguments, Allen Johnson states that all too often the wild woman is depicted as a hypersexualized
nymphomaniac whose “’wildness’ isn’t true wildness at all, but a compulsion that primarily ends of serving men’s
fantasies” (197), and what is a man’s fantasy if not a sexy woman with few desires beyond the carnal, animalistic
ilk? As Catwoman, Patience embodies this hypersexuality. She walks with her pelvis pushed forward, she dances
provocatively in a club to lure in an assailant, and kisses a cop when fighting him. Further exemplified in the way
she is framed and shot throughout the film, the first view of her new identity as Catwoman is given by a slow
vertical pan up the length of her body, slowing on the buttocks, bare stomach and breasts. During a fight scene,
with the man who killed her no less, the camera shots remain on her body parts and rarely on her face. She is
framed often in a way that places her breasts or pelvis center screen, her face only becoming center of attention
when letting out a seductive meow or when almost touching lips with the man she is attacking. Rarely, if ever,
has there been a male superhero that needed seduction to get his way, but through this portrayal of Catwoman
the film implies that the only way for a woman to realize her independence and right the wrongs against her is
through her sexuality.
Jean Grey and Elektra are not immune to the oversexualization either. Though socially inept and mentally
tortured, filmmakers still manage to exploit Elektra’s sexuality by not only dressing her like a Frederick’s of
Hollywood model but by making her method of killing an intimate one: right before assassinating her target, she
whispers intimately into her victim’s ear, cooing soft musings on death. The whispering is part of her legend; in
the way that Catwoman has become an animal, Elektra is perceived as a fantasy, her humanity taken away in
exchange for an ideal in a corset. It is not enough for Elektra to be the most powerful assassin on the planet; she
has to be sexy and alluring as she does it. Would she be as respected, as feared were she simply average looking?
Women in real society navigate the same murky waters, knowing that education and know-how is rarely enough
to garner respect. Female sexuality is negatively stereotyped in the superhero world as well. For Jean Grey, her
newfound Phoenix power not only turns her evil but into a sexual deviant as well. The wild woman is often
depicted as incorrigible nymphomaniac, and Jean Grey as the Phoenix is no exception (Johnson 194). In her first
moments as the Phoenix, she reels in her grief-stricken boyfriend Scott Summers with a passionate kiss before
obliterating him. Upon being “rescued” from the forced coma, placed upon her by Professor X, her awesome and
fearsome powers are used to remove Wolverine’s belt with her mind. “Sexually active girls are far more likely to
be institutionalized as incorrigible than sexually active boys” and that Jean Grey’s loose cannon of a self is
characterized by deceptive sexuality makes scathing commentary on female sexuality. (Johnson 197).
But what of Rogue? Rogue’s case presents the opposite negative stereotype regarding female sexuality.
Her power leaves her incapable of human touch, this she discovers at as a teenager when experiencing her first
kiss. Unable to be sexual, her mark is the long black gloves she must wear at all times to protect those around her
from an accidental contact. Her lack of sexuality is a flaw: she has no place in an intimate relationship and
watches as her boyfriend engages in physical flirtation with another mutant. By not being sexual, she stands to
lose the connections that are important to her, a threat placed upon women in everyday dating situations. One
should note that this fate does not befall male superheroes: while Spiderman and Batman serve as exaggerated
representations of masculinity, at their core they are not viewed as sex symbols, available for the ogling of
throngs of teenage girls. The comparison between the sexual aggressiveness that brings to mind male fantasy a la
Catwoman and Elektra, the deadly, conniving sexual aggressiveness that strikes fear below the belt represented
in Jean Grey, and the “frigid prude” connoted in Rogue all illustrate the delicate sexual lines upon which women
have to tread. To cross over any lines even a small amount brings upon harsh social consequences.
Beyond the persona and traits that define the hero, the alter ego carries importance as well. Not only
does it serve to protect the superhero’s identity, it also furthers the hero’s story: the viewer watches the hero
grapples with the complexities of a dual life. Bruce Wayne, when not wearing the Batman suit, runs an empire.
