Female Superheroes Here To Smash Patriarchy!
Sadaf Vidha
I was out buying some stationary, and I ran into a crowd of haggling mothers and loud children. I should have known, it was May and schools were just about to reopen. Everyone was rushing to buy books, pencils, pouches and bags.
One boy of maybe age 7, told his mom, ‘I want the bag with the Chotta Bheem photo on it. I want to be strong like him!’
His sister quipped in, ‘me too!’
And then he said, ‘chup kar stupid, girls can buy something which has Chutki’s photo on it. Chutki does household work and helps Bheem, girls can be Chutki, not Bheem.’
And just like that, this kid was already believing in gender stereotypes. This got me thinking — in this day and age, why do we still have so many male superheroes? Why is it that women still appear as helpers and love interests and nothing more?
I started to look for any alternate stories out there, and lo and behold, I came across quite a few. Be it Ms. Shabash of Bangladesh who fought fairness creams and aunty bots (whose mission in life is to get young girls married), or be it Marvel’s new female hero, Ngozi who is inspired by Chibok girls who were kidnapped by Boko Harem, or be it Pakistan girl, or Ethopian powerpuff girls who fight female genital mutilation and other social evils.
But are we reading into it too much for no reason? Why, what children consume in terms of comics and entertainment important? Is it really beyond just fun and does it shape how they think of the world? The answer is yes.
Comics and what they can do is so important that it became a legal battle in the US in 1954. The Kefauver hearings were a part of the investigation where psychiatrists participated and gave their views whether comic books and shows with superheroes in them were a cause of juvenile delinquency and whether they caused emotional problems in children. They were considered to be against religion and against good moral upbringing of children. A famous proponent of having a ban on these “crime comics”, Dr. Wertham, stated that they encouraged temptation, corruption and demoralization. Although the court did not rule in favour of the ban, and comics became part of American (and later, the world’s) popular culture, this battle shows that comics are no light entertainment.
Developmental psychologists who have done extensive work on the mental development of children, like Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget feel that fantasy play (such that one indulges in when reading comics or acting like one’s favourite comic hero) is important symbolic play through which we understand the world around us and our place in it. Another important figure in Child development, Vygotsky, states that fantasy play helps children explore complex concepts like rules, roles and abstract notions like justice, power and morality. Anna Freud said that fantasy play helps the child to venture into a future of possibilities.
Bruno Bettleheim, who studied the importance of play for children, said that it could help generate favourable solutions to present predicaments and give us the good feelings needed to sustain us.
Rollo May, a famous psychologist, held the view that our myths and stories express our collective consciousness. Just like Carl Jung, he felt that our heroes and demons express our inner battles and the ideals that we all grapple with.
Anderson and Cavallaro (2002) have stated that children shape their behavior and values with the help of heroes and role models as guidance.
(Source for all these quotes: Using Superheroes in Counseling and Play Therapy by Lawrence Rubin)
All of these bodies of work and expert opinions suggest that :
- Comics and their heroes are important for symbolic play
- They help the child form a perception of the world which may stay
- They help the child find his or her place in the world
- They help the child grapple with ideas of justice and morality
- They help the child see what is wrong with the world and how it can be fixed
- They help the child to feel powerful and find solutions to their problems
Therefore it is then obvious that without powerful female figures and without the mention of social evils, especially those caused by patriarchy and sexism, children, especially female children would be at a loss. They would think of themselves and their powers as less than those of men around them. Also, since social problems (especially those caused due to gender) do not get a mention in popular culture, the problem becomes sidelined and women end up thinking that these issues are not as big as problems like corruption, problems of morality, hunger or climate change.
But all this is subsumed based on our readings of what the literature says. But what do actual girls feel about this? We spoke to five girls of age 13–15 and this is what they had to say:
The girls agree that it would definitely help their self esteem and career aspirations and belief in themselves if they were surrounded by heroes like Ms. Shabash. It would also easily help them identify social problems like racism and sexism easily. Up until too late, they thought that this is how the world is.
They mentioned that till class five they suffered a lot of self esteem issues, but 6th onwards, their curriculum started to talk about important female figures and this helped them regain their confidence (case in point for ‘Goodnight stories for rebel girls’). They felt that the female superheroes still look too perfect and the diversity in body type is still missing.
They feel that boys categorise girls in two or three categories, ratta marne wala (someone who studies by rote but isn’t actually intelligent), a dumb girl and a sporty girl. They felt that girls could be more than these three types if there were more female heroes in popular media. It would also help the boys see beyond these few categories. However, the girls did express a concern that if there were many shows and books with female superheroes, men would simply choose to not consume such material and still stay willfully ignorant.
Along with superheroes, the girls felt that role models close to home are equally important. For example, mothers who had economic independence and had an identity apart from that of a “mother” per se (having an interest or career of her own), and where fathers actively participated in running the house — girls from such homes had an easier time fighting gender stereotypes than did girls who were from more conventionally traditional houses.
So the take-away is this — just like Hindu mythology had a major revision where Sita’s and Draupadi’s versions of events opened people’s eyes to the sexism in Hindu mythology, we definitely need more female and feminist comics. This will help girls feel more confident and have better self-esteem. It will help all kids to be sensitised to the issues of gender. However, we need more diversity in body types when showing female heroes and we need to find a way to engage male audiences in these stories.
About our writer: Sadaf is a psychologist by profession. A curious person, she likes to envision a world where we are all respected and cared for, with our unique traits and struggles. She hopes to bring a mental health angle to the gender revolution.
