Saturday, January 2, 2010

Where is Wonder Woman?

My 4 year old daughter recently informed me that Wonder Woman is NOT a part of the Justice League, and that only boys are super heroes. Really?

Based on Wikipedia (which she doubts as a credible source, but is now commonly considered as accurate as Encyclopedia Brittanica), Wonder Woman was actually one of the first members of the Justice League, since 1960. "The League originally appeared with a line-up that included Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter."
Before Betty Friedan, before Title VII - she was there - yet she's missing from Olivia's new t-shirt. Where is she?

At the young age of 4, she is already getting messages about what she can and can't do, based on her gender, from mass media and marketing folks, who probably made a random decision to leave WW off the shirt. Maybe it's these same individuals who have decided that girls will only buy princess or Fancy Nancy underwear - there is not a single pair of superhero underwear in the girl's brief style to be found, even on the internet. Not even the Wonder Woman wonderoos that I had back in 1979! This girl needs a superhero!
So what's a girl (and her mom) to do? Well, one idea is to buy plain white undies, and then mail order iron-on decals from eBay. A second idea is to order new images of the Justice League, which by the way, also includes Cat Woman and Super Girl in addition to Wonder Woman. A final but critical step is to encourage broad acceptance and endorsement of Wonder Woman by the broader group of preschoolers who have more credibility with O than Wikipedia. I haven't figured out how to tackle this third step yet, but as soon as those decals come in the mail, watch out.





1 comment:

  1. So did the decals work out?

    Also, Happy Birthday to Liam! Did you have a party?

    ReplyDelete