Wonder Woman Part 1: The Secret (Queer) History

This season, sociologist Trisha Crawshaw joins me for a deep dive into all things comics, gender, and Diana Prince. In the first episode of our Wonder Woman series, we excavate her queer, kinky, feminist origins in the 1940s, as well as the life of the man who created her, Dr. William Moulton Marston. Drawing on historian Jill Lepore's bestselling book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Angela Robinson's 2017 film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, as well as my guest's own research, we delve into the complicated legacy of Marston and the role Wonder Woman has played-- and continues to play-- in our culture, one decade at a time.

Chapters

• 0:00 We are thematically prepared
• 0:33 Series/episode/guest intro
• 5:03 Falling in love with Wonder Woman
• 8:09 "Truth, Justice, Boobs": a study of gender in comics and comic book culture
• 18:00 Diana's Origins: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
• 21:34 Jill Lepore's 'A Secret History of Wonder Woman'
• 28:01 Kink, sapphic overtones, and straddling missiles (oh my!)
• 31:40 Bustiers and Boots: A timeline of the Wonder Woman costume
• 33:40 Etta Candy and fatphobia in the comics
• 36:53 Beauty standards (according to who?)
• 39:30 Outro (feat. Part 2 teaser)

Transcript

>> Trisha: 0:00

Oh my God, I love your t-shirt. You are thematically prepared.

>> SJ: 0:04

Oh, I am so prepared. I, like, made sure that my Wonder Woman mug was clean [laughs] for today. I made sure that I was wearing the right shirt. Nice, you got your action figure-- Beautiful. And look what I have! [Trisha gasps, exclaims] [garbled static noises] Hmm. Normally she says something, but now she's just making bad noises. I guess I need to change her batteries. Usually she says, "Great Hera!" or something like that.

>> Trisha: 0:32

That's so cute.[ 1975 Wonder Woman theme song kicks in]

>> Wonder Woman theme song: 0:36

Wonder Woman! Wonder Woman! All the world is waiting for you and the power you possess. In your satin tights, fighting for your rights and the old red, white and bluuuuuuuue

>> SJ: 1:00

Welcome back to the Popculty Podcast, where I celebrated Pride month this year by finally finishing the first episode in a series I have been dying to share with you all for literal years. Yeah, I know I'm really telling on my slowness here, but I thought, 'How better to celebrate queer history than by exploring the origins of one of the most beloved characters of all time-- who happens to be queer, by the way-- and her openly queer creators?' The time has come. I'm talking about Wonder Woman, y'all - One of my favorite characters in all of pop culture. The feminism, the mythology, the Lasso of Truth?? She just-- She's everything. And to talk about all of this and so much more, I knew just the person I needed to call up - My dear friend Trisha Crawshaw. Now, we recorded this all the way back in 2021, when Trisha was finishing up her PhD. Today, she's a professor of Sociology at Franklin College in Indiana. She's also a huge Wonder Woman fan and has a research background in comics. She's also one of the funniest and smartest people I know, and this was truly my favorite series to do. I had almost as much fun editing it as I did recording it, and that is very much not the norm for me. Quick disclaimer that we did have some technical difficulties while remotely recording the first half of our convo, so Trisha's audio is not always the clearest, and there are a couple of dropped words here and there. Apologies for that. I did my best to compensate for it in post, and we were eventually able to resolve those issues. So I promise the audio quality will improve over the course of the series, and it'll be back to normal hi-fi by the last couple episodes. So, with that said, at the intersection of Pride and 4th of July, I give you Part One of a series celebrating the nearly century-long impact of a truly iconic American hero and her queer roots. I hope you learn and laugh as much as we did. Enjoy.

>> Wonder Woman theme song: 2:54

You're a wonder, Wonder Womaaaaaaaan![song concludes with a jazzy flourish]

>> SJ: 3:01

I've been wanting to talk to you for the longest time, about pretty much anything. Then when Wonder Woman 1984 came out, I was like, "Okay, the time has come. We got to do this."

>> Trisha: 3:13

Absolutely.

>> SJ: 3:14

There's so much to talk about with this character, and I knew you were the person I wanted to talk to about all of this, one, because you're one of my favorite people, of course; [Trisha makes d'awww noise] Two, because you're one of the biggest Wonder Woman fans I know; Also, I don't know if you know this, but you were really the person who introduced me to comic books. I don't think I had ever picked up a comic book until you were working on what would become your Master's thesis. You were doing this Wonder Woman project, and you were telling me about this character, talking to me about all these comics you were reading, and I was like, 'Hey, maybe I should check out these comics she speaks of...' I really had no history with the whole medium, and then you piqued my interest. I would go to the campus library after class and just spend my whole evenings reading through their shelves of comics, trying to catch up on, you know, 100 years [laughs] of comics. Which is, of course, an impossible feat, but I tried, and you were the person who inspired me. So that's why I wanted to talk to you about all of this, and I'm so happy to have you here.

