Gender in Comics and Supergirl's New Shorts
When Character Details Overshadow Characters
Jul 4, 2009
Female superheroes can be just as powerful and important as their male counterparts, but well-written superheroines can be difficult to find. The stereotype of the awkward fetish object is far more prevalent, seemingly the base state for female genre characters.
So it shouldn't surprise anyone that current Supergirl artist Jamal Igle's decision to give Superman's younger cousin a pair of athletic shorts under her skirt has become a very big story. It's innocent enough - Igle was tired of seeing Supergirl's panties flashing every time she flew, so he decided it was a simple fix.
He was wrong.
Female Empowerment Through a New Pair of Shorts
There's no reason to believe Igle's decision didn't come from the right place. He told Newsarama that he was "uncomfortable" drawing a sixteen year old's panties, which isn't a position most people would disagree with.
He's also not wrong in thinking that since her return in the pages of Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner's Superman/Batman, Cousin Kara has, at times, slid dangerously towards becoming a fetish icon. She was shown in various states of undress, including a nude shower scene in Supergirl #6.
The panels in Supergirl #6 are fairly indicative of how Supergirl's body has been used throughout her modern publishing history. Scenes depicting Supergirl in various states of undress rarely have narrative necessity. Not that they couldn't, since nudity is a powerful tool when used sparingly and specifically. Nudity shows a human being at their most basic, their most awkward, and most importantly, most vulnerable. That's certainly an interesting place to take a bulletproof girl.
What a reader is given, instead, is something very basic. Superhero women (both the heroes themselves and the women in their lives) are sexy. So just forget she's sixteen and ogle the pleasant lines. Do not pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
The Real World Implications of a Fictional Character
Supergirl isn't a person, so some would say she doesn't carry the same moral implications. She cannot be hurt by being sexualized, so it's a moot point.
What that doesn't account for is the relationship a reader actually has with a piece of fiction. The sensation all writers strive for is a complete connection with their audience, whether that's someone adopting the theme and moral of the story, or merely seeing themselves or the people they love inside the characters.
So Supergirl does carry a moral weight with her, because a reader is asked to interact with her as a sixteen-year-old girl. She is all the girls a reader has ever known; their sisters, friends, daughters, and wives. In theory, then, she should be treated with the same respect by the artists and writers who control her. If the stories are about Kara being a superpowered teenager (which they largely are), then she must act and be treated like a real person. If not, the story is just about a drawing punching another drawing, and it's value is negligible.
Supergirl and Feminism
One of the basic tenants of the male/female relationship is the sexual power struggle. Civilizations, both ancient and modern, have kept women subservient by using their sexuality against them. Instead of being a natural part of life, sex became another empirical tool, used to insure patriarchal leaders and crush the human spirit.
This means that those still fighting for equality are fine tuned to react when they believe the sexual spirit is taken from anybody.
In the aforementioned Newsarama interview, Igle relays the story of an unnamed message board poster who took issue with Supergirl's new wardrobe. He called them the "diapers of shame", seeing the new shorts not as an attempt to desexualize a teenage character, but as a blatant example of a male artist imposing his own views of how girls should act onto a female character.
As uncomfortable as it may seem, the basic idea isn't wrong. Comics have a terrible track record of crafting female characters who don't wear their sexuality like two bowling balls on their chest. Which means, in terms of genre conventions, much of a female superhero's power comes from her sexuality. It is the basis for not only a troubling stereotype, but an honest archetype.
The female superhero is sex, simply because she's rarely been written another way.
It's a disagreeable notion, but it's a sad fact. The culture of comics have related female power to sex since Wonder Woman debuted with her bondage-influenced weaknesses and unconventional friendships with women.
With that in mind, drawing attention to a change in Supergirl's underwear being some watershed moment for the character has the opposite affect. If a character can be changed so completely by taking away a sexual veneer, then what is that truly sating? It is saying that the way a reader reacts to Supergirl is only sexual, and they may like her better if that element is downplayed.
At the end of the day, Supergirl's innocuous new shorts don't have a single symbolic meaning. Yes, adding the shorts means a reader is less likely to be distracted from Kara as an actual character, meaning they will connect better with her on a human level. Yet it also says that the sexual nature of a female character must be either integral to her character or downplayed completely. It's a subtle reinforcement of the almost dogmatic notion that sex cannot be an organic component of a female character, only a lightning rod that almost fully defines her.
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