Newsmaker: Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. Clay Enos / DC Comics / Warner Bros Entertainment

It really ought to have been a red-letter day for Princess Diana of Themyscira, also known as Wonder ­Woman, when the 75-year-old comic-­book pioneer was unveiled on October 21 last year as the ­United Nations' honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls.

Until then, the superhero whose exploits have been in print every year bar one since 1941 had been enjoying a sparkling diamond anniversary. She had made her big-screen debut with a brief appearance in the film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and just two weeks earlier, the United States Postal Service had issued a set of stamps commemorating the iconic DC Comics superhero.

But then, in the presence of her human alter-egos, the actors ­Lynda Carter and Gal Gadot, protesters rose in the UN chamber and literally turned their backs on the proceedings in silent protest.

In a petition, UN staff expressed amazement that the organisation “was unable to find a real-life woman [who] would be able to champion the rights of all women on the issue of gender equality and … empowerment”. It was “alarming and … disappointing” that the UN had picked a fictional character “with an overtly sexualised image … a white woman of impossible proportions [and] the epitome of a ‘pin-up’ girl”.

Two months later, Wonder Woman was quietly dropped from the UN's campaign. The furore did no harm to her career, though – indeed, this weekend's release of the film ­Wonder ­Woman sees her headlining for the first time in a blockbuster set to make global box-office history. Well, not quite global, perhaps. This week, the film was banned in Lebanon – a country still technically at war with ­Israel – because its star, Gadot, is Israeli.

But that local difficulty aside, the furore at the UN highlighted Wonder Woman’s broader cultural flaw, by encapsulating the contradictions of a character hailed by some as a feminist icon, and by others as a disconcertingly sexist parody of womanhood.

Wonder Woman was the protégée of Dr William Moulton Marston, a psychology professor hired as a consultant in 1940 by All-American Publications, a comic-book publisher. Marston was himself a complex character, who advocated feminism while living with two women. Wonder Woman, Marston once wrote, “satisfies the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them”.

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The biog

1941 Born Princess Diana of Themyscira

1942 Joins Justice Society of America

1971 On the cover of first issue of Gloria Steinem's feminist magazine Ms

1986 Only year comic out of print to date

2016 Named, then dropped, as UN ambassador for female empowerment

June 2017 Makes first starring movie role in Wonder Woman

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He probably meant well. There was, he believed, "great hope for this world [because] women will win" and "when women rule, there won't be any more [war]". He conceived Wonder Woman to promote "a great movement now under way – the growth in the power of women". But when he was paired with 61-year-old artist Harry G Peter, the two men proceeded to create, in the words of Jill Lepore, author of the 2015 book The Secret History of ­Wonder Woman, "a scantily clad [and] divisive female icon", complete with "kinky boots … blue short shorts [and] a tight-fitting red halter top".

Regardless, it isn’t too far-fetched to suggest that, despite her controversial dress sense, as a woman never in need of rescue by any man, Wonder Woman may have paved the way for the more modestly attired Muslim superheroes who have emerged more recently – characters such as ­Marvel’s Sooraya Qadir, alias Dust, an Afghan recruit to the X-Men; and the Pakistan-made, Peabody Award-winning Burka Avenger, who in the words of US news site Mic, “fights crime, much of it gender-based, by owning what many see as a symbol of suppression”.

Perhaps the same could be said for Wonder Woman's attire. Gadot put it this way last month in an interview with The New York Times: "As a feminist, you should be able to wear whatever you like … feminism is about equality and choice and freedom."

Wonder Woman’s original story, published in 1941, saw her born a princess on an uncharted island occupied only by women since the time of the ancients; a utopia into which, at the height of the Second World War (in which the US had just become embroiled), man and the modern world suddenly come crashing in the shape of Steve, a downed American pilot.

Diana is given the task of returning Steve to the US, for which she is equipped by the sisterhood with an invisible aircraft, a star-spangled costume of limited practicality and, in the words of the US Postal Service’s recent appreciation, “a magic golden lasso that could compel those ensnared to … submit to the loving will of Diana’s new alter ego: Wonder Woman”.

She came to the US, wrote ­Lepore in The Secret History of Wonder Woman, "to fight for peace, justice and women's rights". In the early years, that fight was against the patriarchy of the Justice Society of America, to which Wonder Woman was admitted – as its secretary.

In the mid-1970s, the battle shifted from the printed page to the small screen, with ­Wonder Woman portrayed for three seasons by former beauty queen Carter. She was ambivalent about the role. “I hate men looking at me and thinking what they think,” she said in 1980. “And I know what they think. They write and tell me.”

Nevertheless, Carter was alongside Gadot at the UN last year and at the premiere of the new film in Hollywood this week. For this retelling, the action is transposed to the First World War, a change that, according to The Hollywood Reporter, "taps straight into the idea of a female warrior for peace confronting the world of men at its most ­destructive".

Yet the fact that Wonder ­Woman has always felt compelled to do so dressed not so much for trench warfare as for over-the-top burlesque has always made her a divisive figure. Pioneering feminist Gloria ­Steinem saw fit to put her on the cover of the first issue of Ms magazine in 1972, but as a reviewer of The Secret History of Wonder Woman put it in 2014, "should we read Marston's Wonder Woman [comic] strips as feminist manifestos or as the working out of issues by a somewhat troubled man, or both?"

One reader, commenting on Wonder Woman, a 1978 reprint of six stories from the comics of the 1950s, was in no doubt. "The importance of Wonder Woman for girls in the 1940s and 50s and on can't be overstated," she wrote. "She was the only role model that showed a strong, amazingly capable woman and underlined that girls/women can be anything they wanted to be if they believed they could be."