While this video by Movie Bob came out relatively long ago, in anticipation for the first pics of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, it still tackles some meaningful issues for our blog: how adding pants and/or covering skin on a female character redesign doesn’t yet fix the problems inherent with her old, more revealing costume and in-story presentation.
That’s why we ridiculed J. Scott Campbell’s outrage over Wonder Woman’s new shoulderpads
pauldrons, but didn’t go so far to praise the covering new costume he hated so much.
It’s an adequate superheroine outfit and has Diana’s iconic elements intact, but its supposedly biggest change, the skin-covering catsuit, seems indeed like an uninspired, colored-in afterthought.
While, as Bob points out in the video, there will always be a crowd unsatisfied with the changes (especially for such a popular character), I say it’s crucial to just PUT AN EFFORT into a redesign. Only then things can begin to work out.
See, for the record, BABD’s favorite re-imaginings of Wonder Woman:
~Ozzie
As Bob said, there’s a lot to unpack and while we’ve seen that it’s certainly possible to cover female character head-to-toe and still have her be ridiculously sexualized. I also feel that arbitrary statements like “makes her less like the other two” are at least as responsible for bad re-designs.
Ironically when it comes to characters like Diana, a large part of this is that the comics industry is influenced by unhealthy amounts of nostalgia so instead of doing completely fresh re-designs they tend to insist on homaging the original.
And when the outfit was as ridiculous as Wonder Woman’s original outfit it’s kind of hard to make something that looks credible. Particularly since people aware of her origins tend to go with “sexy pinup dominatrix” rather than “genuinely intimidating and dominant woman”.
I will say this though, if you really want to take the stance against “modesty” approach and tell people that it should all just be allowed to hang out – there’s someone who should be wearing a lot less than Wonder Woman. No. Really.
– wincenworks
