This is the second post in a series looking at the cultural and personal significance of Wonder Woman as a character and a symbol.
Today, it just so happens that this Wonder Woman series is intersecting with Blog for Choice day. Make of that what you will.
I have never watched Lynda Carter on TV. Never saw the show only the few stills I’ve stumbled past online, usually on the way to something else.
The first time I saw Lynda Carter was on April 25, 2004, at the March for Women’s Lives. I knew who she was, of course name and face but not much more.
She was not the most famous speaker at that rally, nor the most important, nor the most qualified. She was not someone for whom I was waiting with bated breath.
But she was Wonder Woman.
If there had ever been any question in my mind of who Wonder Woman was, of what she meant, it was resolved the moment Lynda Carter stood at the microphone and began to speak.
Lynda Carter is equal measures self-possessed and passionate, sweetness and steel. She’s smart, and she’s got this incredible strength and resolve and dignity and humor she’s real, yes, but there’s something to her that seems like more.
And I remember thinking, crystal-clear, Yes. This is Wonder Woman.
‘I knew that she was, and is, a character that had the potential of being very influential in terms of how women see themselves, and how men see a woman being. Yes she can be beautiful, and she can be all that stuff, but she’s smart and she can kick my butt.
‘It was a very conscious decision on my part to play against what was expected. I never played sexuality. I never tried to ‘play’ Wonder Woman. She didn’t think she was all that! She’s not all full of herself, and certainly not against men…but for women! It was just about being who she was, and trying to connect to that secret self that we have.’
-Lynda Carter
You can discuss this column and the rest of the Something About Wonder Woman series here.
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