"Although the original creators may have intended Wonder Woman to represent a strong and independent 'warrior' woman with a feminist message..."

"... the reality is that the character’s current iteration is that of a large breasted, white woman of impossible proportions, scantily clad in a shimmery, thigh-baring body suit with an American flag motif and knee high boots –the epitome of a 'pin-up' girl."

Said the petition to reconsider the decision by the Secretary-General of the United Nations on October 21, 2016, to make Wonder Woman the new Honorary Ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls.

Today comes the announcement:

The United Nations has ended a campaign featuring Wonder Woman as an ambassador for women and girls, two months after the announcement was met with protests and a petition complaining that the fictional superhero was an inappropriate choice to represent female empowerment....

Jeffrey Brez, a spokesman for the U.N., disputed that the campaign had ended early or as a result of the protest, as some reports have suggested, citing other honorary ambassadorships with much shorter tenures.

So what is the correct feminist position on Wonder Woman? I've never liked her, but I just don't give a damn about super-heroes. She's scantily clad and has an idealized physique, but that's true of male super-heroes as well. It's a good idea, within super-herodom, to have female characters. Is that inspiring from a feminist perspective? Ms. Magazine has always liked the fictional lady. She was on the cover of the first issue:



I remember seeing that first issue bandied about in 1972 and dismissing it out of hand as old-fashioned and middle class. We had advanced beyond the boundaries of gender, I thought, so this was retrograde — embarrassing.

But Gloria Steinem has long promoted the buxom, hot-pantsed woman:

Wonder Woman's family of Amazons on Paradise Island, her band of college girls in America, and her efforts to save individual women are all welcome examples of women working together and caring about each other's welfare. The idea of such cooperation may not seem particularly revolutionary to the male reader. Men are routinely depicted as working well together, but women know how rare and therefore exhilarating the idea of sisterhood really is.... Wonder Woman symbolizes many of the values of the women's culture that feminists are now trying to introduce into the mainstream: strength and self-reliance for women; sisterhood and mutual support among women; peacefulness and esteem for human life; a diminishment both of "masculine" aggression and of the belief that violence is the only way of solving conflicts.

Wonder Woman has a band of American college girls? Seriously, I do not know the story of Wonder Woman. It really doesn't sound U.N.-appropriate.