>> Trisha: 4:23

One, I had no idea that I inspired that, which is, like, super humbling. And two, I feel like you really inspired me to appreciate the Buffy comics. I have always been a fan of, like, DC and Wonder Woman, but I really hadn't entered into that genre of graphic storytelling. And so when you recommended Buffy-- just the tv show, because I'd never watched it before-- I was like, "There's a Buffy comic??"

>> SJ: 4:48

Yeah.

>> Trisha: 4:49

And so you became someone also that I would go to for more ideas when it came to reading and the canon in general.

>> SJ: 4:55

Nice! Oh, I love that we've influenced each other. Do you want to share a little more about your background and areas of expertise with our listeners?

>> Trisha: 5:04

Yeah, my interests primarily lie with Youth Studies and social movements, and more on the topic today, I've also always been really interested in gender and resistance narratives. I probably got interested in Wonder Woman circa 2007, through my friendship with another incredible person, Sarah "Amazon" Ekstrand.

>> SJ: 5:25

Yesss.

>> Trisha: 5:26

And so, her love of Wonder Woman influenced a lot of my research and a lot of my exploration into what it means to be a powerful woman in this genre, where, you know, everything is hyper- sexualized and objectified. How are we creating bodies? And then, how are those bodies powerful?

>> SJ: 5:42

Right. Yeah, shout-out to Sarah Ekstrand. Amazing cosplayer-- specifically Wonder Woman cosplayer. And now she's doing stunt work, which is really cool. I can totally see it.

>> Trisha: 5:51

She's a stunt person! And I've seen her jump off of buildings and light herself on fire...

>> SJ: 5:57

That's so cool!

>> Trisha: 5:58

I'm blown away every time I see anything that she's doing.

>> SJ: 6:01

Love that journey for her. Yeah, so, what became your thesis is amazingly titled Truth, Justice, Boobs - Gender in Comic Book Culture. Can you walk us through your research process and just give us a little bit of an overview of some of the things you found while doing that project?

>> Trisha: 6:20

Of course. So again, circa 2006/ 2007, I was introduced to Wonder Woman by Sarah. Sarah had always been an avid comic book reader, and she was particularly interested in Wonder Woman. That summer, she decided to audition for an actual casting role as Wonder Woman at Six Flags. And I remember thinking, 'That is the coolest thing. Tell me more.' Like, I was more familiar with this kitschy aspect of Wonder Woman. You know, the t shirts, the action figures, the watches - Very material things.

>> SJ: 6:57

Right.

>> Trisha: 6:58

And the passion that Sarah had for it kind of blew me away, and I wanted to become more interested. She introduced me to the 2009 animated film, Wonder Woman. So I have this really deep nostalgia for that film, which I think we're going to talk about in a little bit anyways...

>> SJ: 7:13

Totally.

>> Trisha: 7:13

But it was just funny, and it was smart. And I remember thinking that it was raising a lot of uncomfortable questions that feminists have been grappling with for a long time. And, I kind of fell in love. So, as an undergraduate, I'm thinking a lot about Wonder Woman, and I'm thinking about how cool it is that this world out there exists where other really smart people are thinking about what gender means and how we show gender and gender expression through popular culture. And then I decided to go to grad school.[laughs] Which, uh... Twelve years later, I'm still in grad school.

>> SJ: 7:49

Hey, it's a journey, not a destination.

>> Trisha: 7:51

Oh my gosh, it's a journey. It's a rocky, rocky road through a haunted woods. [SJ laughs] So, I decided that I really wanted to focus my MA research on the comic book community. I was really interested in comic books, and spaces that involved comics, and the people who like to read them and talk about them. So I designed a qualitative study where I was doing in- depth interviews with comic book readers, and I was also working at a local comic book store at this time. A lot of what would become the chapter Truth, Justice, Boobs actually comes from content analysis of comics that I was reading, participant observation-- these spaces where I was taking notes and journal entries into experiences that I had in the shop-- and then also a collection of 20 interviews that I did with folks who were reading comic books and were really moved by the comic book industry. So, um, I wrote that thesis. It found a really great home in Advanced Gender Research, and I'm really proud of it.*And* I no longer hang out in those spaces, because they were really difficult to be in for a long time.

