House of Eratosthenes

Someone needs to get these people the help that they need. Really, these are not mentally healthy people. It should be classified as some weird obsessive-compulsive disorder because that’s exactly what it is.

New WW Movie Let’s take a look at what we know happened here. Someone saw a picture of Wonder Woman in the Lynda Carter costume…which is nearly identical to all of the Silver Age costumes of the Champion of Themiscyra, going back to the very beginning. They looked at that costume with the bustier that conceals Wonder Woman’s tits. The bustier that is propped up by whatever structural stiffness it has, and absolutely nothing else. The bustier that fights not only gravity, but also whatever shifts and pulls and wrenches and tears and body blows come about while she is wrestling with giant gorillas or killer robots or superhuman Nazi clones. The bustier magically conceals the Wonder titties…and these sick asses looked at that and said, “I know what’s wrong with that! Wonder Woman is wearing shorts! Let’s fix that!”

Yes, Wonder Woman wears shorts. Male superheroes cover their legs up, superheroines show theirs. That’s the way it is because that is the way it’s supposed to be. Have you seen an average man showing his legs lately?

You want to re-vamp the costume, give Wonder Woman a collar so she’s got kind of a “Slave Leia” thing working for her. Or, just hook something on to the bustier, wind it around the back of her neck, and then hook it on to the other side so it’s got kind of a halter thing going on. Something that makes it believable the goddamn thing stays up while she’s a stowaway on the outside of a rocket, or a jet plane, or an alien spaceship, or whatever. Then people will sing your praises. They’ll say “Hey, there goes [blank], who made sure Wonder Woman’s tits finally remained properly concealed!”

Because let’s face it.

Nobody, but NOBODY…not Ted Nugent, not Patricia Ireland, not John Kerry, not Rush Limbaugh, nobody but nobody but nobody…is ever going to say “thank goodness the Good Lord saw fit to breathe life into the body of [your name here] who put Wonder Woman into a pair of pants.” Nobody wants to see that.

Here, I will explain it one MORE time:

Wonder Woman wearing a pair of little tiny shorts is not a symbol of female oppression. It wasn’t in the 1940’s and it isn’t now. You know what that symbolizes? The Olympic games. That’s what it is all about. Have you read the origin of Wonder Woman? She is, first and foremost, a champion. She was selected as the best of the best…and right after champion, she becomes a diplomat. She is an emissary sent from one world to another. She is an ambassador. The so-called “skimpy” costume is an emblem to be worn, to reflect the demanding physical nature of the contest by which she became a champion. It really isn’t clothing at all; if anything, it is a fabric mural telling a story of how she secured her position. It isn’t intended to be pin-up attire, it is intended to be competitive, athletic attire. Kind of a hodge-podge between a track running suit, and combat armor. To sum it up, she is a female Hercules.

And by the way, where she comes from everybody prances around buck-ass naked all day all year. It’s a story of perspectives, and from her perspective the classic Lynda Carter costume is…well…something like a burkha.

Yeah, it looks a little peculiar when she wears it into outer space with a plastic globe around her head. Whatever. She’s Wonder Woman. Deal with it.

Frankly, what we’re looking at here is the reason there will never be a female-action-star movie that makes real money. Never, never, not ever. It isn’t going to happen, because when you’re a female movie star, everything you do arouses controversy, and every controversy has to be resolved by means of the answer that is most assured of avoiding passion…and therefore, being boring. This counts double when the subject turns to the exposure of lovely female skin.

Tomb Raider: Wore shorts for the promotional shots, ran around fully clothed for the rest of the movie. Generated a decent revenue stream for opening weekend, got crappy reviews. Cradle of Life: No shorts outfit at all, one bikini scene, completely stupid plot, slightly better reviews though decidedly lukewarm, financial failure. Aeon Flux: Cartoon character who runs around showing everything, brought to life with a supermodel who’d look completely awesome naked — again, running around fully covered from head to foot the entire movie. Critics hated it. Audience hated it. Creator Peter Chung felt completely embarrassed and humiliated. Fiscal meltdown.

