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DC Women Kicking Ass: On Wonder Woman and high-heeled boots

dcwomenkickingass:

I posted this morning that the Wonder Woman TV pilot will be apparently be using a heeled boot for her costume. The flat heeled version was just for stunts. I’ve received a lot of comments on the boots, with some saying they like the look. I hate the heeled boot and here is why.

Wonder Woman is free of vanity. For her a costume should be utilitarian — to cover what needs be covered and to make her recognizable to scare off weak-willed adversaries and alert others to her involvement.

I’m not so sure we can say this exactly. She keeps her hair long, and in her earliest incarnation wore eye makeup and admired nice clothing. From Marston to Simone she is extremely competitive, which certainly establishes a certain amount of well-deserved pride. She keeps a traditionally feminine appearance and wears a costume that flatters it. The bathing suit is deeply impractical. The armor is highly stylized beyond practicality. (Seriously, an eagle headdress rather than a regular helm?) The only thing CLOSE to completely utilitarian costume we have ever seen her in is the previewed Flashpoint armor, which isn’t an Amazon style according to any representation of Wonder Woman we’ve seen yet.

Diana is not excessively vain, but to suggest she would favor utilitarian over style in all functions completely ignores her standard design and typical mode of dress. Any warrior that keeps their hair long and loose in a fight (or even just pulled back in a loose way) has a certain degree of appearance-consciousness. Diana is from a different culture, and it manifests in different ways than vanity in an American woman but she’s certainly not free of this flaw.

I don’t like a high or a spiked heel on Wonder Woman either, but there’s post-Crisis aspects that favor style over function, a pre-Crisis precedent specifically for high heels (Peter designed her and all the Amazons with high heels), and Amazons ride horses so there’s room for it as a practical style (you are much better off with a heel than without if you’re using a stirrup and it is not a stretch that a horse-riding culture would develop both) that became popular footwear on the island.

I empathize with all you high heel haters (I do not like the tapered heel red boots pictured even though I was fine with the original blue solid-heel boots), but this isn’t out of thin air or so ridiculously thoughtless that it signifies a complete misunderstanding of Wonder Woman as a character.