From the time of Wonder Woman’s creation, she has always been treated as a sort of women’s alternative by the people whose jobs it is to make money from her worldwide brand. In corporate terms, she’s a female hero for female consumers. But that’s never really been the case for fans.
Just because you’d be hard pressed to find a Wonder Woman t-shirt in men’s sizes doesn’t mean women are the only people who have been following her and admiring her for the last 75 years. It’s the same with male heroes; if you’re a woman and you want to dress as Superman or Batman for Halloween, you usually have to make do with Supergirl and Batgirl, even though we all know it’s not just men buying cinema tickets.
“I don’t think that one character has to represent either gender ever,” says director Patty Jenkins. “That’s even part of the interesting thing about Wonder Woman. I hope she does, but the expectation is that she should represent all women. Then again it comes down to that [thing of there being] 70 male characters who get to represent every different version of men, but only one woman who has to represent not everybody but every struggling thing, you know? It’s something where of course she won’t end up representing everyone, but I hope that she represents men and women.”
Jenkins tells us that she hopes Wonder Woman will represent all kind of people that never thought they would be represented on screen.
“She’s a universal character. That’s what I went for more than anything. She’s all of us, because everybody has wanted to do the right thing before but not known how to do it, or how to be stronger or be good. That’s kind of what I think has been so powerful about the other superheroes before is when they can really hit that button like Superman did for me. I tried to just ring the bell of mankind instead of any specific person. But hopefully everybody will relate to the struggle to be a better person.”
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