Get Your Cape On! (at Super Hero High)
Hippolyta let out a big sigh—the one that mothers reserve for their children when they have so much to say but can’t get it all out.“My dearest daughter,” she said, her voice softening. “You were born to be a leader. You have royalty in your blood. Stay here, and someday you will rule Paradise Island and be Queen of the Amazons, just like me.”
Now it was time for Wonder Woman to be silent. She breathed deeply before saying, “Mother, I love and admire you. But when I grow up, I want to be just like me.”
[excerpt from Wonder Woman At Super Hero High, by Lisa Yee, coming in 2016]
One of my pet rants over the ten eleven years that I have been a mother is the exclusion of women (as characters and audience) from superhero merchandise – and other toys like LEGO which have been traditionally marketed only to boys.
The main reason this is a problem? Kids play with toys, and the toys available to them shape the games they play and the way they see the world. At a time when the superhero concept is at an all time marketing high, it’s a problem that girls have been shown that they don’t get to be superheroes. It’s an equal and overlapping problem that boys have been shown that girls aren’t worthy of being superheroes.
Let’s be clear here. Girls often gravitate towards traditionally girly stuff, and boys often gravitate towards traditionally boy-y stuff. Ask any parent who tried valiantly not to buy into all the gender bullshit, only to have their girl reach for baby dolls and princess dresses, while the toddler boys grabbed trucks and made their own rayguns out of play-doh. Kids liking traditionally gendered toys isn’t really the problem. The problem is their choices are narrowing – toys and other products marketed to children have become more and more binary in nature in recent years, so it’s all but impossible to find anything gender-neutral, or shared-gender products. For boys and girls who do want to cross over the pink and blue lines, the path gets harder all the time.
Kids might often choose the obvious-gendered option for themselves, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be offered viable alternatives!
We’ve all seen the way that LEGO has struggled with this – shifting over the decades from a gender neutral toy that siblings could play with together, to a super-macho building universe that excluded women so dramatically that the only way they could imagine change (and sell toys to girls again) was to invent a separate super-girly building universe two aisles away.
The kids aren’t the ones telling us that they only want to play with characters of their own gender. Even the TV shows they watch and books they read are (mostly) not telling them that – except those that are based on existing toy lines.
My daughters have grown up alongside my friend’s sons, as honorary siblings/cousins, with overlapping interests – LEGO, Harry Potter, Doctor Who superheroes. I still remember a 6 year old Raeli telling me earnestly that the reason she loved the Tiny Titans comic was because it wasn’t girly or boy-y – it was about kids all together.
Smart (and interested, and engaged) kids notice when you take a fun concept like “superhero team”, and leave out all the women. Smart kids get just as outraged as their mother when they hear that a fantastic show like Young Justice got cancelled because the audience was “too female.” Smart kids notice that Black Widow and Scarlet Witch get left off the Avengers merch, and that it’s really hard to get hold of a Wonder Woman action figure, and that the large majority of ‘Early Reader’ superhero books are about male characters.
Also, primary school age kids who think romance and kissing is super gross really really REALLY notice when the single action figure of a female character they can find has her catsuit unzipped, or a tiny waist bent over to make her boobs look bigger. Pre-teen boys and girls alike aren’t all that keen on action figures that look like porn stars. Which, sadly, cuts down their options considerably.
[just look at the argument about slave Leia toys in recent weeks – um, yes, it’s authentic to the movie, but what does it say about our culture that the most commonly reproduced outfit for the original female hero of Star Wars is the only super gross sexist one, as opposed to all the other outfits she wears while doing her job? The message this sends to girls is obvious, but what about the awful message it sends to boys about the place of women in the universe? Toys that don’t require a corresponding lecture about the patriarchy are the best toys]
My younger daughter Jem (6) is much more gender essentialist and girl-centric in the way she sees the world than Raeli (10+) – she’s hung on to the pretty frockitude longer than her elder sister did, and takes a perverse glee in enjoying the ‘super girly’ toys and shows that her elder sister loathes. Yes, I do let her watch the Bratz cartoon. I don’t like it, but you have to respect a kid who uses pop culture to one-up a sister four and a half years her senior. Jem also enjoyes Monster High, Ever After High (kind of Once Upon a Time for tweens), Barbie in the Dreamhouse (surprisingly clever and subversive) and that terrifying thing where the My Little Pony characters got turned into horsey high schoolers.
Jem also adores superheroes. She has invented her own Wonder Woman spin off character, she clings to the rare examples of girl-centred superhero books I’ve managed to acquire, and she taught herself to punch by watching Ana in Frozen. She requested a superhero birthday party – I made her a Black Widow cake – and she adores the new Supergirl TV show.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that my Jem is a prime candidate for the new DC girl merch initiative, DC Super Hero Girls. She’s been hanging out for this. Sure, she’s into the shows full of cute girly girl characters who are Best Friends Forever and maybe have magic or really great fashion sense. But add to that some training montages, capes and saving the universe, and Jem is 100% on board.
