Female Superheroes. It seems to be  relatively unimportant but because Captain Marvel is coming out in March, I thought I’d share why I think that movies starring female superheroes are important.

First of all here’s my disclaimer: I myself am a fan of superhero movies and comics. I am not bashing on anything just stating something that I would like to be changed in the general content of them.

I don’t know why there seems to be a strange assumption that girls don’t read comics or watch superhero movies. We like these things just as much as boys do. From my personal experience, going to Comic-con here in Conway, there were just as many if not more girls than guys there. Statistically, comics actually used to be read more by girls than guys. In the 1950s and 60s, comic readership was actually split 45% guys to 55% girls.

Readership has declined for females partially because comics started to focus on things that were geared more towards males and because a lot of political cartoons and underground comics in the 70s and 80s featured content that was offensive and degrading towards women. However, women are starting to read more and more comics as the content is changing to be more equalized.

In my opinion, having a roughly equal number of female to male superheroes is important because the population is roughly fifty-fifty. It’s not that girls don’t relate to male superheroes, we do. It’s just that we would like to have representation and cool role models to admire also.

I believe that it is important for young girls to have strong powerful women to look up to in popular culture who aren’t diminished by being the love interest of a movie. I want little girls to see these powerful women in movies and on tv and say “I want to be like her when I grow up.” To tell the truth there weren’t very many of those characters for me when I was a little girl. There was no Wonder Woman movie. There was no Black Panther with all of its strong women. Avengers wasn’t even out yet so there wasn’t even the Black Widow. Most of the women I saw in movies were love interests whose purpose in the plot was to develop a male character. The first Superman movie was made in 1978. Why wasn’t there a Wonder Woman movie made back then?

And to all those people who say that a movie about a female superhero won’t do well, look at how well Wonder Woman did. It’s by far the best DC movie yet and it was directed by a woman. It was about a woman. It received great reviews from both men and women.

Finally, I’d like my Black Widow movie now please.