69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 4: Tools of the trade

“Wonder Woman is actually a dramatized symbol of her sex. She’s true to life — true to the universal characteristics of women everywhere. Her magic lasso is merely a symbol of feminine charm, allure, ‘oomph,’ attraction. Every woman uses that power on people of both sexes whom she wants to influence or control in any way. Instead of tossing a rope, the average woman tosses words, glances, gestures, laughter, and vivacious behavior. If her aim is accurate, she snares the attention of her would-be victim, man or woman, and proceeds to bind him or her with her charm.”

“Lasso of Truth” by Samurai Pet.

“Woman’s charm is the one bond that can be made strong enough to hold a man against all logic, common sense, or counterattack. The fact that many women fail to make strong enough lassos for themselves doesn’t deprive the lasso material of its native magic. The only thing is, you have to use enough charm to overcome your captive’s resistance.”

(William Moulton Marston, creator, qtd. in girlfriend Olive Richard’s Family Circle article “Our Women Are Our Future,” August 14, 1942.)

Michael Turner.

Disagree. Dislike. First of all, if I think someone is not as in to me as I am to them, I soundly give up: I really never expected them to be reciprocally interested in me to begin with and I hate admitting to having feelings, let alone letting those feelings make a fool of me. Nothing I hate more. I am supposed to be impervious and deflect all attention. Upping my game and maybe getting shot down again is the absolute last thing I would ever do. So the idea that I need to re-aim and throw my lasso again is round bullshit to me. No way am I going to tip my hand like that and risk that people know I Feel Ways About Things.

But, my sad and complicated shit aside, secondly and more widely applied, I also dislike the idea of telling chicks that you have all the charm you need, you just need to work harder because it sets up false expectations in women, who probably have enough going already without further blaming themselves for what they perceive to be failures in romance, and redoubling an effort that may be toward a pointless cause to boot. I believe the expression is “He’s just not that in to you,” yes? So what? Glance down the bar and see if someone is looking at you and quickly looks away. Oh, no, his collar isn’t popped and he does not know the cool jam on the jukebox? Talk to him anyway. You will be surprised.

“Old School Wonder Woman” by Lauren Montgomery.

I also don’t like the idea that I got to use some elusive yam-fried set of feminine tricks to get my way. What’s wrong with walking up and honestly asking for what I want from a man or woman? Why does it have to be couched in some charmy little game where I snare someone with an invisible rope? Why can’t I be like a man and straightforwardly address my needs in business and in social settings?

By quasilucid, via fyeahww.

Now how about this: “Woman’s charm is the one bond that can be made strong enough to hold a man against all logic.” Whoa, so even if my idea, the thing for which I’m campaigning and slinging my golden wily lasso, is crazy and illogical and against “common sense,” as long as I’m feminine enough, it’ll still work because by god and the grace of my “charm” I’ve roped that guy? Hell, no. No. Why would I a) want to do something illogical; b) decide to dishonestly employ a feminine wile instead of forthrightly putting a plan in motion; and b) use this imaginary “power” for evil, in a dishonest way that does wrong by some poor dude and the laws of logic? I don’t like any of that. I highly resist and even resent that.

The weird thing is, I don’t think, from the comics I’ve read, that Wonder Woman is like that at all. Marston says she’s the dramatized symbol of this binding feminine charm that he perceives, but I think he’s wrong. She’s straight-up, in the main, and an almost always equal player on a male-dominated planet. Wonder Woman is not walking around this world with a water bra and a bunch of batty-lashy tricks up her sleeve. And if by some shady necessity she is going about her business sidewise or in disguise, she is a bit by the seat of her pants and obviously unaccustomed to artifice. And the Lasso of Truth seems to run counter to the tricky charm lasso to which Marston analogizes non-wonder-women’s apparent powers. Truth, not some murky invisible binding charm that stickily works despite logic and sense. So, no. I realize that Marston was Wonder Woman’s creator, but it doesn’t make him right in my eyes. He said a lot of bullshit: why should I accept his interpretation of anything?

Seems I’m in the surprising position of defending Wonder Woman, from her own father.

Done for today.

Movie Moment: That one little movie and confession — the vanity

The source of these screencaps is a tiny little-known film from which you’ve likely never seen stills. I will not trouble you with the title, as even the star’s name escapes me.

So here’s how shallowly I am capable of behaving even after recovery from some serious illness, in case you get the impression from my tomboyishness or my interest in peace studies and nonprofits that I have a diminished capacity for the same cripplingly pathetic vanity that plagues us all — when they gave me the word yesterday that they were going to release me from the hospital later in the day, the very first thing I did is I called in a hair appointment. Like, literally, from my bed at the hospital I called the salon. I hadn’t washed my hair in fifteen days except for this weird dry-chem showercap full of shampoo and setting lotions that one of the nurses gave me twice. I kept brushing my bizarrely slick, pomaded hair in to this hideous half-ass poofy chignon and pinning flowers in it to distract from how filthy it was and keep myself cheerful. Then on top of this they’d told me it would be at least three to four days before I can safely shower. I have some sutures, etc., from various tubes I’d had put in for dialysis and then had jerked out waiting to close up, and getting the wounds wet I’m told is a Very Bad Thing.

Related anecdote.*

Also, they didn’t have to do it, but since I was already in there getting all kinds of stuff done anyways, I had them switch my boobs around, too, so I have to heal from that procedure as well. I just needed a change, you know?

So, yes, the first thing I did on hearing I was going to be sprung was call up my stylist and tell her I desperately needed a wash and blow out. When I was fidgeting, waiting on the paperwork and worrying about whether someone was going to snatch up my freedom on some flimsy whim and stall my discharge, keeping me away from my dear kidlet and my own bed and toilet yet another night, I was secretly mainly fretting over whether I’d be out in time to keep that all-important hair appointment. In the mouth of recovery from death, I was mortified and primarily motivated by my hair. Oh, the vanity.

Looks really good, though. I keep touching it and stroking it like it is a pet from which I’ve been separated. My god, the vanity. I’m about thirteen years old, I think. I can only laugh at myself.

On the e. coli thing, I checked in to it, and I guess it’s okay and not uncommon to have a little e. coli. I guess it will go away? The More You Know.

*Related to this still, my mother and I invented a game during my stay called Saddest Stripper. We tried to top each other with descriptions of sad strippers — e.g., vertical caesarean scars, visible scurvy, leaky dead eye. I thought I won with my vivid description of a foaming syphilitic with a full head and neck-cage collar thing, but Mom swept when she thoughtfully said, “One leg and an IV.” Horrible, horrible joke but for some reason it really worked. Perhaps because of all the time I’d just spent on IV, it was the idea of dragging the single leg and the IV about the stage in a g-string while attempting to bump and grind that slayed us. I hope none of that offends any sad stripper readers; sorry. Also, glancing over the brief list I gave, it looks like the attributes I best remember us naming are those a stripper might share with a pirate. Intriguing.