An Icon for woman empowerment: Wonder Woman VS Black Widow

Wonder woman has turned into a mainstream female icon as of late, with her standalone movie easily being by far the best thing in the DC extended universe. With a female director in its helm and with Gal Gadot’s amazing portrayal of the character it truly did prove to the world that a female lead superhero movie could not just work but actually do better than most of its competition.

But a short while ago James Cameron made a comment that Wonder woman was a step back for strong female characters which got him a lot of hate. The iconic director of movies such as the terminator and the titanic felt that Wonder woman was too attractive to be considered a true feministic icon.

Now my gut reaction was to join the mob along with the rest of the world to grab the pitchforks and go after Cameron for saying something so mean about my beloved Gal Gadot (yes I have an unbelievably huge crush on her), But my crush aside here’s why the comment was so unnecessary. By numbers alone there are way lesser female icons in pop culture than male ones, and saying that such a beloved character from the comics was a step back is just delusional.

See James, this is how you get a strong female character wrong

But James Cameron himself has provided a few of the best female icons including Sara Conner from the terminator franchise, but his fault here is in thinking that there can only be one model of a strong female character. The gritty hardened Sara type and the larger than life Wonder women are both icons to be respected in their own way and the director of wonder woman, Patty Jenkins said it best “There is no right or wrong kind of powerful women”

But this got me thinking, is wonder woman the best feministic super hero icon we have? With all the praise that wonder woman got from its woman empowerment angle I decided to compare her with the next biggest female super heroine we have right now: Black widow.

So is Wonder woman a better icon for feminism than Black widow?

And the answer I came up with is: No.

Okay now before everyone goes off to grab your own pitchforks, here me out: I love wonder woman, and this has nothing to do with attractiveness, because let’s face it both Gal Gadot and Scarlet Johansson are both so beautiful that they would make a gay man wish he was straight.

I mean just look at them

This also is not based to represent which movie is more empowering to women, which wonder woman does better than anything the black widow has been in.

And this is definitely not a Marvel vs DC thing.

This is merely taking out the individual characters and looking at them through a lens to find out who would make a better symbol to strive towards.

And for this I first put forward a rather philosophical question:

Is it better to be born good or to overcome ones evil nature through great effort?

Sadly this question was not put forward by some ancient Greek philosopher but by Paarthunax the Dragon from the game Skyrim.

yup,this guy

But the fact that he is a fictional Dragon aside, the question still holds weight and this can be seen paralleled in the two fine women we have with us today