Wonder Woman Unbound (22 page)

April 1955’s
Wonder Woman
#73 was the first issue of the series to have the seal of approval from the Comics Code Authority on its cover. The next issue was the last issue to have a total percentage of bondage higher than 10 percent. Three issues later,
Wonder Woman
#77 was the last issue to have the percentage over 5 percent. Starting with
Wonder Woman
#78 in November 1955, the bondage in the series nearly died out completely. Zero percent was the most common total and, compared to the years before, the use of bondage was almost nonexistent. There were no other notable changes to the book; Kanigher’s new direction for the series, with its new artists, origin, and stories, didn’t begin until
Wonder Woman
#98, twenty issues and almost three years after the bondage dropped off.

There appears to be a clear connection between the implementation of the Comics Code and the amount of bondage in the series. Wertham never mentioned Wonder Woman’s frequent use of bondage, but there were portions of the Comics Code that could be read as applicable to bondage. The Code stated that “suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable” and that “sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.” It’s possible that DC Comics or Kanigher himself, all of whom were well aware of the sexual connotation of Marston’s approach to bondage, decided to curtail its use in order to conform to the Code.

Wonder Woman’s lasso usage also puts the CCA at the center of bondage-related changes. Before the CCA, Wonder Woman used her lasso in 9 percent of the series’ panels, but after the CCA the usage fell to 5 percent, a drop of nearly half. While this was a big decline, the change in how she used it was even more significant.

In the early 1950s, when Wonder Woman used her lasso she roped people about half of the time and roped objects for the other half. In the late 1950s, when Wonder Woman used her lasso she only used it on people about 10 percent of the time and lassoed objects 90 percent of the time.
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So not only did Wonder Woman use her lasso less frequently after the CCA, she also used it to tie up people far less often. That’s a double bondage drop, with the CCA right in the middle of these significant changes.

The fallout from
Seduction of the Innocent
and the creation of the Comics Code Authority had some influence on the series. A writer would have to go out of his way to avoid bondage to get such a low percentage with Wonder Woman. After all, her main weapon was a lasso! It appears that someone decided to eliminate bondage from the series, and the timing suggests it was because of the Comics Code. There’s no smoking gun to prove this claim, no interoffice memo from DC Comics or some such, but the numbers speak for themselves. Wertham, who unknowingly went after Marston’s comics with his Holliday Girls outrage and inadvertently stumbled onto the book’s possible lesbian subtext, unintentionally was the catalyst for the death of Marston’s favorite metaphor.

The Real World Carries On

The Golden Age Wonder Woman and the typical American woman of the 1940s were different in many ways, but at their core both embarked on a new role for women in a very complicated environment. Wonder Woman was a new kind of hero with several complex subtexts, while women had new wartime jobs and duties while managing their responsibilities at home and the difficulties of the war years. The Silver Age Wonder Woman was better defined by simplicity; over the years, Kanigher undid most of Marston’s complexity, resulting in a character who was no longer unique, whose heroic mission was a hassle that stopped her from getting married, who didn’t fight real criminals, who let her boyfriend aggressively control their relationship, and who lacked any sort of metaphor or subtext other than the importance of romance and marriage. The Silver Age Wonder Woman retreated to a traditionally feminine role, and the rest of popular culture from this era would have you believe that all American women did the same.

Cold War culture and domestic containment resulted in a focus on women solely as wives and mothers, happy homemakers who spent all of their time caring for their family. The rapid spread of suburbia facilitated this role, and American popular culture perpetuated the image of this ideal woman who found complete contentment in domesticity. Sitcoms like
Leave It to Beaver
and
The Donna Reed Show,
as well as magazines like
Ladies’ Home Journal
and
Good Housekeeping,
furthered this message of domestic, suburban bliss. It seemed that everyone was happy in the late 1950s, and if they weren’t it was because they were living outside of this ideal life. However, these cheery depictions weren’t completely accurate. In reality, the 1950s were a complicated time for women, and the simplicity of the Silver Age Wonder Woman wasn’t at all mirrored in the real world.

The 1950s are often seen as a sort of lost decade for women, an unfortunate period between their new roles during World War II and the emergence of the women’s liberation movement in the late 1960s, but this wasn’t the case. The progress made during the war didn’t disappear altogether when it ended, and second wave feminism didn’t suddenly appear out of nowhere two decades later. Throughout the 1950s, women played pivotal roles in social change that improved their position in society. Many women who remained in the workforce after the war were involved in union activities, helping to gain better wages and benefits for all workers. Among these benefits were better hours, maternity leave, and on-site child care for many professions.

Also, women were heavily involved in the civil rights movement, attending protests, marches, and sit-ins across the nation to fight for equal rights and civil liberties. After Martin Luther King Jr., the name most commonly associated with the civil rights movement is probably Rosa Parks, who famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in 1955. Beyond Rosa Parks, innumerable women of all colors and classes were involved in every level of the civil rights movement. In fact, the civil rights movement was both inspiration and a breeding ground for many women who later got involved in the women’s liberation movement. The advances made by women in the 1950s improved their quality of life and paved the way for future progress.

