‘Wonder Gals’
IT’S supposed to be pageant season. But Covid-19 derailed all of our plans. Not to fret, pop culture still satiated some of our cravings for things glamorous that pageantry brings.
Miss Themyscira via israel
JUST when Gal Gadot graced the cover of American
Vogue this May, the world came to a standstill. The story, by Jonathan Van Meter and photographed by Annie Leibovitz, went to press before Covid-19 paralyzed us all. “Obviously the circumstances are horrible and frightening, but we’re home and we’re trying to make the best of it—to enjoy the quality time. It’s so surreal,” Gal told van Meter. “I’ve never been through times like these. But I’m also full of hope for when it will be behind us.”
It’s a long-deserved feature in the world’s fashion bible, one I expected she would have accomplished before Wonder Woman was released in June 2017. The May cover was supposed to publicize the opening of Wonder Woman 1984 in June. It’s now postponed to August. Gal represented Israel in Miss Universe 2004 (won by Australia’s Jennifer Hawkins; Maricar Balagtas was our rep). It’s rare and I think this is the first time that a Miss Universe alumna snared a US Vogue cover. (The British actress Daisy Ridley, star of
Star Wars, was cheekily called “Miss Universe” for her cover story in November 2017.)
Supermodel Helena Christensen, Miss Universe
Denmark 1986 (won by Venezuela’s Bárbara Palacios; Violeta Naluz was our rep), appeared twice in 1993: in January (photographed by Pierre Scherman) and April (by Herb Ritts). But she shared the cover with other models. She was solo on the cover of Vogue Germany October 2004 (by Mark Abrahams) and in multiple British Vogue issues.
After Wonder Woman 1984, Gal will next be seen in Kenneth Branagh’s Death in the Nile and in her selfproduced Untitled Hedy Lamarr Project, a TV miniseries. For now, the world waits excitedly as Gal reprises her role as the princess/goddess from Themyscira.
“It completely changed my life. Somehow it came out at a point in time where people were really craving it. It made an impact. And [director] Patty [Jenkins] and I were very lucky, I would say, that the movie was received the way it was and that it came out in the era it did,” she said to Vogue, “and I think we just, without even knowing consciously, ticked a lot of the right boxes. Because it was in our DNA—WE didn’t have to think about it too much. We were two women who cared about something, and that wound up in the DNA of the movie.”
‘Ms.’
IN 1941, William Moulton Marston, a Harvard-trained psychologist famous for inventing the precursor to the lie-detector test, introduced his creation, Wonder Woman. It was the height of World War II, Superman and Batman were very popular, and Marston observed that there were no powerful role models for girls in comic books. Marston wanted his superhero to be strong and independent. She could stop bullets with her bracelets. And she should “be uncommonly beautiful; she’d wear a tiara, like the crown awarded at the Miss America pageant,” wrote Jill Lepore, author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman, in Theguardian. com in December 2014.
DC Comics wanted to sell millions of comic books, so the instruction for the artist, Harry G. Peter, was to draw Wonder Woman as “a woman who’s as powerful as Superman, as sexy as Miss Fury, as scantily clad as Sheena the jungle queen, and as patriotic as Captain America.”
It was during the “Second Wave” of feminism, in the early 1970s, when Wonder Woman became a symbol of the fight for women’s rights. In 1972, Gloria Steinem, the glamorous poster girl of the feminist movement, placed the superhero on the first regular cover of her liberal feminist magazine, called Ms., with the banner blaring: “Wonder Woman for President.”
By 1975, Wonder Woman had her own TV show, with beauty-queen-turned-actress Lynda Carter. As Miss USA, she competed in Miss World 1972, won by Australia’s Belinda Green, and ending as finalist together with our own Evangeline Reyes.
“Sometimes you have to use a tiara to make a point,” Lynda said, in a quote in Variety in October 2016. “She doesn’t let anyone push her around.” Because of her iconic portrayal, Lynda ushered in powerful female protagonists, such as Charlie’s Angels, Bionic Woman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess, and The Charmed Ones. As a sex-positive role model, Wonder Woman blazed the trail for Madonna, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. Lana del Rey, not so much.
“Wonder Woman symbolizes many of the values of the women’s culture that feminists are now trying to introduce into the mainstream: strength and selfreliance for women; sisterhood and mutual support among women; peacefulness and esteem for human life; a diminishment both of ‘masculine’ aggression and the belief that violence is the only way of solving conflicts,” Steinem wrote in 1972.
What superpower would be the most important one [for Wonder Woman] to have today, Steinem was asked by Vanity Fair.
“Her magic lasso that makes everyone tell the truth—no more falsehoods and Alternate Facts!”
‘Mrs. AMERICA’
Gloria Steinem is one of the principal characters in Mrs. America, the new limited series on FX on Hulu. She’s portrayed by the Australian actress Rose Byrne. Mrs. America is a complex, compelling story about the feminist movement in the 1970s from the perspective of the anti-feminist (though she wasn’t exclusively a homemaker as she traveled across the USA for her cause), anti-lgbt (though she had a gay son) and “queen of the conservative movement” Phyllis Schlafly, played masterfully by the Australian oscar winner Cate Blanchett. Phyllis spearheaded the defeat of the Equal rights Amendment in Congress, which could have led to equal pay for women.
Uzo Aduba plays Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress, and who ran for president in 1972; Tracey Ullman plays The Feminine Mystique author and national organization for Women (now) cofounder Betty Friedan; Margo Martindale plays politician Bella Abzug; Elizabeth Banks plays Jill Ruckelshaus, who served as head of the office of Women’s Programs in nixon’s White House; Jeanne tripplehorn plays spinster Eleanor Schlafly; and Sarah Paulson plays the fictional housewife Alice macray. the show boasts of stellar performances. Cate and her costars will win all the acting trophies in the next awards season, post-covid. Another reason to watch this series is the stupendous, period-appropriate costume pieces worn by the actresses. Designed by Bina Daigeler, who worked in Mulan (2020), Volver (2006), All About My Mother (1999), the costumes are a visual documentation of 1970s fashion.
Daigeler’s work entailed deep-dive research on how women dressed in the 1970s, relying on actual footage of the women, photojournalism and fashion magazines of the era. She scoured vintage shops and online boutiques, scoring amazing finds for Byrne, such as Diane von Furstenberg dresses, an Yves Saint Laurent skirt, and the exact same aviator glasses that Steinem wore. The shirts and jeans that Byrne wore, however, were custom-made.
“Soft colors and A-line skirts were for the anti-feminists. None of them were wearing pants,” Daigeler told the Hollywoodreporter.com. “I wanted a classic American housewife, proper and clean. the ERA [look] was bohemian, New York-style, much more fun. Designer clothes.”
As she told Vogue, Daigeler sees the differences in style between the libbers and the anti-libbers as something that is still relevant today: “It’s about dressing up for ourselves and who we want to be, versus dressing the way you think you should dress or dressing more for men.” n