>> SJ: 8:53

For sure. Which was one of the findings, right.

>> Trisha: 8:55

Right, yeah.

>> SJ: 8:56

And reading that essay, I could see how toxic it would be and why this was a short- term project. One of the things I really appreciated about your study was, I mean, obviously, a lot has been made of how female characters are drawn in comics-- which is a totally valid concern--

>> Trisha: 9:15

Right.

>> SJ: 9:15

--and what they're wearing, right? The costumes and the body imagery that we see in comics is a huge issue that is talked about *a lot*. I thought it was really interesting that you went deeper than that. You focused on this parallel between how female characters in comic books serve as, like, the template for women in real life who exist in comic book spaces or comic book culture. When you were working in the comic book shop and you would observe the very few women who would come into the store, it was *always* either with their boyfriend. [These women] were just there tagging along, and their boyfriend came in knowing exactly what they wanted, what they were looking for. The girlfriend never spoke; If she showed interest in something, it was very short- lived; Or it was, like, a mom coming in to buy Pokemon cards for her son. You said there were just one or two or three women who ever came into the comic book store, and it was always on behalf of a boy or man in their lives. So they were centering the male figure in their lives. And that perfectly mirrors the way female characters in the comics really only exist as supporting cast to the male protagonist. They're always in subservient roles, they're in sidekick roles, girlfriend roles-- you know, MJ to Spider- Man, Lois Lane to Superman, the list goes on and on and on. If they do get to be sidekicks or heroes of their own, oftentimes their names are derivative of the male heroes. So, like, Batgirl and Batwoman are both derived from Batman, etcetera. They're always in a secondary role that is somehow supporting or servicing the male character. And it was wild to me that you found that that bled over into the real world.

>> Trisha: 11:07

Yeah. So, in comic books, typically what you find are these women characters negotiate relationships between men. I'm not the first person who thinks that at all-- You know, Gail Simone's been working with Women in Refrigerators for, like, decades now, right?

>> SJ: 11:23

Yes.

>> Trisha: 11:24

And so, I was like, 'This is a problem. Why are women secondary? Why are they used to advance the plot points of men?' I started to ask those questions. And as I was asking those questions to men who were reading comic books, they told me it made sense, because the things that they read in comics, they see mirrored in their everyday life. Specifically, what really, uh, shook me was, in the middle of an interview, one participant was talking about how it makes sense that women are nags in comic books, because his wife is a nag in real life. She's always going to be telling him to do the dishes or to take out the trash, or, "Why aren't you watching the kids?" And he sees that in comic books because[chuckles] women characters are asking things like, "Why didn't you shoot him with your laser eyes?"[SJ chuckles] He said this, and I thought it was funny because, you know, uh, [laughs] the laser eyes was really clever...

>> SJ: 12:21

Yeah.

>> Trisha: 12:22

At the same time, the more I talked to more and more people, they kept making these parallels themselves, and [deep sigh] I thought that was incredibly problematic. There was also this really weird dichotomy between the virgin and the slut - This weird sexual dichotomy that was happening, where men thought it was okay to participate in comic book culture, and they thought it was okay to play video games based on-- in this instance, it was a Batman game-- but they wouldn't let their little sisters into this space, because they didn't want to see what women looked like in comic books because it was too sexualized. So at the same time that they're appreciating this medium, this art form, no way would they ever want a woman close to them to be able to express her sexuality in a way that was seen by Poison Ivy.

>> SJ: 13:07

Wait, are you saying they were acting like gatekeepers because they wanted to keep this their realm, or they were trying to protect their little sisters from seeing these really sexualized versions of women? Or both?

>> Trisha: 13:19

I think, to an extent, both. I think they were really comfortable with it being a boys' club, as evidenced by some of the conversations that I overheard, talking about Peter Parker "getting his fuck on" with Gwen Stacy. Just things that would, I think, be characterized by a previous slimeball as "locker room talk."

>> SJ: 13:37

[chuckles] Yes.

>> Trisha: 13:38

The hostile environment that comic book shops can become, right?

>> SJ: 13:41

Totally.

>> Trisha: 13:42

I don't think they necessarily become welcoming to people who don't want to automatically be sexualized or ostracized by those who are there. So, I think, at the same time, yes, it was this really exclusive club; And two, they didn't want "good girls" to be in these places, to see these things. And they talked specifically about young girls being sisters, young girls being daughters... There was, like, an apprehension there.

