Now, I know you have to imagine that I was a very aware little girl for, like, four or five, but I was seriously jiving on all of this. And yes, I had all the action figures--I had the little Charlies' Angels dolls in their jumpsuits with their wee little flashlights and pistols, and I had a Wonder Woman doll, and a Jamie Summers, whose head clicked when she turned her head and whose wrist opened up to reveal her circuitry. Add my Princess Leia, who was a commanding height comparable to the Barbies I had, and you have a stable of fairly kick-ass female role models.
This was actually who I really wanted to be when I was about five or six:
Because I liked her in the corny "Batman" series, that had since been rerun during daytime tv on UHF. (Dudes--anyone recall what UHF was, on tv's with dials?) Librarian by day, butt-kicker by night. (I think I also really liked the cool Batcycle. A girl-cycle. A motorcycle was cool like Fonz, but also being a superhero-cycle gave it extra cool points with me.) I remember being distressed when I was 5 yrs old that there was no Batgirl costume at my local Woolworth's. (Remember those sweaty vinyl costumes they used to sell at places like Woolworth's?) So I was Wonder Woman, and I was I think Spiderwoman the year after that. (Spiderwoman? Yeah, seriously.) It never dawned on me then, that I could have just worn a Batman Costume, and since I had girl hair (um, like long--you know, in the '70's, that meant long) I'd have still been Batgirl. A girl, in a Bat-suit. Just like Barbara Gordon was.
Totally took me awhile to catch on to that. Past my trick-or treating years, anyway.
So what I'm getting at is--I think I was influenced to relate to the iconography of butt-kicking (but smoking-hot) role models. Which lead me to ultimately believe, that so long as I could look cute and kick tail, I'd be okay in this life.
So long as I had a magic lasso and was partially bionic.
Or something like that. Or I became an irreparably tv-influenced fangirl. Hard to say.
No comments:
Post a Comment