He attends social events with a woman on each arm, drinks champagne and speeds off in expensive cars. He has
a close confidant in his butler Alfred and love in many relationships throughout his film depictions. There is a
distinct lack of empires and fast cars in the lives of superwomen. Jean Grey, once a highly educated doctor and
the love interest of not one but two men, must lose everything when the full force of her powers changes her
into the Phoenix. After losing control and killing her lover, Scott Summer, Jean must leave the X-Men and her
home, eventually joining the ranks of opposing team, where she stands silent and waxen, waiting until her
services are needed. One must note that Jean Grey is the most powerful mutant in existence; despite her
superiority, or perhaps because of it, she relegated to the fringes, unable to maintain her career, unable to
maintain her relationships. Things aren’t much better for Elektra, a hired assassin so powerful that she is thought
to be a legend. Plagued with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, she spends her free time scrubbing down her
floors and arranging her toiletries in perfect lines. She maintains no social relationships and interacts only with
her agent, who brings her money and new jobs. Catwoman’s alter ego Patience Philips is a passive doormat of a
woman, with a loopy old lady for a mentor and a shallow, obnoxious Cosmo girl for a best friend. As Patience
grows into her identity as Catwoman, her former identity is diminished and eventually discarded. And finally,
Rogue: supremely powerful but unable to have any sort of physical relationship, for her touch not only causes
intense pain but also literally sucks the life out of whomever she lays her hand upon. After running away from her
family and joining Xavier’s School for the Gifted, Rogue watches as her boyfriend carries on a flirtation with a
fellow mutant with whom he can hold hands and hug.
Where are these women’s empires? Why does Batman get a sports car and Elektra a bottle of
antidepressants? For superwomen, it seems to be that “one such limitation of heroism is invisibility” (O’ Reilly
275). With the rise of feminism and women’s rights, this era is one characterized by the notion that women are
able to “have it all.” However, as exemplified by the lives of super heroines, a different story proves to be true. In
their stories is the question of a “female superhero’s ability to be a fully recognized subject” (O’ Reilly 275). The
lack of complexity and richness in the lives of these women is a metaphor for the roles that women have to
navigate in today’s society. The female gender role has supposedly evolved over time, but powerful women with
careers are questioned for their femininity, their maternal nature and their abilities as caregivers. Much like the
superhuman abilities of the Rogue, Elektra, Catwoman and Jean Grey, women are often given a choice, as if to
say, you can have your power but this is all you get. In this, their powers become marginalized, as society asks
them if being powerful is really worth the ostracism.
And really, in the end, that choice proves not to matter when it is taken away completely. “To control the
passionate Wild Woman and what she represents, she is made invisible or defined…as evil, to be coopted,
‘cured’…murdered…or otherwise transformed” (Johnson 198). Catwoman, unable to prove her innocence for
crimes she did not commit, opts to abandon her life as Patience completely, her identity now entirely consumed
by hyper sexualized, leather-clad persona that is less human than animal dominatrix fantasy. Elektra, despite
forming almost familial bonds with a man and his daughter, is still unable to fully engage in those social
relationships. After defeating the man who killed her mother, she is still haunted by demons, and so she packs
belongings and treks out towards more solitude. While the fates of both these women further the idea that
powerful women cannot, in fact, have it all, and seem to say that for women power is equated with injustice and
mental disorder, are in fact far tamer than the fates befallen by the other two heroines. The X-Men are the
quintessential superheroes in that they are depicted as a higher evolution of human being. This “master
evolutionary narrative that generates the notion of a super male offers no extrapolative path toward
superwomen. Exaggerate the [masculine traits] and you get a stronger…more aggressive superman. Exaggerate
the female traits and get someone who erases her self from the story.” (Attebery 83). Rogue, fearful of losing her
boyfriend and tortured by the physical solitude that her powers bring her, takes an antidote that suppresses the
mutant genes in her DNA and renders her powerless. Pop culture time and time again has instructed women to
give up their power for the greater good of spinster-hood avoidance, through Disney depictions of headstrong
princesses leaving behind everything to marry princes they’ve just met and countless romantic comedies
involving educated businesswoman falling for the jobless losers with a charming five o’ clock shadows; rarely
however it the message so forthright than it is here. Rogue literally opts to suppress her own innate power in
able to touch a boy who, twenty screen minutes earlier, was ice-skating hand-in-hand with another girl. Women
classically place greater salience in their relationship with a partner over their relationship with themselves,
regardless of their power, and in Rogue’s story is the message: you can’t have both.
