Upon learning that the world spins on its axis, Irma Peterson—the title character of the comic strip My Friend Irma—reacts with shock, exclaiming "Golly, no wonder I'm dizzy!!!" while her boss looks on in dismay.
As the comic strip above illustrates, stereotypical depictions of women were a mainstay of comics (or the “funnies”) in the mid-1900s. The industry was founded and dominated by male artists and editors. Whenever these comic creators needed a ready source of subject matter, they would reach into their collection of stories about women, and in representing them reflect their own and societally perceived beliefs about feminine inferiorities or peculiarities. Roughly 300 comic works were printed periodically in 1,000 newspapers nationwide during the mid-1960s. Both then and now, more men than women read comics, so it can be said that men both created and published comics for other men.
Generally, comic artists appear to have portrayed the women in their lives that they knew best: their mothers, their wives, and their daughters. Male artists depicted women as empty-headed, obsessed with dating, and excessively emotional. Other strips depicted women being demanding and impatient, requiring pampering, and having different priorities than men. From the group of about 900 original comic art drawings found in the museum’s collections, we can explore how this medium both shaped and reflected the shift of women’s roles in society.
This comic strip shows Lolly, the title character, attempting to please her boss with her work; he immediately becomes frustrated because of what he presumes to be her mindless misspelling of the word “dear.”
Here two young girls, one dragging a doll at her side, discuss the boys coming toward them. One girl hopefully suggests the potential counterintuitive bullying reaction the boys might offer if they are interested in the girls.
Here Dotty, the title character, is depicted as naïve and over-sensitive from her husband’s point of view because she cries when her son enthusiastically leaves home.
Here the wife is portrayed as a fault-finding, irritated figure who won’t let her husband enjoy his vacation until he finishes his chores.
Here the woman at the restaurant seems to silently demand a meal. The man, responding to the waiter’s assumption that he is interested in an inexpensive meal, turns his head quickly in confusion, as if to say, “Hey, you’ve caught on to me.”
Here the wife is trying to inspire her annoyed husband with a nationally related excuse to go out and make money.
With societal shifts, beginning in the 1940s, depictions of women in comics started to change.
Adventure and comic books such as Superman and Wonder Woman popularized superheroes. The Invisible Scarlet O’Neil strip featured the title character, a plainclothes superhero who assisted people in need.
Here Scarlet O’Neil leaves a child in the car and makes herself invisible by touching her wrist to successfully spy on the scene of a crime. The episode includes the idea that—even when a woman has such a perilous job—she is expected to perform duties like caring for children.
Here Wonder Woman, the strong superheroine, is shown rescuing an Inca girl from becoming a human sacrifice.
Joye Evelyn Hummel was one of the few women comic artists of this era. She ghost-wrote for the short-lived strip and continuing comic book for Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, between 1944 and 1947. Hummel later resigned from her job to spend more time with her newborn, but she had also become frustrated by the leanings of other Wonder Woman writers who she felt were interested in eliminating the feminist themes perpetuated by Marston.
By the 1950s and 1960s, the women's liberation movement had shaped American social consciousness to the degree that comic art creators and publishers saw the need to adjust their depictions of women further. While some works continued to belittle women, others promoted and applauded them. Several artists, some women, began to include more equitable representations of women. But the characteristics associated with women in comics that would continue to most assist, and sometimes unintentionally promote, women’s liberation were those describing successful, strong, capable female heroines.
Here Brenda Starr, the title character, is keeping up appearances after a job in the South Seas, proving that women can be both glamorous yet adventuresome.
Similar to Joye Evelyn Hummel’s dealings with the Wonder Woman comic strip and comic book, Dale (Dalia) Messick created and drew the Brenda Starr strip but felt she needed to change her name to follow the accepted conventions of the comic art business, being male. This male-oriented convention has since become either unacceptable and/or undercut, as roughly two hundred women have now been documented as having been involved in the production (creation, illustration, and writing) of comic art in the United States since its beginnings.
As a medium that echoes the real-life complexities of women’s transitions between positions as homemakers and career-oriented individuals, these comic works help us grapple with understandings about, and the circumstances and climates of, the mid-1900s, including the inequities that permeated American culture. They point to a future, however, where equality, as it relates to men and women of all cultures, has a future.
Readers can browse through the 900 comic art drawings using the museum's Comic Art object group.
Joan Boudreau is a curator of the printing and graphic arts collections in the Division of Work and Industry. She has written other blogs, including Gus Arriola and Gordo, agents of Mexican culture.
