Wonder Woman: she’s a princess AND a superhero! So why are there so few children’s books featuring Diana, Princess of the Amazons?
As the father of a young girl, I find myself constantly confronted with images of princesses. Pretty princesses, passive princesses, plastic princesses—there are whole aisles devoted to the princess lifestyle in almost every major retail store in suburban America. It’s just a fact of life for parents. You shrug off your gender role and male gaze concerns and you buy the tiara for your daughter because it legitimately makes her happy. But, while I agree with a lot of the social push-back against “princess culture” that has arisen in recent years, if I’m being honest, my main problem with princess culture is simply that it is so damn BORING. If my daughter wants to pretend she’s a princess, FINE. But can she at least pretend to be a princess who DOES SOMETHING? Who accomplishes more in a day than getting dressed and pouring tea?
That’s why, when I first set out to find some non-traditional, non-passive princess role models for my daughter, my mind immediately leapt to one of the most iconic female characters in all of literary history: Wonder Woman.
Because, c’mon: can you think of a more kick-butt, take-no-prisoners, I’ll-rescue-myself princess than Wonder Woman? In my mind, I imagined my daughter in her bed late at night, poring over the adventures of Diana, princess of the Amazons, marveling at her great deeds and bugging me with endless questions like, “Could Wonder Woman could beat up Superman in a fight?” or “When I grow up, can I get my own invisible plane?” Say what you will about Wonder Woman, but she’s no shrinking violet. She’s not going to wait up in a tower for someone to rescue her. She’s an active, forceful princess who isn’t just strong and self-reliant, but she’s also altruistic and actively works to help the less fortunate. She’s the whole package.
I was CONVINCED that Wonder Woman was going to be the answer to every one of my over-worrying dad, princess gender-identity woes, because you know what’s cooler than a princess? A princess SUPERHERO. How the heck can Snow White or the Princess and the Pea compete with that?
Plus DC Comics had been publishing Wonder Woman since 1941, so there HAD to be libraries full of Princess Diana stories just waiting for my daughter to discover them, right?
However, I very quickly ran into a series of problems that I just never anticipated. Because, while Wonder Woman, on the surface, should be an incredibly easy sell to young readers as the coolest princess they’ve EVER seen, in reality, the character has a whole lot of baggage that prevents kids—at least most kids younger than eleven—from embracing her as anything other than a Halloween costume.
Basically, I think there are two BIG, essential issues holding Wonder Woman back from being every five-year-old’s favorite princess.
PROBLEM #1: IMAGES
While I might roll my eyes at the over-frilly, completely impractical ball-gowns in most princess stories, at least they’re not wearing star-spangled panties and a steel-plated halter-top in public. Wonder Woman’s costume is, indeed, iconic, but it’s also way too easy to sexualize, and the vast majority of Wonder Woman comic book art can be accurately described with adjectives like “heaving” and/or “engorged.” Fine, I understand why the ongoing “appropriate for teens and older” Wonder Woman comic book indulges so heavily in the cheesecake sexuality. They’re pandering to their 18-35 male demographic. But it just seems too strange to me that, given Wonder Woman’s global appeal, DC Comics, WW’s publisher, doesn’t seem concerned with trying to find ways to introduce Princess Diana to younger readers. It’s like they’re purposely leaving money on the table.
Last year, the Tumblr blog “DC Women Kicking Ass” published a post where Tom Bancroft, an artist and former Disney animator, drew some fantastic sketches of Wonder Woman in the “Disney” style, as if she were a classical princess rather than a hyper-sexed valkyrie. And I LOVE those sketches. They look exactly like the kind of young, tenacious, non-passive princess character that my daughter would INSTANTLY fall in love with. The author of the Tumblr post even commented that, “I’ve never, ever figured out why DC and Warner Bros. don’t do more to market Wonder Woman to young girls. She’s a princess for heaven’s sake.”
