I am not a scholar of myth, ancient – modern – or in between, nor am I a professional historian, sociologist, or qualified authority on gender. What I am is a keen observer of people and things.
The world is changing.
In my lifetime, I have seen the rapid empowerment of women in my society go from a backswell to a prominent and unignorable fact. In like manner, I have seen the treatment of women in popular culture change radically. When I was a kid, there wasn’t much being said about the lack of female roles, or the lack of gender diversity. Today: it is sneaking in everywhere. And I am not that old.
This battle for gender equality in life and fiction started long before me, though I hope desperately that it may grind itself to a halt in my lifetime. I will be grieved indeed if it does not.
However, my own thinking in this area has undergone change, and sadly I confess that I am not completely there. But lately a few things have caught my attention and have turned the lights on for me. I want to discuss the portrayal of females in popular culture, as well as their roles in popular culture. By portrayal I mean: what they look like. By role I mean: what they do.
Portrayal. It is the stereotype, and still the dominant way of displaying a female within pop culture, as an icon of beauty, of sex, and little else. Personally speaking, I sexually prefer women, and I think the female body is powerfully beautiful in all shapes and sizes. Therefore, for me, it is very hard to separate my personal enjoyment of the female body and the effect that has on my perception of women. Generally speaking, when one objectifies something, it becomes more difficult to see that something for what it really is. When one gets into the habit of recognizing women only for their sex appeal, one has trouble seeing them as people. (I only use women here in this context, because, like I said, I am a person who sexually prefers women. That’s how I understand this paradigm best. I works for men who prefer men, men who prefer women, etc.)
To analogize a bit, I’ll put this in other terms that I am also quite familiar with. I use, and am quite a fan of, Apple products. That is iPhones, iMacs, iPads, iPods ad nauseum. I tend to objectify them, if I am not careful, and hold them up as exemplars of modern technological engineering. In certain cases, Apple has made some fantastic products. Some of them are quite good. But I can tend to see them as objects of beauty rather than what they are: a phone, a computer, a music player, a tablet, and really, when you get down to it, no better at their job than anything any other company makes. In this modern era what any piece of technology is able to do is pretty amazing. My point is that I see my iPod as a gorgeous object for something which merely allows me to experience my music.
Yes, I just compared beautiful women to iPods. I apologize. Please don’t send me hate mail or refuse to have sex with me (simply because of that). I only try to wake up the mind to what I am realizing: women are so much more than just a hot body. They are people, precious souls, and irreplaceable members of human society and advancement.
Consider this picture, a recent comic book cover: 
I’ve been aware of images like that my whole life. It didn’t really bother me or make a dent in my brain until very recently. Sure, I had an intellectual understanding that such comic book covers objectified women and that it was wrong, but it didn’t mean anything to me until this week when I saw another image. This is entitled Miss America and comes from Fan Art Exhibit. 
Don’t judge me too harshly, please. My point here is that society my entire life has been feeding me this idea of women and it is hard to break. By the way, I do want to point out that men have it no better, but it is less kosher to point it out, mostly because, as a society, men still have a majority of the power and influence so it is boorish to whine. But, do walk through a comic shop sometime and see if you can find a realistic looking man on the cover of anything. Go ahead, I dare you. I could not look like Captain America as he usually looks any more than any girl could hope to look like Wonder Woman.
Role. Most women in popular culture are eye candy, the damsel in distress, or non-existent. They exist to look pretty, to be rescued so the man looks heroic, or they simply aren’t there. I really, really enjoy the Lord of the Rings, both in book and film form. Do you know how many females there are in the main cast, in the Fellowship of the Ring? 0. Nine males. How about the Hobbit, how many women in the main group? Yeah, 0 again. There are 13 male dwarves, a male hobbit, and a male wizard. Even in Star Wars the ratio is still 5 to 1. (Han, Luke, Chewie, R2, C-3P0 to Leia). And what does Leia do in the first film? Gets captured by men and gets rescued my men. In the Empire Strikes Back? Gets rescued by men. In Return of the Jedi? Tries to rescue a man, gets punished by way of brass bikini, gets rescued my men and male ewoks. I love Star Wars, but it has a gender equality problem. Only recently, and very slowly, has this changed. Even the mighty Joss Whedon, who elevated women so spectacularly in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was shackled when he made Avengers because, yep, women were outnumbered on the super hero team 5 to 1. But Joss did what he could and made that one woman one of the most important and smartest of them all. Men break things, men fix things, men are the heroes. That is the message I’ve heard my whole life. And not only does it not make sense, it is stupid, and ignores completely the role women have wrested for themselves at great cost. Even in our long, patriarchal history there were women who did great things and stood high above men, but mostly they are ignored or marginalized. For shame.
How did this happen? That is a very long discussion. But, I blame two things: biology and laziness.
Not to ruffle feathers, but you can’t argue with evolution. The male part of the human species, rather generally, has more muscle mass than does the female part. Way back when we were fighting for evolutionary survival, that mattered. Men led because men could kill more, hunt more, build more simply because they were stronger. And, because all who gain power fear to lose it, once women let men fight for the power, men never gave it up. The majority of societies built since our meager beginnings have been male dominated (to my knowledge). Once we, as a species, kill our predators, kill our food, and build a fire, we like to be entertained. So we tell stories. We are smart, but not that imaginative, so our stories reflect everyday life. They are about warriors, hunters, builders. And, since what we see every day are men in those roles, men take those roles in our stories, our legends, our myths. Hence, laziness.
Since the dawn of history, until now, very rarely have we as a species deigned to allow women into our myths in any significant way, just like in real life. Sadly, it is only recently, and then only a little, that this is changing. Modern comics, tv, film, books are the myths of old retold again and again. Why else is Wonder Woman the lone female member of the Justice League (in popular consciousness) why else is Black Widow the only female member of the Avengers (again, in the popular consciousness, I am vaguely aware that in the comics Wasp was also a founding member)?
Humanity is a species slow to change. It has taken me 25 years. It has taken us millennia. I hope not much longer before women are in power, realistically portrayed, alongside realistic men is simply the way of everyday life and the stuff of legends. I advocate not for a reversal of the binary, but a destruction of it. Men and Women are equal in every way that matters biologically speaking. We should be socially and mythologically as well.
a simple man 