Writer and Comics Herstorian,
Trina Robbins, posted the following to the Women Comics Scholars List today and I'm aghast:
This is from the book, "Our Gods Wear Spandex," by Christopher Knowles,which just came out:
"Wonder Woman is by far the best-known of the superheroines, and her audience has always been predominantly male. Young girls are generally not interested in superheroes and gravitate more toward romance, humor, and teenage comics."
Anyone here contribute to discussion boards? I'd love to see this up on a women fan's discussion board and see what comments it generates.
- Trina
Snort. How does one even respond to this sort of ignorance? (Other than by writing a book of course!) THIS is why I never read comics as a teenager, I'd outgrown genres which were socially acceptable for a young girl to read and had no idea that there might be anything else out there.
Females are continually steered away from comics, and yet there's evidence that many more women have been empowered by Wonder Woman than men. It's not that "young girls generally aren't interested in superheroes" it's that superheroes we can relate to--that embody our thoughts, lives, and journeys are depressingly underrepresented.
To add to that, television is typically where female characters thrive, as women are more likely to be in the home and engaging with that medium, so complex female characters are particularly sparse in what is (fallaciously) considered a male form of entertainment.
So here are some of MY favorite comic book females, problematic as they may or may not be.
And here are links to some amazing female and feminist fans critiquing a genre that's not supposed to be for them.
Girl Wonder (And check out their
Auction this month. )
Sequential TartWhen Fangirls AttackLabels: feminists, Industry Sexism, Scholars, Trina Robbins, Women