>> SJ: 14:09

That's so interesting. And that's just reinforcing the Virgin/Whore dichotomy that you are talking about, where the girls and women in their lives are seen as the Virgins, and then the Whores can exist in the comic book spaces, and these men would sort of keep those two separate.

>> Trisha: 14:25

I remember one participant specifically talked about Miley Cyrus - That these comic book heroes "looked like they were getting things out of Miley Cyrus's closet." I was like, 'What a very specific person to point to,' right? And then, 'What about Miley Cyrus is upsetting you?' Because I can think of things that upset*me*!

>> SJ: 14:45

[laughing] Right, sure.

>> Trisha: 14:46

But the things that upset him were about clothing and promiscuity and ideas of what he would never want his daughter to behave like.

>> SJ: 14:56

It's so interesting. And even when you were talking about the environment itself, the way your male coworkers would casually talk in very disparaging ways about female characters, and the type of merchandise that you even saw around the store-- There was a board game called Wenches or something, and there were, I think you counted, three or four Slave Leia posters on the wall.

>> Trisha: 15:20

[audible eye-roll] Of course. Yeah. And I think what's so*frustrating* about this is that I know so many avid comic book readers who are women, and I'm not saying that women don't consume this genre. They absolutely do. They're buying, they're reading, they're talking about, they're carving out their own spaces where they want to share their opinions. But these physical places-- and even, I would argue, places online-- are so hostile to the idea of women sharing their ideas about comics.

>> SJ: 15:49

Totally. Yeah. And, I mean, you see the same thing in gaming spaces, absolutely. Anita Sarkeesian's work at Feminist Frequency has been talking about the toxic environment that exists for female gamers online - Being harassed constantly for just existing as a female gamer. There's definitely a lot of bleed-over between the world of comics and games, because both are sort of seen as boys clubs-- or previously had been. That's definitely changing. As you say, more and more women are reading comics. I think the latest data says that more women than men identify as gamers these days. So it's changing. But then you see the pushback from the old guard being like, "They're taking over our spaces!" And we should mention that you did this study back in 2006, you said?

>> Trisha: 16:30

That's probably when I became interested in comics. I was doing the bulk of my research in 2014, and it was published in 2018.

>> SJ: 16:39

Oh, okay. We're starting to see things change a little bit, in just the last two to three years. I don't think that the problem is solved, or that there's equality in the comic book world, or anything like that. But it would be really interesting-- I'm not saying you should, because I totally understand not wanting to go back into those spaces-- but it would be interesting to see someone do a follow up study to yours, you know, post- Gamergate and MeToo, and post- the massive cultural impact that the new iteration of Wonder Woman has had. I think it's still a little too soon, but I would love to see studies done looking at just the impact of Patty Jenkins' 2017 Wonder Woman film on the world of comics, honestly. So, getting into Wonder Woman, let's get into the history of this character a little bit.

>> Trisha: 17:28

Ahhh, she's so cool.

>> SJ: 17:29

She's so cool! And her creation story is *wild*. I mean, we got to talk about it because a lot of people don't know how bonkers her creation story is. So, giving a little bit of backstory on the character of Wonder Woman... She also goes by Diana Prince. She's a DC comic book character who first appeared in All- Star Comics #8 in October 1941, with her first feature in Sensation Comics#1 the following year. She is a founding member of the Justice League, which also includes Superman, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter. The character was created by American psychologist and writer William Moulton Marston and artist Harry G. Peter, inspired by the suffragists in spirit and by Marston's wife, Elizabeth, and their life partner, Olive Byrne, in appearance. Okay-- we gotta unpack that. That was a lot, especially that last part.

>> Trisha: 18:26

Oh, yeah.

>> Old-timey newsreel announcer: 18:26

Doctor Marston and emotions. It's 18th of July, and Dr. William Marston demonstrates complicated device whereby he claims he can determine and compute comparative emotions of blondes, brunettes, and redheads.

>> SJ: 18:40

William Moulton Marston. Such an interesting dude. Invented the lie detector test and created Wonder Woman.

>> Trisha: 18:48

Yeah.

>> SJ: 18:49

I mean, his personal life is something, and certainly his professional life is something. There was a movie that came out also in 2017-- the same year as Wonder Woman-- called Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which gave me a lot of this backstory. And the director, Angela Robinson, will be the first to admit that she took a lot of liberties to imagine what his life would have been like, his relationships with Elizabeth and Olive, and what their polyamorous relationship would have looked like.