James Bond slaps on a pair of swim trunks and nothing else…ladies go “ooh!”…but the movie continues to be about whatever the movie is about. Bad guy’s laser cannon or nuclear sabotage or whatever. Colorful characters, goofy double-agents, gadgets, codes, decoder machines, betrayals…James Bond showing skin, does not become some controversial thing that takes over the entire production. You doubt me? Let’s say your wife coos at you to put in the Bond movie where Daniel Craig wears swimming trunks…or Pierce Brosnan…or Sean Connery. Do you know we’re talking Casino Royale, Goldeneye and Goldfinger? No, you don’t. Because those movies are about many, many other things. Result? Double-Oh-Seven continues to pull in a goddamn fucking fortune, every single time. Even the bad ones make money. There is effort put into the actual story, and the method in which it is told…there is “give a damn” in the movie. That’s what everyone wants, right?

Indiana Jones? I don’t even care. I’m a straight dude and I don’t swing that way. But if I have to attend to some tedious household chore for two hours, I can promise you Raiders of the Lost Ark has a whole lot more potential for being tossed into my Blu-Ray player, than any Tomb Raider movie, or Aeon Flux. It’s got heads melting and exploding — what do you think I’m going to do? Hell, I’d rather watch that second one with the slave kids and the screaming blond and the railroad cars, than Aeon Flux. The difference isn’t the action hero. The difference is the story. And the story got some attention because they didn’t use up all their bandwidth quibbling about forcing pulchritudinous females into long pants.

Rockettes You read it here first, folks. The new Wonder Woman movie is going to be a financial Japanese-Tsunami-Reactor. And it’s not because Wonder Woman is covering up her legs; it’s because, since she is, we know the makers of the movie have all their priorities cockeyed. They’re focused on the wrong things. They won’t work hard to entertain the audience. They’d rather be politically correct than deliver the entertainment value to the audience, that the audience was promised.

What’s the problem with female legs, anyway? Where’d this come from? We’re a year and a half away from electing a female President with an awesome looking pair of legs. Isn’t it time we got past this?

Bare female legs…they’re like puppies, or kittens. Good enough to turn your bad day around and make it into a good one, even if you’re a straight female. C’mon, I’m only saying what everybody’s thinking already. Seriously, if you can lay eyes on a Wonder Woman costume and your first instinct is “those two need to get covered up”…and you’re not talking about the breasts…you are way, way off base and there is something wrong with you.

Some people just haven’t been around ladies’ gams long enough, and don’t know what they’re missing. They’ve become incrementally disconnected from their own humanity, and need to be brought back in touch with it.

Which I suppose is fine, all by itself. But how come they’re in charge of making all our movies nowadays?

We’re so obsessed with being properly entertained lately. It seems everything that reaches multiple people, has to be entertaining. Even the domestic & foreign policy of our government…we judge it according to whether it is entertaining or not, not by whether it is likely to achieve the results we say we want.

How come we allow our entertainment to become so incredibly boring? Radiant, ravishing, gorgeous, beautiful females, running around in long pants. They tell us we should clamor for more of this although the ticket sales clearly prove we don’t want it. Why do we tolerate this?

Cue for Buck telling us that Palin will *never* be elected president. We’re waiting, Buck-o.

I agree. I read the buzz this afternoon about the WW costume, and it isn’t even the 2nd revision…the previous one looks like the current one but less…shiny. I was asking, “What’s wrong with the original Lynda Carter costume?” And a lot of people agreed with me.
- cylarz | 03/31/2011 @ 01:48
I forgot to include something about the boots. I’m actually on-board with the bitch fest about the boots with the fuck-me heels. I don’t care if you’re a comic book character or a superhero, you can’t run in those.

But Wonder Woman’s crazy merry-go-round right now is, people gripe about the costume needing a rework because the boots are impractical…she gets long pants…people talk about it awhile, and then nobody ever notices the boots again.

And capes. Where does Wonder Woman get her props, for her unique sense of practicality in choosing not to wear a cape? Where are all the calls for Batman to revamp his costume because the cape is so unworkable for street fighting?

WW is actually the last superhero who should get a costume re-design — because whenever it happens, it exposes the fact that she’s appallingly poorly defined as a comic book character, considering her seniority. It isn’t even well established whether she can fly or not. Every time they neglect that stuff and start debating her costume one more time, it diminishes her further.
- mkfreeberg | 03/31/2011 @ 07:43
Yup. It looks dumb. It’s trying too hard to be correct.

Wonder Woman is sexy. Anything to play that up makes the story better. Anything to play that down makes it worse.

I mourn the loss of dresses in our society. I know. a lot of women still wear them when they “have” to, and some women — usually the ones I like — actually like wearing them.

But by and large it’s pants pants pants pants.