I’m not saying that I want to radically alter Wonder Woman’s iconic look and, you know, give her pants or anything (heaven forbid), but I think the Disney-style sketches show how an artist can create a look that is 100% in the spirit of the classic Wonder Woman image without making her look like a sex worker. And, yes, DC does publish some younger-age appropriate depictions of Wonder Woman, but none of them are particularly significant. She’s either a minor supporting character or she appears in uber-cheap media tie-ins like sticker books or hastily-produced “I Can Read” books. Which gets us to our next problem with Wonder Woman…
PROBLEM #2: WORDS
Wonder Woman has always been characterized as a “problematic” character in comic book history. Her beginnings are a bit odd—a pastiche of classic mythology and a normal superhero origin—and, while there have been some plotlines in her comic books that people have admired, there’s the definite impression that no one yet has really written the essential Wonder Woman story. People have a hard enough time even naming a few of her villains, much less her greatest adventures.
This makes it especially hard for kids who become interested in the Wonder Woman icon—because there’s no real essential Wonder Woman story that you can direct them towards. You would think that you’d be able to go into a bookstore or a comic book store and easily pick up an age-appropriate retelling of the “Wonder Woman story” for your five-year-old daughter who just dressed up as Princess Diana for Halloween. And, if you’d think that, you’d be wrong.
There are precious, precious few Wonder Woman stories that are written for kids younger than twelve, and most of the ones that exist are cheap toy-based easy readers that are just as bad as any Barbie or Bratz book you can find. It simply blows my mind that there is this character— a PRINCESS freakin’ SUPERHERO—that has SO much global cache and yet her publisher has never figured out a good way to make her appeal to perhaps her most obvious audience. Yes, gross fanboys like Wonder Woman because of her body, but her whole DNA just seems custom-designed for kids. And yet there is so little of the Wonder Woman canon that speaks to kids AT ALL.
THE SOLUTION?
Remember when I said that “There are precious, precious few Wonder Woman stories that are written for kids younger than twelve”? Well, as I mentioned, a “few” do exist and one or two of them are actually worth a damn.
My very favorite Wonder Woman books, at the moment, are a series of early readers written by Nina Jaffe, a wonderful folklorist, and illustrated by the sublime Ben Caldwell. These were published in 2004 by HarperCollins and they’re regrettably now out-of-print. (Why, DC Comics, why?) I got my hands on a few used copies of these books and almost instantly began drooling. All I could think was “My daughter will loooove these.” And she does.
Jaffe does a really admirable job bringing out the best in Diana’s origin story and she nails a tone that is PERFECT for readers ages 3-8. Her Diana is smart and confident, and all of her feats of strength are normally balanced out by descriptions of her intellect or her commitment to her message of peace. Fine, these aren’t epic works of mythology. They’re simply very well-crafted easy readers that function as the perfect gateway for young readers who want to know what Wonder Woman is all about.
But, I’ll admit, it was Ben Caldwell’s art that really knocked me out. His Wonder Woman is lean and girlish—she’s pretty and vibrant without a hint of the sweaty sexuality that surrounds her comic book appearances. She looks like a girl, not a statue, and my daughter instantly responded to Caldwell’s illustrations. “I love her skirt!” my daughter cooed, and I agreed. I thought Caldwell’s age-appropriate redesign of Wonder Woman was so wonderful, so important for my daughter to see, that I actually wrote him a fan letter. (And I got a very warm response—turns out that Caldwell has two young daughters, which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.)
Like I said, these titles are out-of-print, so they’re hard to find, particularly since some of them are going for exorbitant amounts in the online used book circuit. So, if you can find a reasonably priced copy, I’d say pick one up. As far as I can tell, Jaffe and Caldwell worked on six books together—two early readers (Amazon Princess and The Journey Begins) and four picture books (I Am Wonder Woman, The Contest, The Arrival, and The Rainforest).
The only other Wonder Woman book for young readers that I’ve seen (and liked) was Wonder Woman: The Story of the Amazon Princess by Ralph Cosentino. The author structures his book as an introduction to Wonder Woman for younger audiences, which, yeah, is exactly what the character needs. Cosentino’s retro illustrative style has a nicely timeless quality and, while the text is more of a primer on the character than a full-blown story, it does a very impressive job of placing the character in context for kids. You can give a child a copy of this book and they’ll finally be able to put together, “Ohh, so that’s why she’s on all those lunchboxes, billboards, and TV shows…” (Cosentino has also created similar young-reader-appropriate takes on the origins of Batman and Superman.) The only issue you might have is that, after reading Cosentino’s book, your kids will be hungry for more, and there just isn’t much more out there for them until they become teenagers.
