Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy

Superhero comics have tended to promote an ideology that is both masculines and driven to mastery. Nowhere are these biases more blatant than in the representation of female superheroes. With unabashed and unapologetic obviousness, women are portrayed as objects of male desire and fantasy with absurdly exaggerated sexual characteristics. While it is true that the costumes worn by male superheroes can also be defined by an overt sex appeal, those worn by their female counterparts tend to reveal a lot more bare flesh. But the frisson of fetishistic sexuality presented by female superheroes is adduced with one hand only to be dismissed with the other. This offering and denying of sexuality, which helps to resolve the sexual fears and desires of developing males, is the eternal paradox of the super heroine.

Cat woman, through her radical split of conscience between "good girl" and "bad girl," liberalizes this contradiction. Created by artist Bob Kane, she was inspired, in part, by Hedy Lam arr, whom Kane admired for her "great feline beauty." When she first appeared in Batman No. 1, Spring 1940, she was known simply as The Cat, a female burglar. Her real name was Selina Kyle, and originally she was characterized as a sybaritic socialite whose initial impulse to steal stemmed from ennui. Over the years, both her origin story and her costume have undergone several redesigns.

While in some cases the costume changes parallel (and signal) character transformations, in others they seem to be purely for the sake of fashionable appearances. Indeed, in another instance of comic-book chauvinism, female characters are typically subject to more stylistic makeovers, whether radical or restrained, than their male counterparts. Submission to the dialectics of fashion is presented as another expression of a fetishist femininity. Fetishism is a defining ingredient to Cat woman's wardrobe. She is best known, perhaps, for catsuits that cleave to the body, due in large part to the portrayals of the character by Julie New mar in the television series Batman (1966) and Michelle Proffer in the film Batman Returns (1992). Typical of the inter media cross-pollination for which superheroes are famous, the costumes of both actresses served to inspire and influence those worn by Cat woman in her comic-book representation.

As apparel, the catsuit has long been identified with the dominatrix, an archetype frequently associated with Cat woman. Michelle Puffer's performance strengthened this connection by spotlighting the themes of alpha-cat and submissive kitten-like behavior. Her costume, which co-opted the traditional iconography of the dominatrix, included associated paraphernalia such as a whip, gloves, and high-heel shoes.

The visual and symbolic language of Cat woman resonates strongly in fashion, especially in the work of Terry Muller, John Gillian, Doles & Cabana, Gianni Verses, Jean Paul Gaul tier, and Alexander McQueen. All these designers, like Cat woman (and, indeed, female comic-book characters generally), have been attracted to the wardrobe of the dominatrix and its associations of a liberated sexuality. Conceptually loaded and psychologically coded items such as catsuits, corsets, bustiers, and harness bras, usually in black "wet-look" materials like leather, rubber, and polyvinyl chloride, have in the hands of these outre designers achieved widespread acceptance as exotic-erotic couture.

But in co-opting these sexual cliches, fashion has, in the process, muted their meanings and sanitized their subtexts. In much the same way as comic books, fashion presents elements of fetishistic sexuality stereotypically, undermining, or at least redirecting and repositioning, its subversive, sadomasochistic underpinnings. While presented blatantly, erotic energies, like the feral nature of Cat woman, are tamed, neutered, and, ultimately, neutralized.

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/superherOes/paradoxical.asp


How this relates to my study

This is an interesting piece of research that Ive uncovered and by far the most helpful as it is preaching what i have already said about the representation of females In superhero movies. It boosts the idea making my conclusion on my PowerPoint presentation even stronger because it talks about the clear differences between the female characters and their male counterparts with distinct reference to the film cat woman, through the accessories and costumes they are given by the directors the source reveals the lenghts that they are being subjected to to give a clear indication as to what aspects of the male and females are being payed attention to

While the males brains, personality and muscular physique are the features being presented to the audience to give him credit for females it is purely what they can offer in terms of sexual presence that is catching the eye. This is important to my Independent study and I will use this information in the future to help write it.