>> Angela Robinson: 19:18

To me, it was always just really, I wanted to tell a simple love story and have it play out in an organic way. And my goal for the film was not to, like, otherize their experience at all or be like, 'This is weird,' or, 'This is kinky.' I just wanted to portray what I thought it would be like for three people who love each other to come together and form this family, and see their hopes and ideals kind of realized in the Wonder Woman character.

>> Bella Heathcote: 19:47

It's great, because I have a friend who's a part of the polyamorous community, and she's really excited about the film because she feels like no one's told their story.

>> Luke Evans: 19:54

But what's lovely about this story is that it shows a very successful version of polyamory and that these three people went through an awful lot to stay together and to fight the restrictions of 1930s/ 1940s society, to keep this love pure and to be there for each other. It's actually-- It is a beautiful love story.

>> Angela Robinson: 20:16

Their love for each other is not an issue within the movie. Do you know what I mean? That's not what they are worried about. It's whether or not they can be who they are in relationship to what the world wants them to be. But within their relationship, I always thought of it as a tripod-- like, you needed all three of them in order for it to work.

>> William Marston: 20:39

What is normal?

>> Elizabeth Marston: 20:40

It can never happen. [sweeping, romantic music] The world won't let it.[music builds to crescendo, then ceases]

>> William Marston: 20:48

The world can't stop us.

>> SJ: 20:51

But that is all very much based on fact.

>> Trisha: 20:54

Yeah.

>> SJ: 20:54

And a lot of that comes from Jill Lepore's book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, which was written in 2014. I knew you had a copy! There you go. I knew you had it, I knew you referenced it in your thesis. Could you give us some highlights and some of the things you found most interesting?

>> Trisha: 21:11

Well, first of all, one of the most wonderful things is that she is an incredible historian who has compiled so many of the original comics and shared them in this book. Clips and pieces and artwork from the originals. And not only does she have a really wonderful analysis of what was going on historically, and what that means for contemporary feminists as well as what that meant back then for Marston. One of my favorite things that I didn't know about Wonder Woman that specifically came out in this book was that, it was up to the readers whether or not they wanted Wonder Woman included in the Justice League.

>> SJ: 21:48

Oh, wow.

>> Trisha: 21:49

The idea of having Wonder Woman in the Justice League was kind of a novel concept. So they had a write-in poll in, like, the 1940s, whether or not readers thought that Wonder Woman, "even though a woman"-- like, that was part of the thing-- should be a member of the Justice League. Folks wrote in, they said, "Yes, absolutely. She should be a member of the Justice League... and she should be the secretary."

>> SJ: 22:12

Oh, no! That's where that came from? It was the readers??

>> Trisha: 22:16

Yeah!

>> SJ: 22:17

That was society who made that decision??

>> Trisha: 22:20

I don't know for sure if it was the readers who wanted her to be the secretary. They decided that they wanted her to be involved in the Justice League, and the decision was made to make her secretary. So, I don't know if that was coming from the creator, or DC, or the readers, like, I'm not sure who made that decision. But, this, uh, light bulb situation was, 'Okay, we have a woman in the League - What do we do with her? Notes! Lots and lots of notes. [SJ laughs] She'll be a great stenographer. She can use the Lasso, like, [scoffing] to corral the other members into group meetings...'

>> SJ: 22:52

Nooo!

>> Trisha: 22:53

Yes! And [sighs in frustration] Marston, too-- He did this interview with the American Scholar, and I actually quoted a little bit of this in my chapter. It was like a 1943 article in the American Scholar, where he was asked why he was inspired to write Wonder Woman. And he said that little girls didn't have anyone to look up to. And as long as we didn't see women as powerful, little girls wouldn't want to grow up to be good women, who were kind and submissive and full of love and honesty. And so, Marston himself has, like, a really limited viewpoint of what he considers to be 'a good woman,' right? And Wonder Woman was kind of this propaganda piece to make other little girls become 'good women.'

>> SJ: 23:40

I actually-- That was one of the quotes that I pulled out. He says,"Not even girls want to be girls, so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace- loving, as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman, plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman." That was such a wild statement to me, because in the same breath, he is calling out the lack of role models that little girls have, but then he's also reinforcing that limited scope of'a good woman.' It's such a paradoxical thing, and I think it represents really well how Marston was both, in many ways, thinking ahead of his time-- He had a lot of very progressive viewpoints, he was very feminist for the time-- But he was also very much a product of his time. Do you think that's fair to say?