Women can look good in the right pants. But dresses and skirts flatter them best, and proclaim “I’m a GIRL!”

I like that in a woman. Sue me. I’m a guy.
- philmon | 03/31/2011 @ 09:14
I’m with you Phil on the dresses. I’m a bit surprised to hear you say that since you live in MO. I thought in the southern and mid-western regions, women still dressed in….dresses.

WW has always struck me as little more than a girl version of Superman. Some comic book artist decided that he needed a female counterpart – an all-American one at that – and instead of drawing a girl in the same costume, Wonder Woman is what we got instead.

What exactly are her powers, anyway? Okay, she can deflect laser beams with her wrist cuff things and her lasso makes people tell the truth. I think she also has some kind of telepathic abilities. Anything else? Otherwise, she’s little better than Batman and his reliance on tech and devices.
- cylarz | 03/31/2011 @ 10:48
Nobody knows what her powers are. Every time she’s about to actually achieve some definition, anywhere outside of a Justice League cartoon, people start arguing about her damn legs being bare and that’s as far as it gets. She may or may not be bullet proof, she may or may not be as strong as Superman, she may or may not be able to breathe in outer space and she may or may not be able to fly up there. That’s the way it is with chicks, everything has to be a statement, and every statement gets someone in trouble with someone else.

You know what really gets under my craw about this. It isn’t one more nice looking lady getting her lower appendages covered up, or that someone somewhere is fanatical about doing this for no reason at all. It irritates me the same way as “Truth, Justice and All That Stuff.” Someone is trying to make a mark; to say “I was here” — by destroying what was already here before they came along. They want the props for building something when what they’re really doing is destroying something. Because that’s easier to do.

If you want to re-vamp Wonder Woman and make your mark on her so people know you were here…you could do what John Byrne did with Superman. Add definition to the character, interconnect the powers with each other, so that there is an explanation for all of it and it ends up being somewhat believable. That’s what WW really needs more than anything else. What Byrne did was ingenious. It was his idea, I think, that Clark Kent wouldn’t be able to shave…Superman’s a good guy, so he can’t have beard…so the solution is, he uses his heat vision to fry the stubble off his face. The heat vision has to be reflected, an ordinary mirror won’t work, so Pa Kent pried off a piece of Kryptonian metal off his space shuttle and polished it, to send with him to Metropolis for this purpose.

You have creativity like that…versus dressing Diana Prince up like Hillary Clinton with boots. It’s just no contest. Something is happening lately, and it isn’t good.
- mkfreeberg | 03/31/2011 @ 11:20
You’re essentially asking the same question Freud (and, in one of his lesser roles, Mel Gibson) asked: “What do women want?”

Because that’s who’s driving all this. That’s the reason “when you’re a female movie star, everything you do arouses controversy, and every controversy has to be resolved by means of the answer that is most assured of avoiding passion…and therefore, being boring.” Contrary to popular (read: feminist) belief, guys do not have a problem with gorgeous women kicking ass. Or un-gorgeous women kicking ass. So long as said ass-kicking is epic, total, sustained, and even quasi-plausible, guys are there… because we’re simple creatures who enjoy few things more than a bout of old-fashioned butt-whoopery.

It’s women, on the other hand, who bust out phrases like “control of female sexuality” and “our bodies, ourselves” and “fanservice” and the dreaded “objectifying male gaze” whenever anyone threatens to reveal that good-looking women are in fact attractive. Thought experiment: would all the complainers be just fine if the new Wonder Woman were some wizened crone in a burka?

Answer: of course not. The feminist response would be: “what, so you’re saying only ugly women that no man could ever possibly want are capable of defending themselves? Oh, the patriarchy!” Etc. etc. Predictable as sunrise.

That’s why nobody takes feminism seriously anymore. Equal pay, equal opportunity, voting rights, all that stuff… all that was achieved in the 70s, if not long before, because those things were both right and necessary. But now that we have them, feminists want…. what, exactly? What would “gender equality” or a “nonsexist society” even look like? (Setting aside for a moment the even more-impossible question of what it would take to actually achieve it).

Until they can answer that question, or until Hollywood stops listening to them, all female film roles will continue to be played by a) vapid tweenybopper sexbots in bikinis, or b) Judi Dench. And guys will continue to stay away from movies in droves, emerging only for the occasional Michael Bay summer blockbuster.
- Severian | 03/31/2011 @ 13:04
versus dressing Diana Prince up like Hillary Clinton with boots.

