X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor (8 page)

Though she may have superpowers and wear the costume of the X-Men, Marvel Girl’s role on the team is often that of the damsel in distress, especially during the first years of publication.
The X
-Men #4
(Mar. 1964) sees the entire team threatened by a wall of fire, and even though she is not injured, Cyclops picks her up and carries her to safety while the rest of the team runs away on their own (100). In
The X-Men #6
(July 1964), Marvel Girl collapses from the strain of trying to slow the the Beast’s fall, and Iceman must prevent the Beast from crushing her (138). In
The X-Men #7
(Sept. 1964), Marvel Girl collapses from attempting to use her powers to lift a villain called the Blob and is reprimanded by Cyclops, “You shouldn’t have strained yourself against impossible odds like that! Leave him to me now!! Only my power beam can beat him!” (171). In the same issue when an explosion occurs near the team, all the members protect themselves, except Marvel Girl, who is shielded by Angel. Marvel Girl is captured in
X-Men #10
(Mar. 1965), and the rest of the team must go to rescue her. Angel is also captured, but when he sees that Marvel Girl is “numb with fear” and unable to act, it is his quick thinking that allows them to escape. In the process of escaping, Angel must tell Marvel Girl exactly how to use her powers, because she is too incapacitated to think for herself (241). Though Marvel Girl’s powers are an asset, she frequently is too physically weak to use them or a man must direct her because she is too emotionally frail.

Interestingly, much as there was a sudden and somewhat unexplained change in how the minority metaphor was used in
The X-Men
, which came to a head with the Sentinel Trilogy, Marvel Girl’s role on the team sees a significant change in those same issues. In
The X-Men #15
(Dec. 1965), Jean makes a notable jump in confidence and ability. She even directly tells the Beast that “I’m hardly a damsel in distress” as she levitates herself through the air (347). Her words ring true, at least in this adventure, as it is the Beast and Iceman who are captured and need to be rescued by the team. And instead of falling into traps, it is Marvel Girl who calls out “Boys! Look out!” when Cyclops and Angel fail to see an enemy (356). And, as Marvel Girl is straining with her powers as she has so often before, instead of fainting as the reader may expect her to, she calls out a triumphant “I did it!” as she mentally pushes a giant robot Sentinel to the ground (359). Marvel Girl’s newfound confidence carries into the next issue. Again, Marvel Girl is straining to topple a Sentinel when the team sees she is struggling, and one member calls out, “Hey! Jeanie needs help! Let’s move!” but before the men can arrive to save her, she succeeds and calls out “Too late! I downed him myself!” (378). And in the final escape Jean carries Angel to safety, reversing the role they’ve had so many times before. Even as they’re finally escaping from a high wall, Cyclops falls back on the established routine for the team and worries about who will carry Marvel Girl to safety before she tells him not to worry because she can levitate herself to the ground (386).

Why are there such drastic changes in the role of Marvel Girl in these issues? It is hard to say for certain, but much as the Civil Rights movement was drawing attention to many of the prejudices racial minorities faced, the feminist movement was highlighting many gender issues during the time period Lee and Kirby were producing these X-Men comic books. The year 1963 saw not only the first issue of
The X-Men
hit the stands, but also Betty Friedan’s bestseller
The Feminine Mystique
published. Friedan identified what she called a repressive image of women that had become common in society. Women, in post–World War II society, had been told to “seek fulfillment as wives and mothers” (57) and find contentment in cooking, sewing, raising children, and doing their husbands’ laundry. Experts informed women that “they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity,” even as society set about creating narrow parameters for what defined femininity (58). Although domestic roles are not inherently repressive to women, society was dictating that domesticity was the only place where women could be happy. Many women can find happiness in domestic roles, but few other options were available at the time, and
The Feminine Mystique
and the feminist movement raised awareness of this problematic social expectation.

Lee and Kirby were creating a comic book at a time when many social changes were occurring, and those changes affected the stories being told. Jean Grey will evolve as a character and develop many different character traits, but originally, Marvel Girl had many traditional domestic roles that society expected of women. Lee and Kirby were products of the age
The Feminine Mystique
criticizes, when women were expected to find fulfillment and satisfaction only in their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers.

