Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice

I feel like a stranger on planet earth with all the Harry Potter talk that has been going on. I also grew up with the series as a cultural cornerstone, but I stopped reading the books after #4, and I have never seen any of the films. I admit to being a little jealous, seeing all the talk about J.K. Rowling/the series’/Emma Watson through a feminist lens, but now just isn’t the time for me to get in on the action. So let’s talk about another series with an interesting set of female characters.

The Powerpuff Girls.

That’s one of those shows that clearly had a lot going on beneath its iconically abstract kids’ show exterior. If you need evidence of that, look no further than the episode “Meet The Beat Alls,” which was just an overwhelming stream of Beatles jokes from start to finish. Then there was the Mayor’s assistant, Sara Bellum, who was obviously the brains of the office, but shown only from the neck down as an hourglass in a red skirt suit.

THEN, there was the episode, “Equal Fights,” in which the titular heroines encounter a female villain who convinces them to let her continue robbing banks and shops (of their massive stashes of Susan B. Anthony dollars…all banks have those, right?) because hey, she’s a woman, and all women need to stick together because the man has kept them down long enough! For evidence, she cites that the Powerpuff Girls and Wonder Woman are the only popular superheroines with their own identities (rather than existing solely as feminized versions of male counterparts). That one really complicates things.

In any case, there were the girls themselves: Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. A lot of fictional (and hell, real) girls end up labeled as “cool” by virtue of being tomboys, and the Powerpuff Girls had that in Buttercup, with bobbed black hair, a raspy voice, and a love of throwing fists. But it also had Bubbles, the hyper-cutesy blonde who lay claim to the power of a supersonic scream (and speaking Spanish). And then there was the brains of their little operation, Blossom, who had long hair and a big red bow, and was characterized at every opportunity as a brainiac overachiever. All of them are more or less stereotypes, but, in displaying three distinct personalities and styles as equal, the show avoided the frequent, obnoxious implication that traditionally feminine girls are weak/unpleasant/incapable.

And what about Professor Utonium? As squicky as it could be for a single male scientist to have a team of crimefighting girls living in his house, Professor Utonium was shown as a doting, perceptive father, occasionally portrayed as a home maker, and an occasionally lonely single parent of young triplets with all its predictable problems (sibling rivalry, growing pains, and problems at school).

As I was writing this, I kept saying out loud, “And that episode where they get a cat and it turns out to be a mind-controlling villain!” and “Or when Mojo Jojo turns everyone in town into dogs!” I was only interrupted by Mister saying, “I think I do remember that,” to just about all of my prompts and then finally, he said, “How have I seen this many episodes of The Powerpuff Girls?!” When I perused the Wikipedia page (which also contained some interesting commentary from their creator), I learned that the show was consistently very highly rated in every single demographic. That’s how, Mister: boys watched it too. I think we’ve got a rich subject of conversation, here, folks.

So, everyone, what do you think? What do you remember from The Powerpuff Girls that’s much more interesting now through a feminist lens?

“Equal Fights”

“The Rowdyruff Boys”
Part 2