When I was seven, a new woman entered my life.
Her name was Diana, and she was a princess.
But not the kind of princesses I was used to seeing. True, she wore a tiara, and was from a land far, far away that I’d never heard of, but that’s where the similarities ended.
I was used to seeing princesses who needed to be rescued. Who wore glass slippers, who fell asleep eating apples and the like.
Not Diana. In the television show where I was first exposed to Wonder Woman, she rescued a man, not the other way around.
And a life-long love affair begun.
Like many a peasant who loves a princess though, it has been a one-way affair of the heart.
When Bobby asked me to take on Wonder Woman as a sermon topic, I was both thrilled and a little nervous. Thrilled because I’m a fan-boy, and nervous because there was so much to choose from.
And then, just yesterday, life gave me a nudge.
Yesterday morning, when I was retrieving our garbage bins from the alley, I happen to glance over and see a puppy in our alley. Huddled in a corner, looking kind of lost and sad.
It took the puppy about 4 or 5 minutes to come to me, which is sort of odd, because animals usually come to me right away. But he did come to me, nervous at first, and I petted him, then picked him up, brought him into the back yard, gave him some food and water.
Denis had to leave at 6 am for Bakersfield yesterday, so before he left he gave me two instructions: Do not fall in love with the puppy, and do not name the puppy.
This was my nudge.
To me, Wonder Woman is many things.
In reality, she is a comic book character, created by a Harvard Professor during World War II, because he and his wife were tired of the old princesses who were forever having to be rescued.
William Moulton Marston was a professor of psychology at Harvard and the inventor of the lie detector. He also had a wife, and they had a long-term relationship with another woman.
She was created by Marston to offer young girls a role model that would demonstrate to them that they were just as strong as men, that they were just as capable as men, and they had their own powers that they could rely on.
At the beginning of her comic books, there would be a short introduction. This was very common in those days. Superman’s intro went along the line of “The son of a doomed planet, come to earth to fight for truth, justice and the American way.”
At the beginning of her comics, Marston placed this introduction “"beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules, and swifter than Mercury.” Note that she is as beautiful and wise as the Goddesses, but stronger and swifter than the male figures.
Between this clear indication that Marston considered women equal to himself, and the relationship he was in with two women, Marston is a complicated figure for feminism to deal with.
In 1943, Marston wrote in The American Scholar:
Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.
Wonder Woman was not the very first comic book heroine, that title belongs to a woman detective who wore a red coat and a pistol, but Diana, Princess of the Amazons, is certainly the most iconic woman superhero.
I want to talk to you a little bit about the complex relationship that Wonder Woman has with feminists and feminism. Here you have a strong, mythical hero, a warrior Princess and amazon. Sounds great! She’s the equal of any male superhero. Awesome.
She’s dressed in a skimpy outfit, often drawn by men who have…how shall I put this…over emphasized certain aspects of her physique.
This, to me, is probably the most frustrating part about Wonder Woman fandom: her physique as drawn. There has been some push back on this though, as it is pointed out that male super heroes, Superman, Batman, the Hulk, Wolverine, also have bodies that are impossible to actually achieve in reality.
Still, I with that Wonder Woman could be a more realistically drawn figure
Wonder Woman is a warrior. Raised from her mythical birth, in which she was created from the sand of Themyscra, by her mother, and brought to life by a Goddess, (giving her in essence, two mothers), Diana was trained in war. She is a brilliant tactician and military strategist.
Gloria Steinem once wrote in an essay on Wonder Woman:
Wonder Woman was wise beautiful brave and explicitly out to change a world torn by the hatred and wars of men.
She was named after Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, and she has a special affinity with all animals.
And this aspect of her character’s design is what nudged me yesterday in the pre-dawn.
Even though Princess Diana is a warrior trained, an Amazon, strength equal to Superman, it has always been her compassion that I admired.
Over her 60-year publishing history, she has had many authors write her, and many artists draw her. For two of her “best runs” she was drawn by Latino men, George Perez and Phil Jimenez. She has been written by some amazing women writers, including Jodi Picoult and Gail Simone. Given the rich history in the Mother/Daughter Relationship, I’d love it if Joyce Carol Oates would take a turn as her author. She was featured on the cover of the very first issue of Ms. Magazine, and again for Ms. Magazine’s 40th anniversary issue.
In all that time, there have been some really silly plot lines, some amazing plot lines. Some of her powers were lost and regained, and at one point, yes it’s true, she even died.
When she died, her Mother, Queen Hippolyta, and her sister, Donna Troy, stepped in for her. Eventually, though, she was rescued from Hades to resume her own place again.
She lost her right to be Wonder Woman to another amazon for a while, a woman named Artemis, and for a bit in the 1970’s, she even shared her title with an African Amazon named Nubia. This was a direct result of pressure applied to DC Comics by a group of women.
And for a brief, somewhat shining moment, in 1975, Steve Trevor was tricked by one of Diana’s enemies, that he was Captain Wonder, a male version of Wonder Woman in Issue #289. And yes I did dress as Captain Wonder one year for Halloween as an adult.
One thing has remained, though, throughout the many changes in Wonder Woman and that is her compassion.
And in a week like this one, what we need is a shining example of compassion.
This week, we don’t need a dark detective, we don’t need a man who can bend steel.
We need a heart, a strong heart and gentle arms.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had sort of a rough week.
Between the news out of Boston, the explosion in West Texcas, and the double homicide in which two members of our sister church in Davis were lost.
And many, many other things.
I need a hero right now how can sit with me and show me compassion.
And Wonder Woman is good at that.
This is part of what makes her such a stand out when compared to other heroes. It’s not her gender, it’s her compassion.
The Marvel Universe, publishers of such comics as the X-Men, Spiderman and others, is filled with pretty awesome women heroes. In fact, in the Marvel, probably the most powerful characters are women.
In the DC Universe, publishers of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, there are also other awesome women heroes.
But Diana is the paragon. She’s the one everyone else wants to be.
She is the one who leads with her heart.
One thing that comic books inspire people to do is to draw. There are literally millions of images of Wonder Woman on the internet.
I have a book, back in the Midwest in storage, of artists who’ve drawn Wonder Woman. In this book, my favorite image of her is not the warrior, glorious in battle.
It is a drawing of her, playing with a puppy that has been leashed to a sign, written by a little girl, and that sign says “Lost puppy, found.”
This is the hero that we need in a world like this one.
A hero that lifts up acts of compassion.
That tells little girls and boys that they have gifts, that they are important, that they can make a difference in the world.
Even if they don’t fly and can’t defect bullets with their bracelets.
Time after time after time, age after age, this has been the message of the character of Wonder Woman.
Evil must be stopped, but you must try peaceful means to end conflict first.
Sit with your opponent and talk with them.
Show compassion
Rescue those not as strong as you, but show them they they too have strength.
This is my charge to you, today, my beloved, ordinary heroes:
Evil must be stopped, but you must try peaceful means to end conflict first.
Sit with your opponent and talk with them.
Show compassion
Rescue those not as strong as you, but show them they they too have strength.
© The Rev. Joseph M Cherry
Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
of Stanislaus County
April 21, 2013
