She-Ra and the Saturday Morning Leading Ladies

I was born in 1982, and as such I was fortunate to have a number of strong women and action heroines to look up to when I was a kid. From an early age, I noticed that heroism wears a bra and undies, and not too much else. I'm talking about Wonder Woman, She-Ra, and Ripley from Aliens. But honestly, that didn't bother me when I was young. Because I noticed that in Die Hard, Bruce Willis didn't have shoes and He-Man was without his fair share of clothing most of the time as well.

So I processed this information the way a robot might, (A television and movie watching robot from the 1980's) I just assumed that underpants were the uniform of choice for tough chicks. It didn't corrupt me, and it didn't make me want to run around in just a bra and underwear, and it didn't turn me into a "lady of the night" (To use my grandmother's dainty terminology). Sure, it's kind of laughable now, but I really didn't think twice about it back then. If I did pause to notice, I was probably thinking that being confident enough to run around in nothing but undies and win fights with bad guys just took them to an entirely new level of coolness. Most of us have nightmares about being in our skivvies in public, these ladies wore them on purpose, and made them shiny to boot!

I was a huge fan of She-Ra, Princess of Power! I had the She-Ra coloring books, the She-Ra action figures, and a plastic sword of protection. The toy company Mattel created She-Ra. I think it's safe to say that they had a genius in their marketing department at the time. Every Saturday morning I was parked in front of the t.v. waiting for that cartoon. And somewhere around the same time, the X-Men cartoon was also running. This show was jam packed full of tough chicks, and my favorite was Rogue. She had super strength, cool hair, and a non-threatening Cajun boyfriend. A pretty sweet combo. In an effort to become as strong as possible I would run laps around my house for very long, uninterrupted periods of time. I can't imagine how insane I must've looked to the neighbors...but hey it did lead me to my marathon running ways as an adult. (Benefit number 212 derived from the "Good Reasons To Watch The X-Men Cartoon As A Kid" handbook.)

As well as She-Ra and the X-Men, there was Jem. Jem was less a super hero and more of a magic rock star. Let me say that again, you didn't look excited enough about that idea. She was a magicrock star! Hasbro was responsible for this show. My Mom said when she was a kid, she watched "Howdy Doody" and "Bozo the Clown". When people my age watched t.v. we had mutant super heroes, princesses of power, and a magic rock star. What a difference a few decades makes.

I'm just speculating about this, because I'm me after all, and not everyone else. But I imagine that this was a kind of a giant leap for girl-kind. Now little girls could run around with swords of power and magic lassos and pretend to have super strength. Outside of comic books, (Which are no small potatoes, but in households without big brothers...girls may miss out on these.) this was kind of the dawn of a new era as far as what a little girl could pretend to be and aspire to become. Geeks today really revel in the eighties, and many times we look back at that time with sarcasm and a kind of tongue in cheek fondness because the entire style of the decade was so cheesy and over the top. But I'm so thankful that I was born into the time of female action heroes, it was ground breaking I tell you! (Best Jon Lovitz voice in 3, 2, 1...)Ground breaking!

I know, I know...they were just ideas invented by toy companies to make money. I totally get it. But that's not all they were to me. And evidently, they were powerful enough to create the army of female geeks that exists today. And when you're a kid, you don't know about the big bad machine of capitalism yet, or "the man". You're just running around your yard or your apartment pretending to be awesome. And when you do grow up, and find out about the evils of the world...at least you've got your choice of anti-establishment, take no prisoners, magic-earring wearing, sword of power wielding, female role models to turn to for inspiration.