Just got back from seeing “Wonder Woman.” I went in with high expectations due to the positive reviews and i was pleased that i was not disappointed. Sure, it had some clichés and weak plot points—that’s almost to be expected with superhero movies—but overall, it was a good story and a fun movie. I would recommend it, especially to young girls who can and should grow up to be strong women. Of course it’s violent, which isn’t a great thing, but there was almost no blood—it was comic book violence, where a heroic punch can flatten a bad guy.
Wonder Woman, as played by Gal Gadot, is beautiful. Of course she is, she has to be. She is all Hollywood, gorgeous and polished and presented to an adoring, average-looking audience. But to me, she is beautiful not only because of her physical looks (she is quite attractive) but because she is smart and strong and fearless and not content to fit into a role. She follows (or perhaps precedes?) strong women who i can’t help but find beautiful as well—Katniss, Rey, Arwen, Natasha—all beautiful Hollywood actors, all written to be impossibly perfect. And i sit in a theater and watch them on a giant screen and want to be with them, or someone like them, even though i know that that will never happen. For as complex as the character is written and portrayed, a real human being is so much more—more variety, more conflicts, more tastes and fears, likes and dislikes, choices made and lived with, aspirations achieved and unfulfilled.
And i’ve met them. I’ve met women who are smart and strong and attractive and clever and funny and cool—in a word, beautiful. They exist, and mostly, they are happy with other people or too young or too old or too far away. Every time i meet one of these women, i hope. I look at them the way i look at Wonder Woman, hoping that she’ll step off the screen and smile at me and want to know me and have no other reason to be around except for the shared curiosity that we’d have for each other. Everything to say, yet nothing to say. Happy to just be.
I feel guilty for objectifying women like this—staring at them with a selfish yearning—but even as i desire the physical beauty outside, i ache for the beauty inside. I want the strength and humor and brains and skill and fearlessness. And i want that to be inside every woman or girl that i meet, regardless of who they are or whether i find them physically attractive or not (not that my opinion makes a difference), because having all of that inside automatically makes them beautiful.
Yes, i want a beautiful woman to be attracted to me. I watch Gal Gadot and imagine fanciful scenarios that will never be, never. And as the years tick by and the heroines get younger and younger, even the pretend possibilities become ridiculous to the point of creepy. But i still sit in the dark in awe of the movie unspooling before me and i smile and cry and hope and want a Diana Prince of my own. And i want it to be now, and i want it to be magic, and i want it to be more comfortable than i’ve ever been. In the words of Wonder Woman, i believe in love.