Gender, Feminism, and Heroism in Joss Whedon and John ...

MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY IN HERO CHARACTERS
The traditional discontinuity between femininity and heroism has plagued female
heroes across media for decades, providing producers with ways to undermine the
potential threats female heroes posed to power structures designed to favor men. Of
course, this is not to suggest that femininity and heroism must always exist in
problematic opposition with each other. As explained in the introduction, third wave
feminist ideologies have influenced several female heroes created since the mid-1990s,
like Buffy Summers and the version of Emma Frost discussed in this chapter, and these
characters have helped to reconcile the two qualities. Other female heroes influenced by
liberal feminism have been constructed as powerful, liberated characters within the
feminine-heroic binary. Nonetheless, the strong legacy of patriarchy that predated these
more feminist constructions of female heroes ensures that while increasingly common,
these characters are exceptions rather than rules, which is one of the main reasons these
characters stand out as noteworthy. The progress made over the last few decades has not
yet reached the point in which narratives that construct femininity and heroism as
incongruous are no longer normative, especially in the world of mainstream American
superhero comic books where old texts remain important to storylines long after their
original publications and where formal standards have progressed little.
With this in mind, it follows that masculinity typically plays a crucially important
role in American superhero comic books. Masculinity first and foremost defines male
superheroes. The more enormous his armor of muscles is and the more physically active
he is in the savior role (as opposed to the physically stagnant and passive role of the
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