The 1950s were also remarkable in terms of women taking control of their sexuality. Many women worked tirelessly in the area of birth control, with great success. Beginning in 1953, Katharine Dexter McCormick funded research on oral contraception that ultimately resulted in the first birth control pill, also known as “the pill,” in 1960. McCormick’s friend and Marston’s aunt Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was also a tireless advocate for birth control and worked to educate women about their birth control options and change laws that limited these options. Although we tend to associate the battle for women’s sexual freedom with the late 1960s, the groundwork was laid in the decades before. Women worked together to help each other however they could, from large organizations like Planned Parenthood to secret, local networks where women could procure illegal means of birth control or abortions. The pill wasn’t available to all American married women until 1965 or to unmarried women until 1972, while many states had laws against other birth control devices, and abortions were illegal until
Roe v. Wade
in 1973. Because of these prohibitions, women banded together to assist each other and to fight to secure their reproductive rights.

Strides were made in other areas of sexuality as well; the postwar era saw the emergence of a strong and vibrant lesbian subculture. The authorities viewed these women as deviants and tried to harshly repress them, but their efforts were in vain and the subculture continued to thrive. Lesbian feminism was a significant aspect of the women’s liberation movement and was, yet again, firmly rooted in the 1950s.

The participation of women in activities outside of the domestic norms showed that many women weren’t satisfied with the lives that the dominant Cold War culture had prescribed for them. This dissatisfaction was most famously articulated in Betty Friedan’s
The Feminine Mystique,
which hit the shelves in early 1963. Friedan looked at the lives of white, middle-class, suburban women and found that the role society had foisted upon them wasn’t fulfilling for many of them. Through surveys, Friedan discovered that women lacked their own identity and that their lives revolved entirely around their families and not around themselves. Friedan blamed the media, like women’s magazines and advertising, for causing women to focus solely on housewifery, and she argued that this trapped women in a lifestyle where their efforts were undervalued and their desires and potential were set aside for those of their husbands or children.

The Feminine Mystique
was an instant success; within three months of its publication it reached the
New York Times
bestseller list despite its unknown author and daring subject matter. Many women identified with Friedan’s characterization of the “Problem That Has No Name,” this dissatisfaction with suburban life, and many historians cite the publication of
The Feminine Mystique
as the spark that brought about the women’s liberation movement. It had been building throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, with innumerable women laying the groundwork for its emergence, and in 1963 the lives of American women were about to change forever.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in December 1955, Wonder Woman was playing baseball with a gorilla and fighting a robot octopus in
Wonder Woman
#78. When the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the pill as an oral contraceptive in June 1960, Wonder Woman went to a parade with Steve and fought giant balloon animals brought to life in
Wonder Woman
#114. When
The Feminine Mystique
was published in February 1963, Wonder Woman was at a carnival with Steve and was turned into a giant by nefarious aliens in
Wonder Woman
#136. The world was changing in many ways, but Wonder Woman wasn’t changing with it.

If anything, Wonder Woman was sinking further into innocuous story lines and defining herself more and more through her relationship with Steve. In
Wonder Woman
#136, a confident Steve told Wonder Woman what to do and extolled the pleasure of his company, stating, “All you have to do is perform a few feats for charity—and spend the rest of your time with me—enjoying yourself!” Steve dictated Wonder Woman’s activities and later described her as “my Wonder Woman.” The Silver Age Wonder Woman wasn’t in tune with the lives of women in the real world, particularly those who were working to improve the role of women in American society. The 1950s saw the gradual undoing of Wonder Woman’s complex nature, and by the early 1960s, Wonder Woman was a generic superhero. But the comic book industry was about to change again, and these changes would lead to a radical new direction for Wonder Woman as the Bronze Age began.

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Recent research by Carol Tilley shows that Wertham’s treatment of these teen testimonials was often sloppy. In one instance, he combined two separate anecdotes into one testimonial. Twice he overemphasized how the reader felt about Batman, omitting that one teen thought other comics characters better fulfilled his erotic fantasies and rewording another testimonial to put the focus more on Batman. This is problematic in terms of research methodology, but the fact remains that several gay teens read homoerotic undertones in Batman comics. The issue is one of degree, not whether or not teens read these undertones in the first place.

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As far as I can tell, this editorial doesn’t exist in any issue of
Psychiatric Quarterly
between 1941 and 1954, the years covering Wonder Woman’s first appearance to the publication of
Seduction of the Innocent.
Wertham was terrible at citations, and it’s possible the editorial comes from somewhere else, but I’ve searched every issue of
Psychiatric Quarterly
to no avail.

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His only exception was a case where two women in a prison experienced weight loss and a general deterioration of health because of “the excessive amount of passion response repeatedly evoked by their female lovers”—or, basically, having too much sex.

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The Golden and Silver Age Wonder Woman sounded a lot like Ron Burgundy, though I don’t think Wonder Woman ever exclaimed “By the beard of Zeus!”—and “Great Odin’s raven!” is a whole other pantheon.

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In
Wonder Woman
#131 in July 1962, Kanigher wrote a story explaining all of Wonder Woman’s expressions. Diana Prince said, “Sappho was so sensitive, she couldn’t stand the sight of suffering in
any
form,” and that’s why Wonder Woman says “Suffering Sappho!” However, a) that doesn’t make any sense, and b) that’s not at all what Sappho was known for.