El-Mayo (LMAO)!

Cylarz … you may see more of them here than other places, but really, pants do prevail most of the time.

I work on a team with 4 guys and 6 women. 4 of the women wear dresses and skirts frequently. Three of those are Chinese, and I mean from China. And only two of those wear them at least half the time. The fourth one is Romanian. Although with her I don’t bitch about her slacks because she looks damn fine in them. (Not that I notice or anything). They are feminine and they compliment her, plus she wears feminine tops and things with them. The two American women, … pretty much never.

In case I had you sweating, none of the guys wear dresses. 🙂 Though years ago we did have one in our department that would have if it were kosher … which it was on Halloween. And he did.

You get out in the country, you might see it a little more, but not much. Ladies who work downtown at banks and law offices tend to wear them more. Nice dress suits.

I miss dresses. You saw a lot more of them when I was a lad.
- philmon | 03/31/2011 @ 13:16
The dreaded objectifying male gaze. Bullsh*t. That’s power right there. The Feminazi’s (as opposed to real, honest feminists) got them all believing that being a woman made them somehow less, and so they started dropping the marks of femininity to look more like men instead of fighting on their own turf. They lost themselves, and they lost us.

I mean, wouldn’t you think that a feminist would be proud of femininity? I think they actually do think women are the weaker sex, and so they try to hide the fact that they are women.

They’re not weaker. Just different. Good different. As I’ve always said … I’m a big fan.
- philmon | 03/31/2011 @ 13:20
But once they’re done tinkering around with Wonder Woman, where exactly is Wonder Woman? It’s an important question because whatever effect they’re having on WW they’re bound to have on everything else they touch.

I think it’s a bad effect. I’m seeing a sort of double-helix winding its way through human history…each new generation says “women can be empowered if they show more skin” if the previous generation said “women can be empowered if they cover up!” They’re just alternating back & forth. But the net effect is to remove structure from things. You see it in the comment threads under every single post about this new costume, this week. WW is all about a new costume — and — what?? Oh dear. Nobody seems to have put any thought into it.

Same goes for Bill Clinton, and the “Clinton” name in general. To someone just arriving at adulthood and political awareness right now…what does that name mean? Is there a “Clinton Doctrine”? No, there isn’t.

So it’s like the feminist movement is running around, (pardon me for using this term) OUT OF CONTROL…loose cannon…reaching into people’s bodies and pulling their spines out, rendering them shapeless. Except they’re having this effect, not on enemies, but on their friends. The beneficiaries of the feminist cause, such as it exists today, are having their form & substance taken away from them, and therefore their life expectancies shortened. Very,very sad thing in Wonder Woman’s case. She’s going to end up sharing the same fate as Captain Nice and Mister Terrific. New generations will come up, hear her name, and reply with “who’s that?” She’ll be like a Betamax to them.
- mkfreeberg | 03/31/2011 @ 14:07
Ok, I think we all need to take a breather and go out and see this movie.

Just to review it.

And stuff. 😉
- philmon | 03/31/2011 @ 20:24
[…] believe we missed this. We must be more of a leg man than we thought we were. Even though we wrote about this before it completely went over our […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/13/2011 @ 07:02
[…] ties in to that other observation I made about the weird, strange people who have long been obsessed with sticking Wonder Woman in long pants. Just like Wonder Woman in a skimpy costume: A product is offered. A great hue and cry emerges […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/07/2012 @ 08:25
[…] Morgan Freeberg contemplates Wonder Woman’s new garb (see, for instance, here), and decides that it’s yet another failure of the system: The new Wonder Woman movie is going to be a financial Japanese-Tsunami-Reactor. And it’s not because Wonder Woman is covering up her legs; it’s because, since she is, we know the makers of the movie have all their priorities cockeyed. They’re focused on the wrong things. They won’t work hard to entertain the audience. They’d rather be politically correct than deliver the entertainment value to the audience, that the audience was promised. […]
- dustbury.com » These boots aren’t made for gawking | 10/18/2012 @ 15:06
[…] on-again off-again campaign to put Wonder Woman in long pants, always a reliable indicator of the waxing & waning influence of negative nasty people, may […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/02/2012 @ 14:00

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On This Obsession With Sticking Wonder Woman in Long Pants…Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

On This Obsession With Sticking Wonder Woman in Long Pants…
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011