Like LEGO Friends (which has a lot of benefits and a lot of problems in its execution though I can’t deny it’s been a commercial success) DC Super Hero Girls is a cross-media project, designing a group of characters to appeal to the young female demographic and rolling them out across vids, books, toys, games, etc. The really cool thing about it is the way that they have been actively looking at creating change in the way girl toys are presented, and listening to feminist advocates (and actualy children) about what they want from a female super hero range.
DC Comics has, like Marvel, decades and decades of story fuel to draw on. The range of female characters across DC history, while their execution has at times been problematic, is vast and has been presented excellently to kids before via animated series like Justice League Unlimited, Teen Titans Go, and Young Justice. But even when the shows have had great female characters, the toys and associated merch have often not bothered to reflect that.
So now we have DC Super Hero Girls – or at least, we will. The website currently hosts a couple of games, character profiles, and some fun vids (animations by Warner Bros) based around the adventures that the girls have at school. I especially like that the school is made up of ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ characters from the comics, but they’re all currently being treated as potential heroes, including Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Star Sapphire and Killer Frost. I love that Batgirl’s computer skills are being emphasised, that Amanda “the Wall” Waller is the principal, and I even love that boys are included though not centred in the stories. The videos aren’t quite as dynamic and adorable as the short-lived Super Best Friends Forever that we fell in love with a few years ago, but there are more of them, the voice acting has some happy surprises, and they are getting more interesting as they go along.
Right now on the website you can download the first three chapters of the new Wonder Woman chapter book that will be released next year, by Lisa Yee – it looks great, and Jem is already champing at the bit for it. And while the character designs still present a team of very pretty, slender girl heroes (more bodily diversity would be good), I appreciate the strong body language, and emphasis on musculature and athleticism rather than prettiness and fashion plate skills.
These sporty heroes-in-training look positively healthy compared to the grotesquerie of the Monster High/Ever After High designs, and the dolls seem much less likely to snap at the knee than the spindly fashion ghouls.
The Mary Sue went into some detail a while back about the thinking and the research that went into designing the DC Super Hero Girls:
Researchers found that girls didn’t want the superheroes to be too girly, a problem with the first round of dolls that Mattel developed. One girl complained that the toys looked “more pretty than superhero,” and another pointed out that Poison Ivy’s scarf would only get in the way during a fight. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, was too skinny and not athletic enough.
Kim, the toy designer, instructed her team to use gymnasts, dancers, and basketball players as primers for sculpting more muscular versions of the dolls and action figures.
The design team, by the way, were women. Which explains the flat soles, sensible shoes, and confident stance of the dolls.
At a time when even Barbie’s most common profession is princess, it’s really nice to see a breath of change coming, for those girls whose power fantasies incorporate more ideas than sparkle magic, fashion and shopping: they can play at all those things if they want, but from next year it will be easier for them to factor in training to save the world.
Back home, Wonder Woman leaned forward and studied the recruitment video. Super Hero High School was everything she had ever dreamed of. The school boasted an expansive campus with a gleaming high-rise in the center. It offered its students and faculty up-to-the-moment technology, gadgets, and weapons to die for. Plus there was the recently unveiled Flight Track and the much- used on-campus hospital. And the only thing more impressive than the inspirational statue of Justice herself in the courtyard was the iconic Amethyst from Gemworld that sat atop the school’s highest tower, piercing the clouds and doubling as a welcoming beacon for incoming flyers.
Oh! And there were classes taught by celebrity super-hero alumni, and more clubs than anyone could possibly have time for, like Playing with Poisons, Cooking with Swords, and the ever-popular Knitting and Hitting. But what Wonder Woman found most fascinating were the students.
Every kind of teenager imaginable was represented—some with multiple superpowers, and others with none at all. Many of the snootier schools, like Interstellar Magnet, only considered students based on their grades, superpowered test scores, and superpower pedigree. But Super Hero High had a loftier goal. Here, students
were selected not based on who they were today, but on who they could become tomorrow. Girls, boys, animals, insects, aliens, robots, mutants, morphers—they were all in the video. This was an equal-opportunity school, and it appealed to Wonder Woman’s keen sense of justice.
[excerpt from Wonder Woman At Super Hero High, by Lisa Yee, coming in 2016]
My daughters took the quiz on the website, and apparently I have a ten-year-old Harley Quinn and a six-year-old Poison Ivy on my hands. I am… not surprised, really.