>> Trisha: 24:40

I think so. And I was looking a little bit into this today for our conversation about the film, but I also wanted to share it with you here... So, I was also really interested in what Wonder Woman was wearing. I was looking into the wardrobe and what she was wearing, and then what other women comic characters are wearing too. In this era, in, like, the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s, you see this tremendous pushback. This is after the suffragist era-- after the initial suffragist movement, I should say-- when young girls are no longer interested in wearing really confining clothes. You start to see the cardigan come on the scene and have this really feminist, fuck-you message to it. So, there was a lot of cultural pushback against the cardigan. They were called "Sloppy Joes." [SJ laughs, "Mmkay."] And if you were a woman wearing a cardigan, you were called a"Sloppy Sue."

>> SJ: 25:29

[trying not to laugh in disbelief] Oh, my God. No.

>> Trisha: 25:31

Yas. [both snickering]

>> SJ: 25:32

Okay...

>> Trisha: 25:34

So, women on college campuses during the 1940s and 1950s were called "Sloppy Sues," if they weren't, you know, showing their bodies in hetero- feminine attractive ways. And then I think of Marston coming along and creating this ultimate feminine archetype, who, for him, was kind and submissive and tender and loving... And also, what does she wear?

>> SJ: 25:56

I mean, a skirt and a bustier...

>> Trisha: 25:59

Not the Sloppy Joe!

>> SJ: 26:01

[both laugh] No, you will never see Wonder Woman in a cardigan. It's true!

>> Trisha: 26:06

Feminists in this time were pushing back against that wardrobe-- the bustier, the skirt. They were starting to wear pants, they were wearing cardigans. And then we create this role model who is, again, in this bustier and this skirt, right? It's like a step back from what women of the time period were demanding, were wearing themselves! I kind of always come back to that. Like, to an extent, absolutely, he was a queer visionary...*And* he was also putting women in bustiers.

>> SJ: 26:36

Yeah. I find him such a complicated person with such complicated ideas. Olive Byrne, who was one of his partners, is the niece of Margaret Sanger, the founder of what would become Planned Parenthood. And he was influenced by the suffragists - Emmeline Pankhurst and the militant British suffragists really infused the spirit of the character, when he was creating Diana. Left and right, he's being influenced by suffragists and birth control activists. But, yeah, then you look at the design of the character, and it's still so regressive in many ways. Not to mention, there's the whole kink aspect... I mean, we gotta talk about that for a minute. First of all, her bracelets are literally called the Bracelets of Submission. This guy was very much into DISC theory, which is about, like, dominance and submission and how both men and women want to be sometimes dominated...

>> Trisha: 27:28

[coquettishly] Tell me more.

>> SJ: 27:30

[both laugh] Uh, well...

>> William Marston: 27:31

Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance. All human relationships break down into the interplay between these categories of emotion. A person is most happy when they are submissive to a loving authority. It is essential that a person submits to an authority willingly, that it is their idea. We get into trouble when people feel forced to do something they don't want to do, and that is merely compliance. People who simply comply instead of submit are unhappy and repressed. And this can lead to resentment. Taken to its extremes, it can lead to crime, war, fascism.

>> female student: 28:12

How do you avoid compliance? It seems like that is built into most situations.

>> William Marston: 28:17

Inducement. Inducement is the act of seducing somebody to your way of thinking, dominating them so completely that what you want is what they want, and they love giving it to you. And that, ladies, is the key to life, to love, to happiness, to peace. Women are better at inducement than men.[students laugh politely]

>> SJ: 28:59

He had all kinds of these ideas that he was also infusing into the character from the get- go. There are all types of bondage themes happening in the comic, there's a lot of lesbian overtones - She's constantly being tied up by women; "You just need a good mistress," is a line that she says. So I don't think people realize the very kinky history of Wonder Woman, which is the other aspect of this. And his justification for all that-- I mean, not only was he personally into that, but when the defenders of 'proper society' would call him out on it--[in a snobbish, vaguely British accent] "Impropriety! Oh my goodness!"-- [normal voice] he would sort of justify it by saying Wonder Woman's always being tied up so that she can break free of her bonds, and that symbolizes women's emancipation from oppression.

>> Trisha: 29:50

[sarcastically] Sure. Mm-hmm.

>> SJ: 29:51

I mean... I don't think I buy that, but, um, 'Sure, Jan.'[both chuckling]

>> Trisha: 29:57

Also, if you look at some old comic book covers specifically of Wonder Woman, she straddles*everything.*

>> SJ: 30:04

[busts out laughing]

>> Trisha: 30:05

If there is a phallic image anywhere, she's going to be straddling it.

>> SJ: 30:10

Oh, my God.

