Cheeseburger in Paradise, by Martha Thomases
It’s Women’s History Month, and time to confess that I’m inordinately interested in the daily lives of the Amazons. Not the historical/mythological Greek Amazons (although I’m somewhat fascinated at the idea of required semi-mastectomies to improve one’s archery prowess), but the DC Comics Amazons who live on Paradise Island, birthplace of Wonder Woman. In my opinion, DC has never handled the Amazons in a believable way. I suspect that’s because Wonder Woman was not consistently written nor drawn by women.
Women, left to their own devices, will develop their own language and customs, much like twins or the Amish. I know. I went to a girls’ boarding school for four years, then lived in a women’s dorm off and on when I went to a co-ed college. With some adjustments for the differences between life in classical Greece and the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I can imagine what Paradise Island would really be like.
In Wonder Woman stories, we often see certain groups of Amazons. The Queen has her court of advisors. The army trains to be ready for the frequent attacks from Man’s World. The priestesses perform the rituals demanded by the gods. Doctors heal. Librarians study. Although we don’t see them, I assume there are also cooks, seamstresses, architects and engineers, cobblers and clowns and musicians.
At my school, we had girls who were interested in all kinds of things. With no boys, there was very little jockeying for male approval (although there was a boys’ school with the same faculty and administration, where girls in the upper forms often had classes). There were athletes and scholars, actresses and musicians, rebels, writers, gossips, manipulators and nerds. But, unlike the Amazons we see on Paradise Island, sometimes these roles could all be found in one girl.
There were groups of girls who were friends, who perhaps shared an interest in riding horses or choir or drugs. However, these were not cliques in the sense we see them in popular movies. It was easy for a nerd to be friends with a jock, to find some common interest they both shared, whether it was Asian history or the Grateful Dead.
I can’t recall seeing where any of the Amazons lives other than the Queen in her palace. If there are apartments, or homes, or dormitories where the other Amazons keep their personal positions, I’ve missed it. As students, our rooms were one of the few places we could display our individuality. We had to wear uniforms (as the Amazons seem to have to wear draping gowns), so our rooms were the place we could be creative. Posters, collages made from magazine images, books and records were our decorating tools. We’d move our standardized furniture to create little private nooks, and write out poems to hand over our desks. Do Amazons have desks?
Fads would start and stop at our school. For a while, it was cool to braid your hair while it was wet in hundreds of tiny braids, then unbraid it to reveal crinkly waves. It’s the closest I ever came to looking like Janis Joplin. Then there was the humming craze, where someone would start humming during a meal, and soon everyone in the dining hall would hum, driving the dean crazy. It was fun because there was no way to tell where it started, a simple act of rebellion with no risk.
We had our own language, based on the rules of the school. For example, we were required to wear “sturdy tie shoes in brown or black leather,” which we called sturds. Clothes were uni or non-uni (as in uniform), with non-uni for Wednesday, Saturday or Sunday afternoons, when there were no classes or chapel. Breaded veal cutlets, a popular dish in the dining hall, were called elephant scabs. If you got caught breaking a rule, you were "stung" an "hour," hours being our form of detention.
Larry Hama once suggested that Wonder Woman would be a more successful comic if it were written more like Charlie’s Angels, which at the time was a top-rated television show. He may have been right, but that’s just replacing one male fantasy with another. I don’t know if Gail Simone plans to make Paradise Island an important part of her story, but, if she does, I bet her time working at a hair salon will help. She’ll know how girls talk.
Martha Thomases, Goddess of All Media at ComicMix, continues her Amazon obsession in an up-coming episode of Munden’s Bar.
Martha, my dear/ You have always been an inspiration. (Where is Paul McCartney when we need him to sing this song of praise?)I've come to look forward to the SAturday morning column. You are tap dancing like Fred Astaire, blowing like Coltrane, riffing at the height of your power. I wonder if your segregated sex education plays into this?
That song was written about his sheep dog. Which reminds me, I need a haircut.Girls' dorms are very similar to girls' locker rooms, except with more clothes. So perhaps you, too, have an idea of what it felt like.
Honey, I can't seem to find my cloak of invisibility anywhere.
You left it in your invisible airplane, dodo!
After a shaky start (talking gorillas not named Grodd or in love with a canned brain? neo-Nazis? child-hating Amazon rebels? puh-leeze), Gale Simone seems to have gotten it right with the latest story arc. Wonder Woman's courting of nemesis brought back the sense of her otherness that made the George Perez re-boot so much fun.
It's funny how one remembers different things of a shared experience. Don't remember the humming or the kinky hair. Definitely remember the "hours" because I got stung 3 my first day there for having serious contraband – a box of bandaids. Not an auspicious start to my first year in the middle of nowhere – I was from NYC and used to hanging out by Bethesda Fountain and going to the Filmore, and suddenly I was in a town without a traffic light and I couldn't go anywhere because there was no where to go – Except behind C dorm to smoke cigarettes. But at the same time, there is something to be said for being in an all girl's school and dorm at that point in life. Because the campuses were segregated by sex, we experienced much less pressure and competition than we would have in a typical school: We could put orange juice cans in our hair and masque (read zit creme) on our faces and no one cared. By the time we reached our upper years and had classes with the boys, we had developed a sense of ourselves and our capabilities, and very often it was we who were the smartest in the class – (well, never me specifically, but other girls certainly were) -I could never figure out what the big deal was with woman's lib because it never occured to me that I couldn't do something because I am a female. In fact, I have always thought we were the more powerful of the two sexes: Guys were pretty easily manipulated and childish. They also are the most sensitive in many ways, finding it harder to get over hurts and disappointments and move on. On the other hand, we hold the trump card in bitchiness, which is why I am so glad my only child is a son! (That and no Barbie shoes to step on when he was young.)To this day, my best friends come from that school. And though there are some former schoolmates who I don't particularly like, a connection still exists between us. There is a whole mass of people who will understand me and speak my language no matter what because we shared an intense common experience at a crucial time in our lives. Modern day Amazons all.Thanks, Martha.
Perhaps some difference in perspective comes from the fact that you dated. I didn't. No one wanted me. And while that is something I think I've outgrown — it's been nearly 40 years, for crying out loud — I think it had an effect on me nonetheless.
I'm trying to think of similar experiences I had in my two years at an all-girls yeshiva (9th and 10th grades), but none come to mind. Maybe that's because most of our authority figures at the school were still men (rabbis), and women in a strictly religious school (especially a patriarchal religion) are used to strictures being put upon them from the outset so there's less chance of breaking free and finding your own voice.
Frankly, I'd just like to see what happens on Paradise Island during that time of the month. It's an established phenomenon that women who live together in close quarters synchronize their periods — can you imagine an island full of PMSing Amazons?
Sweetie, you are going to love my Munden's.