My sister is going to a themed costume party after Christmas, and the theme is "Superheroes." My sister is not an avid reader of graphic novels or watcher of superhero films, and so she was asking me who she could go as.
"Wonder Woman?" No, her friend was going as Wonder Woman. "Batgirl or Catwoman?" Hmm, she wasn't really a Batman fan, besides which, she wanted to be a villain if possible. "Silk Spectre out of Watchmen?" What's Watchmen? No one will know who she is! "Then, er ..."
Two degrees between us and we came up with four choices. And they were all from the DC universe. It was mother who solved the problem in the end; by suggesting my sister go as Claire from the TV series Heroes, the reason for the famous tag line "Save the cheerleader, save the world." My sister is happy with that, but as someone who loves superhero movies and is just discovering the joys of the graphic novel I found it depressing. When I was thinking about it later, I realised that virtually every famous superhero is a man - we've all heard of Batman, Superman, Spider-man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man... why the endless suffix of "man"? The X-Men contain a number of female characters, but who is it that everyone knows best? Wolverine, I bet.
In comparison to the three Spider-Man movies, two Batman movies (plus four made in the 90's) the Iron Man and Incredible Hulk franchises, female superheroes (at least when they're not part of a superhero team) are mostly represented by "Elektra" and "Catwoman," which - let's be honest here - sucked. Female superheroes are no less cool and heroic than their male counterparts, but it seems that they're far less famous and far less bankable as a result. Women in superhero franchises seem to exist in order to be the hero's girlfriend (don't even get me started on the upcoming "Spirit" movie) which I find very sad.
Why is this? Why aren't female superheroes as well known as their male counterparts? I accept that graphic novels and comics up until recently (and still are) a male-dominated industry, but characters like Wonder Woman and Batgirl have been around just as long as other stalwarts like Spider-man, so why aren't they having movies made about them? (Actually Joss Whedon was going to direct Wonder Woman - bliss - but that didn't work out and it's stuck in development hell for the time being). But it seems even women with superpowers need to fight for gender equality.
So I guess for now my sister will have to dress up as a cheerleader. At least said cheeleader made sure a would-be rapist got what was coming to him ...
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/me puts on my silly hat
Female superhero characters that aren't on a team with a bunch of men that overshadow them? Let's see, there's Sailor Moon, the Powerpuff Girls...
/me takes off the silly hat
::sigh:: I don't think this is helping.
Female villains are a bit awkward to write, because it's not nice to show Superman or Batman beating up a girl. :(
There are two other female Batman villains, besides Catwoman, that might be recognizable: Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy. (The latter tends to wear the usual skintight fanservice outfit, though.)
Both Harley and Ivy dress for fan service, but doesn't every comic book character (men and women?) The women in the DC universe (the female Rogues Gallery, the assorted -girls) tend to be a lot more problematic than the Marvel women (the female X-Men on both sides.)
Wonder Woman probably had the best live action TV show out of all of them, and though the show ran before many young feminists' time, they'd do well to check out Lynda Carter. In fact, Wonder Woman's experience in the Justice League of America comics is pretty interesting in terms of its times. At one point, Green Arrow insults her work, she retaliates, and Superman says "Oh, so it's a women's lib thing." Diana pulls out that incredible wrath and says "It is NOT! It's a Wonder Woman thing! I've got my confidence back, Superman! I'm just as much a part of this team as anybody else."
Believe me, the women are there. As a preteen girl, I rediscovered Wonder Woman etc., and was really inspired. I think the problem is that DC and Marvel don't think they can market them by themselves (as evidenced by the stalling going on over at Warner Bros. over the Wonder Woman movie.) I think if more women would read/admit to reading comics, female superheroes would get a better rap.
P.S. Really? Claire over Silk Spectre? She would have definitely had talking points at that party, because most people would have at least recognized her from the trailer.
Alright, geek out over. Sorry for the length.
On a less pessimistic note:
Pick a female Buffy the Vampire Slayer character. Any female Buffy the Vampire slayer character.
Potential ideas: Black Canary, Elektra (was a sucky movie but a wonderful heroine in her comics), Jessica Jones, or Susan Storm of the Fantastic 4/
Wondergirl, Spidergirl, Supergirl
Even Robin was a girl (Stephanie Brown) for a short time.
What about Buffy, Lara Croft, one of the Incredibles or Kim Possible?
Culturally, women just don't grow up thinking that the coolest thing in life is the ability to physically overpower opposition. Men know from a young age that stronger is better, and if you were the biggest guy around, you could get what you wanted. I think victory through violence is just viewed more as a male virtue than a female one.
X-men is an interesting thing to bring up in a feminist context though. The X-men are obviously intentionally as diverse as possible. There are people of all different ages, colors, cultures, backgrounds, etc. Even the main theme of the early X-men is their fight for equality and acceptance of all people vs. the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants who wants the superiority of one group recognized over others. It's a pretty straightforward feminist imo.
