Wondering Where All of the Female Superheroes Went

Photo by Owen Main

Photo by Jenny Livingston

My daughter's best friend moved to a new preschool at the beginning of the school year and every since then my daughter has primarily been playing with a group of boys who are very into superheroes. My husband and I were starting to get on princess overload, so we welcomed the change to more empowered role models for our daughter. I scoured Amazon for books with female super heroes because while she had a Supergirl costume and doll she received for her birthday, she didn't really know anything about super heroes besides what her friends told her, and they were only interested in the boy superheroes like Batman, Spiderman, and Superman. It was time to for her to start studying!

While Christmas shopping for my daughter, I was relieved that to find that DC has been churning out books and toys for the preschool set and has made it a point to include some females in their products (Marvel has some catching up to do!). Specifically Wonder Woman, who receives the most love thanks to Patty Jenkins' new movie starring Gal Gadot, as well as Supergirl and Batgirl. From new Little Golden Books and Step Into Reading books, my daughter has been devouring everything we can find. She especially loves The Big Book of Girl Power by Julie Merberg, which is basically a who's who of female superheroes. Awesome, right?

Fast forward to this week when I found a new book of superhero bedtime stories called DC Super Friends 5-Minute Story Collection put out by Random House that I thought my daughter would enjoy

Photo by Jenny Livingston

. The front cover features Superman, The Green Lantern, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Flash. The back cover features Batgirl, Superman, the Flash, and Batman. The male superheroes definitely get more love than the females, but a good mix non-the-less, or so I thought. I excitedly bought the book with one-click and eagerly awaited the book's arrival so I could share it with my daughter. When the package arrived in my mail box, I ripped open the cardboard packaging and eagerly started flipping through the pages. Thankfully my daughter was off with my husband when the book arrived because what came out of my mouth once I had flipped through all of the pages was not appropriate for her young ears. The book starts with a biography of (supposedly) all of the superheroes featured in the book. There is just one problem: when you get to the stories, Supergirl and Batgirl are nowhere to be found. They literally are not in a single story, despite being displayed on the front and back cover of the book as well as in the super hero biographies. Wonder Woman gets a smaller role in one story, but that's it.

Photo by Jenny Livingston

While my daughter still loves the book and is enjoying all of the stories despite the absence of two of her favorite characters, I have been fuming about the false advertising. DC obviously knew that the female superheroes would be a big selling point for a big chunk of their target audience, so why exclude them? It makes no sense. Every single one of the male superheroes listed in the biographies is included in at least one story, if not several. What gives, DC and Random House? Was this an accident from too many people working on the book? Were you just trying to widen your audience with the cover, not really caring that it didn't represent the contents of the book and hoping no one would notice until they had already purchased it and wouldn't want to disappoint their kids by returning it? Judging by the reviews on Amazon (mental note, always scan the reviews before purchasing a book in the future), I am not the only one to have noticed the missing female superheroes and to be upset by it.

I am genuinely heartened by new push for female superheroes. It has been long overdue. However, it's products like the DC Super Friends 5-Minute Story Collection that bring into focus how far we still have to go before there is true equity and female characters are not treated as an afterthought thrown in to appease the angry feminists. The huge success of the new Wonder Woman movie gives me hope that the companies producing these products are finally coming to their senses. What do you think? If you have any book recommendations, please post them in the comments section.