Marvel Girl matches many of the roles of femininity that Friedan criticizes. First, her identity is closely linked to the advances of the male members of the team and her own secret longing for Cyclops. In postwar America, much of the idealized concept of womanhood was not as an individual, but as part of a heterosexual pair. This was not the only image of femininity promoted in American culture, but it was one of the most dominant. Conversely, men were allowed their own independent identity as well as the option of finding fulfillment as part of a heterosexual couple. Clearly the men on the team are also very concerned with romantic relationships, but there are other defining characteristics for each of them. While Cyclops is shown worrying about being the field leader of the X-Men and the larger issues facing mutants even as he longs for Jean Grey, the only insights reader gain from reading Marvel Girl’s thoughts are that she wishes Cyclops loved her. Her identity is linked exclusively to her romantic feelings, and she is shown as being incomplete without Cyclops’s affection.

Marvel Girl also adopts a domestic role on the team.
The X-Men #6
(July 1964) begins with a full-page panel showing Professor X, Angel, Cyclops, the Beast, and Iceman seated around the dining room table, whereas Marvel Girl is sticking her head around a doorway in the upper left hand corner of the image. The men are all in the foreground, whereas Marvel Girl is in the background. Professor X says, “It was a delicious meal, Jean! Thank you for helping out on the cook’s day off!” to which Jean replies, “I was glad to do it Professor!” (131). From the image, it is unclear if Jean partook of any of the meal herself or simply waited quietly in the kitchen while the men ate.

After the X-Men battle the Juggernaut, who also happens to be Professor Xavier’s half-brother, in
The X-Men #13
(Sept. 1965), all the men are injured, and Marvel Girl is shown caring for them while wearing a nurse’s uniform. Cyclops laments that they’ve never had so many injured before, to which Iceman replies that “With a nurse like Jean, it’s a pleasure!” When the Beast mentions that his mother would kiss him to aid his healing, Jean notes that she is not his mother, and Angel offers a wry “That’s for sure!” in reply (318).

A stronger Marvel Girl who appears in
The X-Men
#
14
(Nov. 1965) and
#15
(Dec. 1965) seems to offer some level of recognition that she had been more or less a token female member of a boy’s club up to that point. However, although Marvel Girl remained more confident of her powers from this point forward, many of the domestic markers that defined her role as the female on the team were not abandoned. For example, the last panel of
The X-Men #18
(Mar. 1966) shows Jean wearing an apron and carrying a tray of food out to the table where all the men eagerly await the meal (433). And she is the damsel in distress again in
The X-Men #19
(Apr. 1966), though a point is made when the team is escaping from a collapsing mine that Marvel Girl does not need to be told what to do and can easily keep up with the boys. And in
The X-Men #35
(Aug. 1967), Cyclops orders Marvel Girl to stay behind because the threat they are facing is so dangerous, and he does not want Marvel Girl to be injured. So in some ways readers encounter a strange mix of the old damsel in distress and the new confident Marvel Girl.

Marvel Girl has acted as a cook and nurse, but she will adopt another role traditionally associated with housewives: seamstress. When the team has their uniforms redesigned, twice in this era, Marvel Girl designs and produces the outfits. Originally the team wears uniforms with the same blue and yellow color scheme and basic design, with the exception of Iceman, whose powers simply make him look like a snowman at first and like he is carved out of ice after artists change how he is drawn.

In
The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, and the History of Comic Book Heroines
, Mike Madrid criticizes the roles and costumes of early Marvel superheroines, such as Marvel Girl. Madrid argues that these female characters “take on traditional female roles within the group as mothers and handmaidens: sewing uniforms, making coffee, and doing secretarial work. All the while, they conceal their femininity beneath unisex costumes that match those of their male counterparts” (109). The roles the superheroines had in the early 1960s Marvel comic books reflect the domestic ideals of the 1950s, and the costumes are certainly representative of the conception of femininity before Gurley Brown, the editor of
Cosmopolitan
magazine, helped subvert patriarchal norms by creating the “Cosmo Girl” beginning in 1965. Brown promoted this sexually liberated interpretation of womanhood on the magazine’s cover with images of models featuring “exposed cleavage, teased hair, heavy make-up, and flamboyant and suggestive costumes” (Oullette 123).