>> Trisha: 30:11

And a lot of this-- again, like you were saying-- is militant. So they're like bombs or missiles, and she has a hold of it and her thighs are, like, encasing it [SJ laughing in background], and she's going to save the day! And there is this element of kink sexuality, of course, that is selling and is also a sly wink to those who are involved in the culture. Yeah.

>> SJ: 30:32

It's such a weird, hidden history of this character-- that is totally there, if you look at the comics! If you just go back and read those first comics from the 1940s, you're like, "Oh, wow. No, it's right there. He wasn't trying to hide anything." There was pushback at the time, people saying, "Think of the children." But also people who were into that and were like, "When's the next issue coming out??" It was definitely a mixed reaction even at the time, but certainly that was pushing the envelope back then. I'm honestly really surprised he got away with as much of what he put in those comics. You mentioned the outfit, and her outfit has a really interesting history, too. I have my Wonder Woman mug here, one, because it's sets the tone for our conversation, but it also is very educational, because it has a timeline of...

>> Trisha: 31:21

[in awe] All the different costumes! Yeah!

>> SJ: 31:21

...all of Wonder Woman's depictions over the decades, starting in the 1940s. And it shows you how her costume changes across all the different decades. So you've got her in the 1940s, she has the red boots and about a knee- high skirt, and she's all star spangled bannered. 1950s, the skirt becomes more like... Spanx? [both chuckle] Like shorts of some kind? And, uh, now she's got sandals. 1960s, looks pretty much the same. 1970s, it's just, like... underwear. Straight- up bustier and underwear. And that kind of remained, honestly... 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s! All the way up into the 2010s, she's still in underwear. That is the best way to describe it - It's less than a one- piece bathing suit. There have been minor alterations to her design, but really since the 1970s, she's been in her underwear, in the comics, and certainly-- as we'll talk about [chuckles]-- in the on- screen presentations of her. And that, I think, is a really good reminder that Wonder Woman really reflects women's place in society in any given era. You can see that reflected in her design, in her costume, because she's being designed and written and drawn by men, and they are drawing her based on how they perceive or how they want women in society to look like, how they want them to behave. So I find that piece of her really interesting, because she's always been this reflection of woman's place in society.

>> Trisha: 32:59

Absolutely. And I think one of the characters who doesn't get enough credit for being phenomenal, but again, comic relief is Etta Candy. [SJ exclaims in adoration] I am in looove with Etta Candy, I am in love with Lucy Davis, obviously...

>> SJ: 33:15

Ahh, she's so good.

>> Trisha: 33:16

But I think one of the things that sticks out is Wonder Woman... You're right, she reflects this idea of the ultimate, ideal woman and where she is in our society. And then, her best friend or sidekick is Etta Candy, who, you know, is a fat woman. And she becomes this foil to what is good and what is attractive. And I'm also really interested in Fat Activism and stuff. There are so many plot points where it's this running joke that Wonder Woman is so strong and incredible and she can do anything, but even she can't make Etta Candy lose weight.

>> SJ: 33:47

[in sympathy and shock] Ohhhh. That's in the comics? That is, like, an actual running joke?

>> Trisha: 33:51

Mm-hm. There are splash pages where you see Wonder Woman having to carry Etta Candy, because she can't run as fast.

>> SJ: 33:57

Oh, wooow...

>> Trisha: 33:58

Yeah! And so, not only do you position Wonder Woman as this babe in a bathing suit, but at the same time, you're also showing young girls specifically that this is your role model. The foil to that role model is someone who is fat, who isn't as fast or as strong, someone who is comic relief - She's always eating, she can't diet, she can't lose weight. And even the name Etta Candy is built around the idea that she's always eating candy and that her appetite can't be controlled.

>> SJ: 34:30

As soon as you say it, I'm like, 'Oh my God, of course. Etta Candy is totally the Fat Best Friend joke character.'

>> Trisha: 34:37

Yeah.

>> SJ: 34:38

I also didn't really know that, because I haven't read a lot of the original comics. So the image I have of her is the Lucy Davis character from the movie, and then also the newest incarnation of Etta Candy in the Greg Rucka comics run with DC Rebirth, where she's a Black woman and she's a badass - She's a commander, she's confident, and there is not a hint of fatphobia or that joke aspect to her character. So I wasn't aware. I mean, now that you say it, I'm like, 'Of course that's how that character started out.' And of course they had to revamp that for the current generation, because that's not okay. I loved seeing her this way, and I didn't even think about that obviously problematic history.

>> Trisha: 35:23

Okay, so this is... This is what she looks like in the original comics.

