Feminist media critic Stephanie Abraham wrote a piece for Ms. Magazine this week that takes the filmmakers behind the new smash hit Wonder Woman to task for not sacrificing hundreds of millions of dollars in worldwide revenue for the chance to instead make a grand, laughable statement about social justice. Rather than cast former model Gal Godot in the title role, Abraham argued, the studio should have turned Wonder Woman into an overweight black lesbian.
Perhaps the Wayans brothers are taking note.
Abraham starts off acknowledging the film’s success, the female director, and a few of the movie’s attempts at diversity, but none of this is apparently good enough. When you critique a film from the position of radical feminism, after all, the only thing that matters is how well or poorly the movie gets your politics across. It doesn’t seem to occur to Abraham that the movie was targeting a somewhat larger demographic than the furry-legged Slutwalkers of Berkeley, California.
“Why couldn’t Wonder Woman be a woman of color?” Abraham asks. “When it was announced that Gadot would play Wonder Woman, audiences went wild body shaming her for not having large enough breasts. One can only imagine the white supremacy that would have emerged had the announcement said instead that she would be played by a Black woman.”
Proof that “audiences went wild body shaming” the actress for not having big enough boobs to play Wonder Woman? We’re sure Abraham found some cretins on some geek board who expressed that opinion, but we don’t remember some huge national controversy over the size of her breasts. But hey, when you’re preaching to the choir, you can use all the strawmen you like.
“With the body positivity movement gaining steam, the film could have spotlighted female warriors with fat, thick and short body types,” she laments. “While people have said that warriors can’t be fat, some of our best paid male athletes are, particularly linebackers on the football field, and no one doubts their physical strength.”
Right. Because NFL linebackers are the correct comparison to make. OR…ORRRR…we could look at the gross obesity of such men as Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Ben Affleck, Mark Ruffalo, Henry Cavill, and whoever is playing Spider-Man this week. Oh wait, none of them are fat? Weird.
Abraham goes on to complain that “the story’s overt queerness gets sublimated by heteronormativity” and that Wonder Woman ends up showing compassion and love, which is apparently bad because women should be portrayed as coldhearted and unlovable, like most feminists.
Of course, the filmmakers could have made Wonder Woman a 400-lb, transgender, man-hating, nubian legbeard, and people like Abraham would have just found something else to complain about. That’s their purpose in life: To complain about what IS. Whatever IT is, they’ll find a way to be unhappy about it. And hey, there’s an audience for that. Not one large enough to sustain a Hollywood blockbuster, but hey…maybe one day.
Hopefully long after we’re gone.
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