Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 32

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Popular Culture Review

She-Ra." Attendant upon these apotheoses are the revelation of
"secret powers" to Adam and simply of "secrets" to Adora. In
addition, He-Man, as Adam announces, becomes "the most powerful
man in the universe"; She-Ra becomes . . . She-Ra.
The only noticeable criticism at the time properly accused the
line of action figures as "obvious sexual stereotyping" which ten years
earlier "would have been an outrage" (John Cech, qtd. in "Is She-Ra,"
1): "The male heroes are bom with power given to them as physical
attributes like a fist with a power punch. But women only get their
power from men, using magic symbols representing naen" (13a). Indeed
the only women in the collection mechanically endowed with
anything comparable to He-Man’s "power punch" were Evil-Lyn, an
"evil warrior goddess," and Catra, the evil "jealous beauty" with
"scratching action waist." Thus, only "bad" women are aggressive, for
She-Ra dolls were equipped solely with this possibility; "Raise her
arm s-her cape opens to a burst of stars." This special feature, unlike
He-Man's punch, was entirely unrelated to the cartoon show where
She-Ra would most often kick or use a kind of Charlie's Angels’
karate against attackers. Thus, fashion alone characterizes the
doll's "power."
Among the seemingly endless series of action figures were male
heroes with names such as Snout Spout and Extendar, "heroic master
of extension" (seemingly a conflict of values with the tacked-on moral
of one episode which insisted that "Size is not the true measure of
one's worth"), and female friends of She-Ra with names such as
Angella, Glimmer, Flutterina, and Perfuma--"Make her flower
bloom! Smell her perfume!" It is not within the scope of this paper to
examine the sexual problems of the creators of the Masters of the
Universe series, but one doubts if we can really expect much in the
way of progressive, gender-blind toys and cartoons from those
purveyors of children's culture for whom a fenuile villain should be
named Entrapta, for whom the special feature of a "good" female
action figure is that you can "fit [a] magical staff onto her hand," and
for whom it is appropriate that She-Ra, the warrior, be equipped not
just with a pink sword and shield, but also with a comb.
Another significant doll/cartoon/merchandise assault in the late
'80s and early '90s has been Jem and the Holograms, by Hasbro
Inc./Sunbow Inc./Marvel Inc., featuring a teenage female "rock" star
and her band-member friends. According to a summary of the video