>> SJ: 35:29

Oh, man.

>> Trisha: 35:29

Sooooo... She is, uh...

>> SJ: 35:32

...Not exactly the composite of Elizabeth Marston and Olive Byrne. [laughs uncomfortably]

>> Trisha: 35:37

Right! Right, absolutely. So, like, as much as we want to paint Marston as this feminist visionary-- and sure, there are certain things he was doing that were inspiring. At the same time, he is painting "undesirable" bodies as images to mock. That's not feminist, asshole.

>> SJ: 35:56

[with a deep sigh] Yeaahhh, yeah. No, that's a really valid point. And there was something you said in your thesis-- You say, "In order to exist in these spaces, women characters must be attractive by heteronormative beauty standards. This sends the message that women are to be seen, and then-- maybe-- we might get around to reading her word bubble. A woman must also be physically feminine and desirable in order to be seen and appreciated by the public." I think that really nails Marston's representations of women, but it's still something that's very present today, you know? And this is something I have somewhat complicated feelings about, because Wonder Woman is still, like, the most gorgeous woman on the planet. That has never and will never change, especially now that she's being played by Gal Gadot, who-- She's not of my species, certainly. [both laugh]

>> Trisha: 36:47

She's a different caliber of person.

>> SJ: 36:49

Yeah. But I have kind of complicated feelings about it, because it's still reinforcing this idea that you hit on, where we only listen to her because she's so gorgeous, and we can only take her seriously because she's a beautiful woman. And I kind of wonder, what if she looked like the people I know? She wouldn't be a character. You know what I mean? Like, she wouldn't be having her own movie. She wouldn't be as global a phenomenon as she is. And that's kind of the rub of the whole thing - Yes, we have this amazing, empowered female character, but she still has to look a certain way, she's still got to be the most beautiful woman you have ever seen... And then maybe we'll take her seriously. And even then, half the population still won't. You know? It's so frustrating!

>> Trisha: 37:37

Involved in that too, is you still have the most beautiful *white* woman...

>> SJ: 37:40

Mhm. Mhm.

>> Trisha: 37:41

You still have the most beautiful femme, straight woman...

>> SJ: 37:44

There you go.

>> Trisha: 37:44

Again, the heteronormative standards. And you still have this slim woman, this able- bodied woman. And so, there are all sorts of different identities built into what we consider desirable, that is shown to us over and over and over and reproduced within popular culture, until we start to think that maybe *we* don't fit, because we don't look like them.

>> SJ: 38:03

Ding ding ding! Yep, exactly. And we will talk about some of the ways that she's been a little bit subverted over the years, in her portrayal. But yeah, that's exactly right. It's important to remember that she was conceived of, and is largely reproduced as, the epitome of *American, white, cisgender, straight, able- bodied, feminine* womanhood.

>> Trisha: 38:24

Yes.

>> SJ: 38:25

There's so many caveats there!

>> Trisha: 38:27

Mm-hmm.

>> Wonder Woman theme song: 38:30

Wonder Womaaaaan! Wonder Womaaaaan!

>> SJ: 38:35

We'll pick up there next time, as we continue the pop cultural timeline of this iconic character-- including, of course, Lynda Carter and the 1970s tv show this song is from.

>> Trisha: 38:47

Just to see her-- especially in the 1970s-- as this really strong, assertive woman, who is respected by her peers feels fresh, right? And it feels really forward- thinking... in 2021.[SJ laughs]

>> SJ: 39:03

Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us then. This podcast is produced and edited by just me, and funded entirely by a handful of lovely Patrons, including Suzy, Mary, Denise, Alexandra, and Valerie. A huge thank you to them for sustaining this work. If you enjoyed this episode, you can help me make the next one, get a shout- out in it, and get the first listen, by signing up at patreon.com/popculty. There's even a Wonder Woman tier you can join, if you're feeling super generous. But seriously, as a disabled trans person who refuses to take money from advertisers, I super appreciate any listener support. Patreon is also probably the best way to keep up with me, since I'm not really on social media much anymore these days. But I am still intermittently active on the blog at tumblr.com/popculty. Until next time, my friends - Support women directors, stay critical, and demand representation.

>> Wonder Woman theme song: 39:56

Wonder Womaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan![song ends with a jazzy flourish]

>> Old-timey newsreel announcer: 40:02

Now girls are taking reaction tests in matters pertaining to love. Watching love scene, all girls show some signs of emotional response to a romantic scene, but not all show a similar reaction. Kineograph shows it's the brunette who wants to be loved.