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Saturday, April 13, 2013

A Post About My Wardrobe

When I was a kid, I discovered Batman. I didn't have much opportunity to read comic books but I loved Batman: The Animated Series and that show turned me on to the X-Men, Spiderman, and Superman cartoons. I loved superheroes. I still do. Unfortunately, to show my love of superheroes, I've always had to shop in the boy's/men's sections for T-shirts. As I write this post, I'm wearing a men's size small Star Wars t-shirt (I don't find this blasphemous at all by the way) and I'll probably wear my men's size large Batman shirt to sleep tonight. The fact that, as a geek girl, I've always had to shop on the other side of the store for the stuff I love bothers me. What bothers me even more is that this hasn't changed all that much since I was a little girl, running around in my bright orange He-Man shirt.

Disney has released a string of Marvel-based hero shirts. They have a great variety of shirts for men and boys and, while they have no shirts specifically for little girls, they have a few for women.
Of course, all the dude shirts say things like, "Be A Hero" and "I'm a Hero" while the girl's shirts say "I Only Kiss Heros," "I Love A Man In Uniform," and my least favorite, "I Need A Hero." 

WTF, Disney?! Marvel has a slew of seriously amazing female heroes, you know, like half the X-Men.  Why can't some of these butt-kicking ladies get their own shirts? Uggh! 

My Rogue hair from my first year in college.
Anyway, it just made me thankful once again that Star Trek has ALWAYS had super serious wonderful women role models. Go all the way back to the pilot to find Majel Barrett as the original Number One. Then look at Uhura who gave Sulu the what-for in the mirror universe and then took charge of the bridge in The Animated Series. Then you get to the series I grew up with: TNG. Tasha Yar was the freaking SECURITY OFFICER! Pulaski put a new heart in Picard when all the boy doctors couldn't handle it and Guinan made an all-powerful alien (Q) shrink away in fear. In DS9 you get Dax (who could kick Worf's butt) and Kira who lead a militia for her people during wartime. 

Then you get Voyager--the most badass Star Trek lady show--with Janeway (in many ways the BEST captain) and B'lanna and Seven of Nine both of whom are scientific geniuses who are also completely lethal. Move on to Enterprise and you get T'Pol, an expert in Vulcan martial arts, and Hoshi who is not only a xeno-linguistic genius but once broke the arm of a superior officer when he tried to break up her illegal poker game. These chicks are badass and I'm proud to say that I grew up with them and, when I could afford it, finally bought a shirt for myself in the WOMEN'S SECTION. Nice job, Star Trek. 


4 comments:

  1. Amen sister, amen. Love this post.

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  2. Check out Nichelle Nichols' " Of Gods and Men" on the Star Trek You Tube Channel. This is one of those side Trek projects. Some are absolutely terrible, but some are quite good. There is an animated Fan movie called : Star Trek: Argo" which is pretty cool and it has women central characters.

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  3. I love this post. As a geek fanatic myself as well as the mom of a little girl who told the comic shop guys she was going to marry Darth Vader, I totally understand where you're coming from. My daughter is 4 and adores all things superhero; just took off for her first day of kindergarten today with a Marvel Hero's backpack. I've never had a problem letting her wear boys shirts but she just hated only getting princesses, flowers and butterflies for underwear choices. When she saw the Batman undies in the boy's section, she asked for them and I said yes. Why can't our little girls dream of capes and superpowers? I'm much happier giving her Star Trek role models than princesses with pretty voices. She loves doing science experiments and loves to tell stories about robots and ghosts. I just hope I can keep up with her awesomeness! Thanks for your blog - I just love it!!

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    1. Thanks so much for sharing this story about your daughter. How great too that your gave her a choice of underwear. I remember all those hearts and flowers as a little girl and wishing for the spiderman underpants. I'm really grateful to have had suck amazing pop-culture rolemodels. When it wasn't the women of Star Trek, it was Ripley, Sarah Connor, and Lara Croft. Thankfully, my parents encouraged my enthusiasm in all these characters and I never grew out of trying to emulate them.

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