While a regular criticism of comic books has been the unrealistic and overly sexualized portrayal of women’s bodies in extremely revealing outfits, it is worth noting that Jean Grey is shown with normal proportions and modest clothing in these early issues. Although many artists draw what is often referred to as “eye candy” for male readers, Jack Kirby and Werner Roth generally draw Marvel Girl in a manner that is not outlandish for a sixteen- to eighteen-year-old girl. Her curves are realistic, her breasts are not exaggerated in size or shape, and her costume covers her from head to toe with the only skin being revealed around her mouth. This will not always be the case in costume design and artist portrayal of Jean Grey.

The first redesign of the team uniforms is very minor. Some of the patterns of blue and yellow are shifted minimally and red belts are added. One seemingly minor change in Marvel Girl’s costume is that her neckline is now V-shaped, rather than a circular shape that closely hugs her neck. This change resulted in something of a migratory length, with the V-neck of her costume sometimes being shown to plunge downward. For the first time, in
The X-Men #33
(June 1967) with art by Werner Roth, the reader sees an uncovered cleavage line in an X-Men comic book. The art is angular and the actual line of cleavage shown makes little anatomical sense, so it is not a terribly cheesecake-style image, but it will be far from the last time cleavage is shown in
The X-Men
. As with many comic books, the breasts and butts of female characters will become very exaggerated and focused on in future issues, while the muscles of male characters will see their own exaggeration.

Possibly in response to numerous letters written in by fans asking for the characters to have more individual looks, Marvel gave the team a much more drastic set of costume changes in
The X-Men #39
(Dec. 1967). Again, Jean Grey is responsible for designing and making the team’s new costumes. Jean explains that “[j]ust before the episode with the Juggernaut, I had been hard at work on a pet project of mine—with the Professor’s permission! Here’s a pack for each of you! In it, you’ll find—a new costume!” (16) Marvel Girl’s costume is a single piece of green fabric that has a V-neckline and ends in a very short miniskirt. In some panels, the top of the costume is drawn completely off the shoulders, essentially wrapping Marvel Girl’s torso and arms and nothing else. The men on the team remain fully covered by their costumes, though the Beast’s hands and feet are bare to allow him greater dexterity. Marvel Girl’s costume offers little protection in the field of battle.

Marvel Girl’s costume reflects the image promoted in some women’s magazines. Her outfit is more suggestive and less conservative. However, although it may reflect some aspects of the second wave of feminism, it may also serve as a more suggestive look to attract the predominantly male readers of comic books. Although her outfit has become more revealing and her bare legs are often drawn longer than is realistically possible, the rest of her anatomy is drawn with relative restraint.

In
The X-Men #48
(Sept. 1968), Jean Grey will begin to wear even skimpier outfits in her new, short-term role as a fashion model. The team has temporarily disbanded and are assuming cover roles. Jean Grey becomes a swimsuit model, while Scott Summers becomes a radio technician. Jean takes a job that requires beauty but no brains, while Scott takes on a role that requires brains but looks are irrelevant. The comments from the men on the set of the photoshoot echo Marvel Girl’s teammates’ first comments about her looks from
The X-Men #1
(Sept. 1963). The boss, a woman, in the scene says, “Carlo, you ordered four models for the beachwear job—and you’ve just used only the new one, Jean Grey! What’s so special about her?” And the photographer replies, “She’s fresh, boss lady! Like an easter bunny or an oven hot biscuit! And that’s the name of our game!” Another male in a suit adds, “He’s got a point there, Candy! That’s the tastiest package of goodies we’ve opened around here in months!” (1). While most of Jean is in profile in this scene, she is depicted as twisting in such a way that her swimsuit-clad breasts are clearly depicted for the reader.