So, why am I complaining about Wonder Woman so much? Because I live in a world where many young children, including my daughter, really, really like princesses. And that’s fine—good for them. I’ll take it as my job as a father to accept that and then direct them towards the best examples of princesses I can find.
CONCLUSION
On the surface, Wonder Woman seems to be an ideal princess for little kids to embrace. She’s fun, she’s selfless, she’s clever, strong, noble—she even has a social conscience. Plus she’s already a globally recognized international ICON. In theory, she should be a no-brainer. She should be bigger than Cinderella and more empowering than Rosie the Riveter.
But she isn’t. And it’s because her publishers have never found a way to put together the right kinds of words and images to really make her speak to our youngest readers. And that’s a shame.
But I’m not going to write off Wonder Woman just yet. Because I still believe that the image of the princess superhero can be a powerful symbol for young kids and princess-lovers everywhere, my daughter included.
Editor’s Note: DC Comics chose not to comment on this article. However, multiple sources have pointed us toward the brand new DC Fan Family Blog for younger-age appropriate content.
A version of this article originally appeared at Building a Library: Finding the Right Books for Your Kid (Through Trial and Error).
Read more on The Good Life: A Long Way From ‘Duck Hunt’: Kids and Video Game Violence
Image credit: DC Women Kicking Ass/Tumblr
As a kid I loved dressing up and stuff too, probably less than real afficionados (I wasn’t caught in a wardrobe trying stuff 50 times too big for example), but I knew better than to do so, lest I be beaten to a pulp for it.
And even were I alone, I was convinced someone would know, and destroy my entire life (even as I had no reputation, that can tell you how worried I was). So I abstained.
I would agree that there are many things that are marketed to little girls that send the wrong message. Most products sold to little girls are packaged/promoted/sold by thin, white girls. I actually think products like Hanna Montana (and the actresses who remain role models to little girls even as they grow and struggle to find their own adult identity) are more harmful to girls than a Disney Princess. I am not ready to banish enjoyment of princesses or the desire to have tea parties over killing bad guys. There is a careful line to tow where we don’t give… Read more »
You ought to check out “The Paperbag Princess” by Robert Munsch. Best princess EVER. She tricks a dragon! She chooses herself over a prince! And she does it all while wearing nothing but a paper bag.
If you want people to take her seriously, make her stronger than Superman. She isn’t as clever as Batman, and she never will be (that would ruin Batman’s niche). She can’t fly, not really. She can’t shoot laser beams or energy blasts. The only interesting thing about her is the lasso of truth. Make her stronger than Superman, and all of that becomes irrelevant. She’ll have a real niche — one that both fits her back story and character. No other character has ever occupied that space well, and Superman doesn’t really need to be the strongest to be the… Read more »
The only interesting thing about her is the lasso of truth. I’ve never been into comics, so maybe this has been discussed to death by those who are, but if swords and guns are often considered phallic symbols, isn’t that golden lasso that squeezes truth out sort of…vaginal? I’ve long thought that WW’s magic lasso is really just a symbol for kegeling the truth out of usually male villains. A super-weapon by virtue of envelopment instead of something that penetrates. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Give me a choice between having the truth stabbed out of me or… Read more »
My solution is to make wonder woman version who is not pretty at all. And she can became a hero although she is not pretty.
The major issue with Wonder Woman as a role model for little girls is that she never was ever for little girls. From their vey inception the Wonder Woman comics were a vehicle to talk about sexuality, in particular the original authors very positive views on bondage as well as his views on the burdgeoning feminist movement, which he was quite involved with. This sort of very adult overtones always meant that on some level the discussions being had were not really being aimed at kids. Flash forward to now and you are talking about the post 90’s comic world… Read more »
My problem with princess lies with their “my status is all I am” deal. Dr Doom is “king” of his country of Latvia…but he conquered it. You’re born a princess, no merit there. All part of the gender roles: men do, women are So, my solution to the princess and the passive problem both, is to have female characters who are characterized as doing something (probably something badass, not seducing the main guy), and just that. No title, no fancy dress, no tea party. And there should be no need to make her sexually-appealing either. Super hero save people, that’s… Read more »
Thanks for this! I liked wonder woman when I was boy, but for all the wrong reasons–i.e., the reasons she’s usually inappropriate for young girls (heaving, engorged, etc.). I love those Disney style sketches too. Somebody needs to run with that idea.