Nothing however encapsulates the fate of powerful women on screen as much as the fate of Jean Grey. A
class-5 mutant, the only one in existence, Jean Grey’s powers of telekinesis and telepathy are unrivaled by even
the most powerful male mutant. However, so strong are her powers that they manifest into two dueling
personalities, the other being the Phoenix, described by Professor X as “all desire, joy and rage.” “Women are
regarded as irrational beings ruled by emotion, intuition, and the rhythms, needs, and desires of the body”
(Johnson 60, 194). Women’s emotions, especially those of women in power, come under constant scrutiny; this is
a society wary of a female president for fear of giving control of the big red button to someone with PMS. In the
world of the X-Men, it is Jean’s emotions in relation to her power that lead the Professor, through psychic
barriers of which she is unaware, to suppress the Phoenix side, the “hysterical” side, of Jean Grey, “for her own
good”. At the end of X2, the second film in the trilogy, Jean sacrifices herself and dies to save to save the team,
and ultimately human kind. But rather than leave her to the glory of martyrdom like so many male superheroes,
the sheer force of her psychic powers breaks the mental barrier and unleashes her Phoenix power on to full
effect. In the X-Men: The Last Stand, she returns to life, darker and more powerful than before, but this new
power is not without its price: “inevitably, given the societal view of powerful women…the Phoenix power turned
Jean evil” (Fingeroth 90). No longer a hero, Jean Grey is angry, vengeful, and quite literally mad with power. She
kills Professor X in a fit of rage and then leaves her X-Men family to join the ranks of Magneto. It would be
enough of an insult for Jean’s story to end there, but in the same way pop culture marries off the princess it also
punishes its most powerful women. Thelma and Louise realized their full potential, took control of their lives and
then drove right off of a cliff. While it’s interesting to note that in the comic book version of Jean Grey/the
Phoenix, she ultimately commits suicide to save the universe from her powerful wrath, on the screen Jean is not
even awarded the luxury of engineering her own justice. (Rosenberg) At the film’s climax, Jean stands in the
center of a carnage she is creating, out of control of her powers, her rage and her emotion. As Wolverine
approaches her, she is able to eke out the words “save me.” Unfortunately for Jean, the only redemption for her
sins is the ultimate punishment: Wolverine proclaims his eternal love for her, and then plunges his claws right
into her chest. For her own good, indeed.
William Marsdon, creator of Wonder Woman, once said that, “not even girls want to be girls, so long as
our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power.” What does it do for girls, for women, then when their
archetypes do not lack force, strength, or power, but rather are pigeonholed in the way that they are able to use
them? While male superheroes are able to embody an exaggerated masculinity that gives their complicated
identities depth, and exaggerated femininity breeds compulsion, nymphomania and evil. Within the four women
presented lies a power that surpasses even the men in their fictional worlds, but rather than embodying a
powerful female archetype, they are stripped of their complexity while squeezed into lingerie. This is a sad,
simple metaphor for the roles that women in society have to embody on a daily basis. Harness your power, but
lose your relationships. Earn a place at the top of a powerful social ladder, but look sexy while you do it. And in
the end it doesn’t really matter what you choose, because we’re going to shut you out or kill you off regardless. A
rich, multifaceted existence is not available for those unable to bit into the passive female stereotype, and female
superheroes mirror this societal implication. As Catwoman stalks off into the night, a voiceover telling of her
great new independence, her taut, leather clad buttocks sway center screen as she launches herself off of a ledge
and into oblivion. This is all you get.
Works Cited
Attebery, Brian. Decoding Gender in Science Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Fingeroth, Danny. Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Society. New
York: Continuum Press, 2004.
“Introducing Wonder Woman.” Wonder Woman Archives. Vol 1. Stories by William Moulton Marston and Herry
G. Peter. New York: DC Comics, 1998. 8-16
Johnson, Allen. The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997.
O' Reilly, Julie D.. "The Wonder Woman Precedent: Female (Super)Heroism on Trial." The Journal of American
Culture September 2005: 273-283.
Rosenberg, Alyssa. "The Invisible Woman". The American Prospect September 12, 2008