The Powerpuff Girls

This week I wanted to focus on the powerpuff girl’s episode Equal Fights.

The episode you can watch here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPgqtisi4_E and you don’t need to watch more than 2 minutes to see the character femme fetale that I’m going to write this post about.

Powerpuff Girls were one of my favorite cartoons growing up. Why? Because I was a little girl obsessed with superheroes like batman and the power rangers and they were the first girl superheroes that weren’t male and as femme fatale puts it not the “extension of their male counterparts” and not “lame”. I never liked batgirl or supergirl or wonderwomen because they all seemed to be female superheroes cartoonists just came up with so they wouldn’t anger the feminists in the world. And obviously they were always the right new to their male superheroes and never fighting crime alone.

Anyway, femme fetale is the villain in this episode of powerpuff girls and she is a feminist. So wait, a cartoon is portraying a feminist as a villain? Yes. Her clothes and mask have the female sign and also her weapon is female sign. But she brings up good points like the fact that there are no good female superheroes in our pop culture. The most interesting part is when she is robbing the bank and yells at the man who is giving her $100 bills because she says they have a man’s face on it (Benjamin Franklin) and she only steals Susan B. Anthony coins. She also yells at the man saying “men can’t do anything right” portraying an over exaggerated feminist that hates men.

Even though Powerpuff Girls is always portrayed as a cartoon were equal rights are met, they found a way to create a whole episode revolving around the fact that feminists are villains and they use their speeches only for their own good.