After watching Wonder Women: The Untold Story of American Superheroes and taking a trip to the local library, it is clear to me that all oppressed groups are underrepresented in the comic industry. The appeal of superheroes started after the Great Depression, in the late 1930s when the American dream was in shambles, and the general public wanted someone to come in and save them by fixing every issue that they had.
Before Wonder Woman was created in 1941 by William Moulton Marston, males dominated the comic industry. Marston changed things up by making a strong female the hero. Wonder Woman was everything that a typical woman in the 1940s wasn’t. In the comic, the only person who saved Wonder Woman was herself. She came from a land that taught its inhabitants that you didn’t need a man to save you. More focus was put on teaching women to be strong, smart, kind, and fair to all people.
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That process of thinking originated from the fact that women were still seen as a second-class character that needed to be saved by a male to feel valued. Several comics featured women being raped or saved against their will. The dress code for a heroine was vastly different from a hero’s. A hero wears an outfit that shows off his physique and strength. A heroine’s costume showcases her body as an object of lust by featuring rips, low cut tops, and short skirts. I think if more women had the opportunity to write comics it wouldn’t be that way but, because 97% of the media is portrayed by men’s sexualized fantasies, women are dressed in a way that only a man would