I find it interesting that superheros are a particularly american phenomenon, something about universal salvation through rampant individualism seems to resonate in the US culture more-so than elsewhere. I don't think victory through violence is viewed with any admiration in Europe though.
I don't know anything about xmen but I think the phenomena of celebrating the ubermensch over groups of normal individuals working together isn't healthy.
I would think that Japan rivals the United States with the number of superheros in their pop culture. So, I don't think the phenomenon of superheros is specific to America, although the superheros we have here may be different. However, many of the superheros in Japan also have godlike strength and work individually to save humanity. Although they may have more superheros who work as teams than we do.
I think Sailor Moon (although not an American superhero...) and the powerpuff girls are great ideas for superhero costumes, as suggested above.
This is only applicable because girls are socialized to be weaker and give less credence to the power of their physical bodies. At the same time, while girls may consciously be indoctrinated into this belief system, their physical behaviors can belie that false believe and you will see girls be as physical if not more so than many boys. For example, when I went to day-care a friend taught me how to wrestle and showed me using one of the boys. She knew wrestling moves and taught them to me. Later on I became a bully....but thats another story. When I was a girl I wanted physical dominance and would have 'strong person' fantasys about being able to 'take' any person that came at me. I loved to wrestle and physically compete and was a natural athlete. I used to love Rambo movie series and the gladiators. I often wished I was born back then so I couldve grown up and been trained to be a warrior like them. I'm sure many girls felt the same way, but never had these beliefs tapped because of their gender. The curious thing is, when I would pretend I was a large and strong individual it would always be in the form of a man. This always frustrated me, and I wished (even when I was a little tyke) that these images would manifest themselves in the form of my female body.
I didn't make it clear, but when I said that they grow up doing these things, I meant that it was because of the socialization. So, I agree with what you're saying.
I want to flesh out a bit about the X-men. Wolverine might be the most famous of them, but the 2nd and 3rd in charge of the X-men are Jean Grey (with Cyclops by her side and Storm). There are also a lot of great female villains, like Mystique (who comes out of the closet and has a daughter). Those are just the staple characters. I'm a bit behind on my X-men, sadly, but there's whole generations of them from various series that are all strong, independent and kick ass women. By and large, the women in X-men have higher constitution than the men -- with the exception of a couple characters who stand on par with them.
Addressing the question of why they're not as well known, I think it has to do with readership. Most comic book readers are boys/men. It's not to say women/girl readers don't exist, because they certainly do, but the market does need to target its audience and men tend to relate to men doings things better and it hooks them more. Also, a lot of these characters that are staples in our society were founded when women "couldn't do things" like be super heroes. They came into being superheroes only after society began to shift, but many of those well known characters you had mentioned were already well established by that point (Batman, Superman, Spider-man, Ironman). The industry needed to do catch up work and made some of the villains into roguish anti-heroes who would do good only when it suited them. The paradigm is shifting, as evidenced by X-men -- since it came later in the game.
Storm, Phoenix,
archetypes that are super hero like, Goddesses, Orisha's etc.:
Athena, Diana, Demeter, Persephone, Iansa, Oya, etc. etc.
Durga, Tara Kali....
Most of the super hero movies have really glossed over the female characters. I was so disappointed in general by cardboard Storm, Rogue gave up her powers to be with a boy, and even Jean Grey seemed kind of two-dimensional to me, despite the third movie hinging on her. I try not to even think about the recent Batman's 'refrigerator'ing of Gyllenhaal's character. Hellboy has a bunch of well-developed, ass-kicking female characters, but they just weren't in the movies. Liz Sherman was re-written into a romantic role for the movies. Kate Corrigan, Baba Yaga, Hecate, and all the mermaids from the Third Wish are wicked characters not in the movies, even though Kate and at least 1 of the witches really should be.
But anyway, I'd blame the movies, not a total lack of good female characters in the books.
At least said cheeleader made sure a would-be rapist got what was coming to him ...
Wasn't Peter the one who saved Claire from Sylar? hence "save the cheerleader"....
Correct me if I'm mistaken, though. It's been a while.
Claire went off to make out with the football star guy and he's the one that tried to rape her. She died but then came back to life and a few days later she got the football guy to let her drive his car and she crashed it into a wall, hospitalizing him.
Sylar didn't want to rape her, he wanted to eat her brain and take her power.
*Heroes geek*
What about Tank Girl? I love that comic!
This maybe slight OT. But why couldn't she be something no one would know who she is? I recently attended an anime convention as Shana from Shakugan No Shana (who is a superhero by the way). It's relatively new so is little known even among anime fans. Only two people knew who I was but it was fun to hear people's guesses.
I'd say just dress up as her favourite superhero even if it is a male. What's wrong with a bit of gender-bending at a costume party?