Sunday, December 24, 2017

Belated Thoughts on Representation

As I was going back through this blog, I found a post I had written in May, 2017 but, for some reason, never posted.  As I read through it, I am not sure why I didn't post it, but I see that my thoughs were incomplete and very me-centered. But they are still my rambling reflections, so I am going to go ahead and post them, flawed though they may be. 

When I was about 6, I had to have surgery to have tubes in my ears. I very clearly recall not being the least bit afraid because I knew a secret: I had a pair of plastic sunglasses I had popped the lenses out of so they were just frames, and when I wore those, I was Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. I had a different voice I used. I had different skills. I had a different personality. And as long as I went into surgery as Diana Prince, I would be fine.  Right before they put me under, the nurse tried to take off the glasses, but I grabbed her hand and asked her not to, and she relented. Then I woke up.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I had two role models: Princes Leia and Wonder Woman.  Princess Leia was so abstract and distant, what I would be in my dreams and my imagination.  Starships and blasters (who needs a light saber?). Ordering Chewbacca around! Standing up to Darth Vadar! Mouthing off to Governor Tarkin! Taking no nonsense from Luke or Han! I wore my scraggely hair in side buns, then brdes roped across my head. In some distant reality, she was what I could be. But she was distant (far, far away and whatnot)

But Diana Prince, she was real.  She worked in an office. She had real clothes. She was forever being overlooked yet still continually saving Steve Trevor's sorry self.  (Top soldier, indeed. He was always being captured! What would he have done without Diana??)  She had skills nobody knew about and dreams nobody could comprehend. She had a vision for the future that far surpassed what those around her thought of her and knew her role in all of it.

To a shy, smart, oft-overlooked girl in the Midwest, Diana Prince was Wonder Woman, and she was the great hope.  She was possibility.

And she was Wonder Woman. I had Wonder Woman Underoos, and accessories. A Wonder Woman puzzle and a posable cardboard cutout that hung on my wall. Wonder Woman was what I dreamed to be, what I hoped to be. Just a fraction of that.

I talk a lot about representation in literature and how important it is.  Kids need to see themselves in books and stories, to know that they fit into the larger world.  In many ways, Wonder Woman was my first introduction to that idea.  I read books about Laura Ingalls Wilder, and while I loved  Little House, Laura was not who I wanted to be.  The books I read had girls in them who were meek and obedient and followed along, and that wasn't me, not in my heart.

Not until a Wrinkle in Time did I really come across a female protagonist in a book who was bold and smart and capable and relied on nobody.  That gap in books was filled, for me in visions of Princess Leia and Diana Prince.

Diana didn't need Steve Trevor to get things done (often he was a hindrance). She was capable, independent, and fierce.  And in books, for girls, there was nobody else like her.

She was a lifeline to a girl who wanted to be more than Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I have loved Wonder Woman for most of my life.

When I heard they were making a movie about her, I felt physically ill.  So many of the things I love have been ruined by Hollywood (I'm looking directlyat you, live-action Last Airbender movie), so it is with trembling hope that I anticipate the release of the Wonder Woman movie.

And I see a generation of girls for whom Wonder Woman is amazing but she is not alone. Girls have so many heroes, so many role models, but, let's be honest, we need to do better.

Half of the world is female. Half of the heroes need to be female. Half of the books need to be about girls. Where are the great heroes of color who are female? Where are the stories of world leaders who are female?

Representation matters.