Saturday, February 27

You need to be stronger, Supergirl

I've decided to break up with Supergirl. When I first heard about the show, I thought, "Fantastic! A female superhero that I can stand behind." And now, here we are, about I don't know how many episodes into the season, and I'm over it.
I realize that the show is supposed to be empowering for young girls and women, but really, I'm having issues with it. Sure, she's super strong, and able to fight bad guys, but let's look at how she is when she's not Supergirl. When she's Kara, she lets people treat her like garbage. All in the guise of keeping her identity hidden. Brian and I just watched the most recent episode, and Kara's boss, Calista Flockhart's Cat Grant, was just the epitome of a verbally and psychologically abusive boyfriend. Cat refuses to call Kara by her right name, constantly referring to her as Keeera. She is vicious and cutting with her comments on how poorly Kara does her job, and she treats her with no respect at all. And here's the punchline, you guys: Kara "likes" her job, and is so defiant in keeping her "cover," that she allows this treatment. Any woman with any self esteem or backbone would not tolerate such behavior. And I think Supergirl needs to show that she's just as strong and able to defend herself as Kara without her super strength. Her boss is a f*cking bitch, and Kara needs to deal with that.
As Supergirl though, when she's supposed to be among the strongest beings on the planet, she's also relatively weak. She lets this DOE, some kind of secret government agency that monitors aliens, boss her around, give her orders, and shame her when she does something that it doesn't approve of. I'm sorry, but Superman manages to do all kinds of good, and he does it on his terms. Why does Supergirl require some kind of government oversight? And again the question, why does she allow it? She's strong (-ish; honestly, Brian gets so mad about how easily she gets beat by the bad guys when setting up the main conflict. His constant gripe: "Superman would be able to get out of/away from/beat up this; why can't she?"), so she should act like it. Her character needs to be strong. The weakness when faced with being true to herself, and standing up for herself, and actually being the role model that the television show people want her to be is frustrating.
Because of this, I'm done. I sit and watch the show and can't help but sigh over the missed opportunities here. Cat Grant is a bully, there's no other way to describe her, and I'm surprised that I haven't heard anything about that (is it because it's pretty girl-on-super girl bullying?). Supergirl isn't living life the way she wants, and isn't that counterproductive to what we tell girls is their strength? Just to say it, I'm glad that my own daughter isn't watching this show, because I'd hate for her to think that the strongest woman in the world still can't tell her abusive boss to go to hell, and can't quit the organization that thinks it owns her because she's also supposed to be "nice." Grow a backbone, Supergirl, and maybe I'll think you're a hero worth watching again.

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