They say it is impolite to reveal a women’s age but this woman needs to be celebrated for being popular for 75 years since her conception. Born in 1941 along with her buddies Superman and Batman, Wonder Woman is with them in that they are the only superhero’s that have been in continuous print since their birth in the fun literary world of comic books. If a kid hates to read, just give them a comic book with all the colorful wild illustrations and they will want to read about the action heroes. Now there are successful movie franchises where multiple superhero’s battle all kinds of danger. The fascination has never stopped.

For many of us old people it was Linda Carter who brought Wonder Woman to life. There was a TV show of real people in 1971 where she played the part of the busty hot woman that was a bad ass with the criminals. She could just bend her legs and then land on top of tall buildings.  She would deflect bullets by just fisting her arms up and the bullets would just ricochet off her arm bracelets. She had superhuman strength and could bend iron bars in a second. She remained hot with perfect hair in all her action scenes. All she had to do is spin around gracefully and she would be transformed from street clothes to her high wasted bikini pants and revealing cleavage bra. Yes, I watched way too many episodes carefully as a young teen but that is my problem. Don’t judge me.

Linda Carter got the part probably because she is beautiful and with her long dark hair looks just like the comic book illustration. Wonder Woman was a fearless role model to all women. In 1941 parents feared that action hero comic books were too violent for children yet that was one of the big reasons kids wanted to buy so many comic books at the time. There was no Grand Theft Auto video games then where a kid could punch an old lady in the face over and over again for hours, we had comic books that had good guys kicking ass of all the bad guys most of the time. I think it was a more moral era then than the endless violence kids control and experience now in video games.  

Wonder Woman is a pacifist who fights for democracy but she also fights for women’s rights where her good things are that she fights for love, truth and beauty. There is a book called The Secret History of Wonder Woman written by Jill Lepore a Harvard professor. The creator of Wonder Woman has an interesting relationship with women. William Marston was an American psychologist, lawyer, inventor, advocate  for women, writer and comic book writer who created the character Wonder Woman.  William has a wife and a student turned mistress who all lived together and raised four children. The aunt of   William’s  mistress was Margaret Sanger the famous feminist who was a birth control pioneer and the founder of Planned Parenthood.

In the early 1900’s William was intrigued by the suffrage movements and protests of women’s rights. He remembered when women would chain themselves to the White House gates to prove their point demanding equal rights to men. He was inspired by real life events that had him showing Wonder Women breaking out of chains all the time in his early comics of the character. There was a sexual undertone of sexy bondage with her chains and golden lasso that would catch people and force villains to tell the truth while she wore a bikini top showing three inches of massive breast leverage. Again, don’t judge me please.

Psychologist William Marston, creator of the Wonder Woman character was also one of the pioneers in lie detection. In the early comics Wonder Woman seemed to wear a fairly long skirt while she ran around but look closely and she was wearing culottes that no woman was wearing then. He realized that no woman could perform stunts like she did wearing a skirt that could flip over her head.  Whatever she was wearing, Wonder Woman managed to sell 2.5 million copies of the comic book per month. After Marston died in 1947 other writers took the character on in stories. The new writers made her a little less wonderful and more vulnerable and less bad assed.

It wasn’t until 1977 when women’s rights activist and Wonder Woman fan Gloria Steinman put her on the first issue of MS. Magazine with a title called Wonder Woman for President. Maybe if Hillary was more bad assed she would be President now. This summer wonder Woman finally gets her own big budget movie. Again, don’t judge me but I will watch the new movie.