On Diana's Costume

Okay, for the record, I think the not-real-but-ought-to-be Wonder Woman poster as seen on Michael May's blog among other places is positively stunning.

And really ultimately gets to the bottom of my irritation of people who continue to insist that Wonder Woman needs a different costume to be taken seriously.

Okay, granted, she's in what amounts to being a slightly armored (depending on the artist) bathing suit. That's remarkably ridiculous! No one's going to take a woman fighting crime in a bathing suit seriously!

She ought to be in footie pajamas wearing underwear on the outside in primary colors!

Or we could always dress her up like a giant rodent! That'd make her look less stupid!

Am I the only one seeing a logical fallacy here? Are leotards, which, I might add, are actually worn as athletic garments in a variety of endeavors from swimming to dance, to gymnastics, to weight-lifting because they are inherently practical, light-weight, sweat resistant, and do not restrict movement, really more ridiculous than blue tights with carefully detailed red panties atop?

The day I see Olympic Athletes wear footie pajamas is the day I'll yield to that line of logic. And even then it may require the help of mind-altering substances.

Now one line of argument that does make some sense is that there's no protection in a bathing suit for people trying to hit you. This is true. But honestly, I've taken martial arts before, I was never particularly good at it but I did, and you know? A martial arts gi is not any better at impacting force from physical blows either. Heck, even with padding that shit fucking hurts, and martial artists in media don't tend to actually wear padding in much of anything and no one complains when they can take blows that could drop a tank. Do you really think Ken or Ryu wear padding? Probably not.

If Ken or Ryu can generate pyrotechnics and take a ball of like in the chest while wearing a karate gi and live, I'm perfectly willing to buy that freaking Wonder Woman probably doesn't have a whole lot of need for protective outer garments.

Besides, there's nothing to say that, like the fanposter shown on Michael's blog, that an armor-esque design can't be incorporated into it, after all. Variations on the armored leotard thing hasn't hurt She-Ra or Xena's sheer feminist-icon-asskickery potential. Yeah, her limbs are uncovered, but that's not actually a completely unfamiliar concept for certain combat type societies.

Ultimately though, the leotard is Diana's costume. And no matter how much they've tried to change it over the years, from 1940s to the present day, well over half a freaking century, that will always be Diana's iconic costume. The general public is going to be a lot more skeptical of a Wonder Woman wearing the admittedly awesome white pantsuit than they are the red leotard. To the non-comic book fan, a white pantsuit does not say "Wonder Woman". Lynda Carter's pretty red leotard does.

Besides, that poster just shows how AWESOME it can look with the right actress/model and designers with a clue could make it look. That poster pretty much wins my argument for me. :-)