FN Blog - Seven heads are better than one!

“Save me!” cries the hapless maiden (kilometrically long-haired and locked in a tall tower, or tiny-footed and relegated to a life of servitude and sweeping cinders, take your pick), eager to finally exclaim “My hero!” when she is put out of her misery by The One Who Will Take Her Away From All This.

Such were the flashes of “Someday my prince will come” hopefulness propagated by the tales of our childhood. Their message was the same: Fall into a deep slumber (poisoned by an apple or pricked on the finger by a spindle, again, take your pick) and patiently lie comatose long enough, and your swashbuckling, steed-mounting hero will gallop into your life, scoop you up in his arms and not only save you from the clutches of evil but provide life-long financial support fit for a queen (they didn’t have royal blood for nothing).

Centuries later, I know many women who still use this cunning strategy for self-preservation, patiently waiting for The Good Provider so they can finally quit working and live off him. “Finally, I get to have the lifestyle I’ve always deserved!” a friend of a friend was said to have exclaimed, after landing her long-earmarked wealthy catch. (I hear things are not so blissful these days on the Forbes Park castle-front.)

Self-help books tackling the dire need to be saved instead of working on their self-actualization now abound, like The Cinderella Complex and Sleeping Beauty No More. There’s also The Peter Pan Syndrome, which is about Wendy-type women stuck in a pattern of saving bad boys who will never grow up, but that’s another story.

Lucky for us Gen Xers, as little girls we had enough TV heroines to look up to undo all the “damsel in distress” damage Grimm and Andersen may have inflicted. But lest this entry turns into a feminist treatise on that, instead, I’d like you to meet the pop culture superwomen who shaped my girlhood.

Before the cheerleader could save herself,

and before she ZsaZshayed into our lives,

who was saving the world in these parts but

and who else would be the heroine of this Sine Siete baby during afternoons spent not heeding the yaya’s “Taymtoislip!” admonitions (the others being “Tikibat!” and “Wir yur islipers!”) but

 

Darna went on to delight us while slugging it out with various impaktas and higantes. And who can forget the camp futuristic fashion extravaganza Darna and the Planet Women–featuring an all (bomba) star multi-colored (in Yvonne’s tights and leotards) cast?

 

Of course, when we wanted to channel the “imported” version, my classmates and I practiced spinning in a circle so we could turn into

What a concept for young girls then—Wonder Woman, a.k.a. Diana Prince, a.k.a. Princess Diana came from an island of Amazon women where no men were allowed—or a necessity—except for procreation. Made every little girl think of the possibilities!

All you have to do,” she tells a group of young Amazons, “is have confidence in your own strength!”

When Ms. magazine premiered in July 1972, editor Gloria Steinem put her on the cover

 

Later on, we all wanted to lift cars, bend metal and eavesdrop on faraway conversations like

These chicks didn’t have superpowers, but they were brave crime-fighters with great hair, if you overlook the fact that they kind of had a Papa-San for a boss:

Of course, who could forget the heroine who taught us that the problem-solving approach was the key to life?

 

Many decades later, little girls like my five-year-old niece Gabby are bombarded with a myriad heroines to choose from—some of them, like Mulan, or Belle in Beauty and the Beast doing the saving instead of complacently waiting to be saved. If the Power Puff Girls can save the world before bedtime, who needs a knight in shining armor? The message isn’t that men are the enemy as villains come in all shapes, sizes and genders, but that “saving” and gender can be mutually exclusive.

 

On her last visit here a few months ago, Gabby, who lives in California, excitedly told me the origin of her name. “My name comes from a superhero named Gabriela! She had a sword and rode a horse. I saw her statue in the street yesterday!”

“What did she do?” I asked, expecting some nationalistic spiel about the revolution drilled into her head by her parents.

“Oh, some Filipino thing.”

Oh well, I guess that’s a start.

Gabriela, age 5.

Looking up the origin of my own name on the net, here’s what I found:

Not exactly a heroine, but this rendition is pretty spot-on: “feed on the blood of the young” has been my motto since 1995.