Monday, July 5, 2010

For the Fans, the Fanfare around Wonder Woman's No-Longer-Unnecessarily-Patriotic Costume


You didn't hear it here first: But Wonder Woman, the iconic female superhero in D.C. comics' triumvirate (she's there along with Superman and the Dark Knight Detective), has traded in the star-spangled swimsuit for something...well, something that might be considered clothing.

While Reuters has referred to the outfit as a "21st Century Makeover," fans are doing their usual bit: Complaining because a scantily clad female character is suddenly wearing clothes. So my diatribe may sound like something to that effect. But my problem with Wonder Woman isn't that she's finally clothed (I mean, I'm sure any woman could back us up on this, but...crimefighting in a one-piece? That cannot be comfortable). My problem is that Wonder Woman has gone super 1990s in all the wrong ways.

Let's take a look at Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman, aka not Lynda Carter from the '60s. First of all, leggings as pants? No, thank you. Then there's the corset, and the jacket that more or less advertises early '90s biker dive bars. And let's not get started on the choker necklace. Aside from the Wonder Woman logo at the top of the corset, there's not much here that looks like Wonder Woman.

It's the new, "hipper," edgier Wonder Woman...but it seems to fall flat, such as when D.C. remodeled Superman in the 1990s by making him all electric and shoving him in a blue-and-white jumpsuit. What strikes me as odd here is that Wonder Woman isn't really defining the new millennium (though she might've stolen those leggings from a sorority girl, though, btw, leggings are not pants); the design is a rehashing of nearly twenty years ago.

So I'm not sure what to make of this new Wonder Woman, though if her superhero power is making you wonder why she's decided on these duds, then it's certainly working....

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