body policing – Alex Acks: Sound and Nerdery

I’m going with… not yay.

So this is the thing. Apparently Wonder Woman is going to make an appearance in the Batman vs. Superman movie.

Numbered list, go!

I seriously could not give less of a shit about this movie if I tried, Wonder Woman or no Wonder Woman. I’ve honestly never been that in to Superman as a hero, and then when it’s going to be Zack Snyder’s wangsty collateral-damage-what-collateral-damage Superman from Man of Steel, my levels of meh reach dangerous proportions that might threaten my ability to continue breathing as I am crushed by ennui.
We have been bitching and moaning and asking and begging for a female superhero movie, (but action movies with women in the lead don’t work ever except oh hi Catching Fire) and this is what we get? If you want to win our hearts back from Marvel, DC, make a fucking Wonder Woman headlined movie. Otherwise it’s more well Black Widow doesn’t get her own movie but she’s totally in Captain America 2 and that counts right? bullshit. Forgive me for not being excited that Wonder Woman is going to be the third wheel in a movie where two other heroes get billing. It’s not like it’s going to be a team movie like Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy.
So when you add 1 and 2 together to get 3, I’m STILL not in the least bit excited about this movie.

This is all the more hilarisad considering you know who is getting her own movie? Maleficent. Yes, she isn’t a comic book character. But she’s a powerful female icon and a villain. This just strikes me as even funnier considering the song and dance Marvel has given fans who want a Loki movie because villain movies Just Aren’t Done. But there is a villain movie, about a female villain, and arguably the greatest female superhero of all time is still an afterthought to Orphan McBroody versus Orphan McShouldn’t-Be-Broody-But-Angst-Stands-In-For-Character-Development-Right.

And then the Zack Snyder thing. I (shockingly) don’t have quite the hateboner for Snyder as others do, though god knows why. I think it’s because I actually kind of enjoyed Sucker Punch, quite possibly because it was SUPER PRETTY and I went in with such low expectations to begin with. I also think anyone who thought Sucker Punch was anything approaching a female empowerment narrative needs their damn head examined. Which circles us back to… gosh, yeah, I don’t trust Zack Snyder with the superhero whose underoos I wore as a child. (Could be worse, I guess. Could be Michael Bay. Amirite?)

The reason I even heard about this was a friend of mine posting the above linked article and saying that she really didn’t think Gal Gadot looked like Wonder Woman to her. And that was honestly my initial reaction as well, because Gal is a very pretty but very thin lady in that picture. Which upon sober reflection, kind of makes me cringe at my own thoughts, considering I’d be going fucking ballistic if anyone was saying she was too fat to play Wonder Woman.

I think the reason I had that reaction is Wonder Woman is… buff. Amazonian. And while I don’t have any right to be judging thin ladies, at the same time there is already such a conflation of fitness and thinness (I mean for god’s sake, people are still getting on Jennifer Lawrence about being too “fat” when she concentrated on looking really fit for Katniss) and it already feels like “very thin pretty woman” is the default setting. I desperately want to see some more diversity in body type for women in film, and superhero movies are a great opportunity for, I don’t know, at least some LADY MUSCLES or something. (They are non-threatening because they are lady-like!)

I had a brief Twitter conversation with Chuck Wendig about this (thanks, Chuck! And here is his post on the topic by the way), and he nicely deflated me a bit, which I appreciate. Also, apparently some people in the Twitter-verse are bitching because Gal Gadot is a model? So fucking what? (She’s an actress too. Fast & Furious, hello.) He also pointed out that Gadot was a soldier, which I hadn’t known before. (And hey, I know woman train up for roles like this; Jaimie Alexander did for Lady Sif!) So I will shut up about that now and have a good think about my knee jerk reaction.

My feelings toward the movie in general are still an uncomplicated BLEH. Considering it’s Zack Snyder we’ll probably get something like BONDAGE WONDER WOMAN because that looks strong, right? Gah.

Please feel free to prove me wrong. That would be awesome. And I’d see the movie twice. Okay, at least once.

Because you know what that implies? Are there really femmebots out there, complete with boob guns that make up the category of “not real” women? Are there girls made out of plastic? Is there a test you have to take, or are there government regulations sort of like they have for beef that mean we get tagged as real women, right next to the stamp stating we’re organic, because hey we’re composed of carbon-containing molecules?

It’s a bullshit term. It always struck me wrong when I went to Lane Bryant and was rewarded with “real woman dollars” for shopping. But the wrongness burst into ugly life when I re-watched the episode of Project Runway where one of the designers is a giant toolbag to a plus-size lady. The utter patronizing tone in which its delivered and that it’s obvious he’s using it in place of “fat” because he’s trying to weasel out of being eviscerated for being an asshole is even more insulting.

You’re not fooling anyone. We shouldn’t need some kind of smirking consolation prize for wearing clothing that’s bigger than a 16. We already know we’re real. We exist. It’s a sad disguise for the fact that often plus-size clothing feels like cultural punishment by setting set us in an adversarial position to women who wear “normal” sizes. Perhaps if we’re too busy trying to look down our noses at each other, we’ll miss the evil truth that we’re being compelled to attack people who should be our allies in this struggle, divided falsely along superficial lines.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe it’s just a pathetic attempt to make us feel better about ourselves. Hey, you’re large and are apparently considered unworthy to wear anything other than black smocks (it’s slimming, you know) but you’re a real woman. As if realness is determined by mass rather than an authenticity of spirit.

Being a woman isn’t a contest that some of us have to lose. There is a full spectrum of women to which we all belong, an infinite continuum of what it means to “look like a woman,” and no part of that spectrum should be defined as inherently superior. Doing that (and then gleefully jumping over a cliff with the invention of photoshop) is what got us into this mess in the first place.

I’m tired of the implication that my struggle to accept myself has to come at the detriment of other women.

Real women are fat. Real women are thin. Real women come in all colors and shapes and identities, and sometimes we have curves, and sometimes we don’t but damnit we’re all real women.

And we’re all really beautiful.