Saint Wonder Woman

Charles Moulton, who did his most creative work under the pseudonym William Molton Marstan, will never be canonized as a saint of the church. Yet I suspect that Charles Moulton will be credited with having done more to bring about the emancipation of women than the Virgin Mary. I certainly do not mean to offend the sensitivities of those who have been taught to revere the Virgin as the ideal of womanhood, but I do intend to examine the effects on woman of Mary when compared with the creation of Charles Moulton.

Who was Charles Moulton? His name is not a household word, but his creation is. In 1941 Moulton launched a comic strip character named Wonder Woman. Moulton was a psychologist. He was also the inventor of the lie detector. In an autobiographical note in the Wonder Women Archives Vol. 2, he describes himself as "an early feminist," who believed that "a woman's rightful place was as a world leader, not servant or helpmate."

Sharlene Azan, a staff reporter for the Toronto Star, described Wonder Woman as the "hero of my adolescence," who "helped me imagine myself out of a life where being a good girl meant being quiet and obedient." Wonder Woman countered this definition, imposed on most young girls by their mothers, teachers, and the social order. Wonder Woman encouraged self-confidence, not passivity. Her message to her female followers was a single one: "Girls, you can do the same thing." It was a banner no one else was flying in the forties and even in the fifties, when home economics rather than physics was thought to be the proper elective for female students.

When Ms. Magazine hit the newsstands in 1971, the cover featured a picture of Wonder Woman, who had by then become the patron saint, if you will, of the feminist movement. Gloria Steinem said of her, "She symbolized many of the values of the women's culture that feminists are now trying to introduce to the mainstream: strength and self-reliance for women, sisterhood and mutual support among women." The impact of Wonder Woman on women over the last 50 years is hard to measure. There is no mythic comic strip character who has replaced her for girls and young teens today.

But that does not strike me as a problem, because mythic roles are not necessary if those women who had their imaginations opened by Wonder Woman simply went out and did great things.which they certainly did. They are today the Ruth Bader Ginsburgs, the Sandra Day O'Connors, the Margaret Thatchers, the Diane Feinsteins, the Elizabeth Doles and Hillary Clintons. They are also the young women who crashed through glass ceilings in business, education, law, science, and finance.

I look at my own four daughters for documentation. One is a managing director of a major Southern bank, one is an attorney, one has a doctorate in physics from Stanford, and one is a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, the second woman ever to pilot the attack helicopter known as the Cobra. Fantasy role models are not necessary when you have real life ones. That is what Wonder Woman helped to produce.

Continued on page 2: »