Wonder Woman and the Phallic Menace
Do you think those old-timey comic book artists were trying to suggest something in all those Wonder Woman covers? Superman had Lex Luthor. Batman had the Joker. And Wonder Woman, apparently, had the Phallic Symbol. In the early days, the biggest threat to the Amazon (who made her debut in 1941) was being attacked by penis-shaped objects. Though she did enjoy occasionally riding or straddling a rocket, bomb, or skyscraper when the mood struck. And why wouldn’t she? She was only a woman and the rockets looked so much like a ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ well ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ you know. But the phallic fun didn’t end with rockets or torpedoes. The Wonder Woman artists could turn anything into a stand-in for the male genitalia ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ as when the Amazon princess is the meat in a skyscraper sandwich or when, only a few issues before, she mounts another skyscraper and seems to be rubbing its tip. They even made a damn shark look phallic! Either these guys were complete perverts or working through their subconscious desires. Either way, it made for some awesome comic book covers….
I was never a big Wonder Woman fan as a kid, or even when Lynda Carter played her in the television show. Still, even I have to wonder how sex-deprived the artists who drew Wonder Woman her must have been. Did these folks ever get out at all??
Just by looking at the covers, one is immediately struck by Wonder Woman’s proclivity for phallic symbols- bombs, torpedos, missiles- even a shark. All of these, if seen in the proper light, can be viewed as large powerful symbols of male sexual power- and Wonder Woman has her arms and legs wrapped around them. Subtle, no?? Perhaps in the ’50s and’60s this is what passed for subtle sexual imagery and male fantasizing. As if this left much to the imagination….
I find it particularly interesting that the sexual aspects of the drawing are so outsized- the large, hard phallic symbols, poised to explode (no symbolism there, eh?), and the super-heroine possessed of large breasts. I’m not going to get into the meaning of such imagery. After all, this IS something resembling a family show, and people do read TPRS at work. Besides, we’re all intelligent people with active imaginations; I’m sure y’all can put two and two together….
Man, subtlety was lost on these folks, eh?
