One Panel #598: Etta Candy's Silver Linings Playbook

From Wonder Woman: "Wonder Woman Versus the Saboteurs" by William Moulton Marston and Harry G. Peter, Sensation Comics #5 (May 1942)

A look at how Wonder Woman's sidekick Etta Candy was portrayed in the Golden Age. Basically, she was a joke. A very, very dated body-shaming joke. But we also have to be thinking about Marston as a child psychologist, albeit one on the fringe. If all the bondage stuff is supposed to be positive (necessary, comforting structure and joyful release), then what is Etta a body-positive figure only slumming as a caricature? I don't know, but in this comic, she leads the charge with svelter swimmers (there's one in the back) to defeat some gangsters (same) before realizing her chocolates got wet, but then turning it back into a positive.

So is Marston telling little girls that you'll be ridiculed if you gain weight? Or is he saying that, like Etta, you should live your best life and see things in a positive light? I wouldn't expect too much thought from a Golden Age strip, but since there WAS a method to the madness in this case... Who knows?

Comments

RB said…
Eta era perfecta