The Fitful Evolution of Wonder Woman’s Look
In a scene in the newest film adaptation of Wonder Woman, the heroine (Gal Gadot), dressed as her alter ego Diana Prince, comes to the aid of a friend by destroying a gunman’s weapon. She hurls the bully across the pub, where he lands in a hard crash. Watching the scene, Sameer, an associate of Wonder Woman’s comrade Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) exclaims, “I’m both frightened and aroused.”
Looking more closely at Wonder Woman’s 75-year-old history, it becomes clear that the heroine has consistently evoked mixed feelings—whether fear, awe, or attraction. Her body in particular has been a canvas upon which authors, artists, and audiences have negotiated women’s shifting gender roles and beauty standards from the 1940s through today. Tracing how Wonder Woman’s appearance has evolved in the comics and film and TV adaptations reveals the ways her creators tried to respond to anxieties about women’s independence; in playing with her proportions, skin color, and costumes, the architects of Wonder Woman’s image over time have both empowered and objectified her, though the line between the two is often blurry.
When Wonder Womanin January 1942, the superhero was modeled after a new feminine ideal. According to the scholar Jill Lepore, the the Varga Girl centerfolds in magazine for their “cosmopolitanism” and “exoticism.” For Marston, it was important that Wonder Woman have a sexy and feminine appearance to counteract what he called the of comics at the time. As a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for All-American Comics, Marston used his background as a psychologist to advise the newly formed D.C. Comics on how to fight accusations by concerned parents and culture critics about the medium’s violent content.
