Heather Wilhelm laments at National Review Online that the latest heroine in a blockbuster movie will become another casualty of identity politics.
I can’t help but think that if Wonder Woman were dropped into our prosperous yet angst-filled 21st century, she might find something infinitely more baffling than smothering, multi-layered skirts. I’m talking, of course, about today’s weird brand of obsessive, woe-is-me “feminism.” …
… Some of the Wonder Woman hullaballoo comes from the fact that such a hugely successful film was directed by a woman, which is nice. Much of the hullaballoo, however, comes from the assertion that Wonder Woman will empower women and encourage the positive “representation” of women that is supposedly so rare in Hollywood. It achieves this “representation,” apparently, by featuring a gorgeous woman clad in metal lingerie who effortlessly deflects bullets with her bracelets and eventually upends a giant tank. This, we are to assume, will immediately inspire millions of little girls across America to rush home and launch their own neighborhood STEM-research teams.
Don’t get me wrong: I love Wonder Woman. In fact, I’m among the tried-and-true, old-school Wonder Woman rerun fans who used to watch the bodacious Linda Carter spin her way into various skin-tight motorcycle suits and star-spangled scuba costumes as a kid at the dawn of the 1980s.
About that, though: Even though I grew up before seeing the supposedly life-changing new Wonder Woman movie, I always believed I could pursue whatever career I wanted, as long as it wasn’t professional bowling. (Trust me. You do not want me on your bowling team.) I had both male and female role models as a child, and no one told me I had to see my exact facsimile in a job before I could pursue it. When I heard about the new Wonder Woman movie, I thought, “Hooray! It looks like a fun and well-executed summer blockbuster, rather than a giant, manufactured angst magnet!” This is because I’m a fairly normal and well-adjusted person who hasn’t yet let modern feminism melt my brain.
