Peeping into Powerpuffs’ Power-house: Unravelling Politics of Projection

• Main Author: Sayantani Chakraborti
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sarat Centenary College 2016-07-01
• Series: PostScriptum: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literary Studies
• Subjects: superheroines; representation; hyper-sexualization; fetishization; feminism
• Online Access: http://postscriptum.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/psVol1Iss2-sayantani.pdf

Powerpuff Girls, expected to re-enter the new media sometime in 2016, are obviously not the only super-heroines in the genre of animated action superheroes. Their uniqueness lies in possessing superpowers while retaining the essential individualistic girlishness. They start writing a saga of female empowerment when the world of children’s animated films and cartoons have been mostly dominated by the superheroes and even if there are a few heroines, they are shown as beautiful and enticing with bodily curves represented just in the manner the male gaze would love to see them. This may again perpetuate the myth of how important being physically attractive is for women, no matter whether they possess superpower or not. Keeping this in background the Powerpuff sisters emerge to be different when we focus on their kindergarten age and school-girl superhero costumes. They remain the little girls born out of an accidental chemical reaction possessing three basic elements -- ‘sugar, spice and everything nice’-- mixed with the mysterious chemical X. They wear cute clothes matched with their three different skin colours, they tie up their hair in three different girlish styles and wear black belts and black Mary Janes. They in no way appear sensually attractive but statistics have shown a good many number of adults were addicted to the Powerpuff cartoons and used to devour the acts of adventures they undertook. Defying fetishized representation the Powerpuffs have successfully transmitted the message among children and adults that brains have nothing to do with beauty. Besides, what can be the better way to spread the social message of how important female self-sufficiency is in an age when we are desperate to find a remedy for the deep-rooted ideological notion of male supremacy? One doesn’t have to hide her identity or reshape them in the cast of a male, one can fight the wrong, save a society and still be a female. However, though the sketchy representation keeps the Powerpuffs away from sybaritic portrayal, they cannot escape the politics of the narrative. Inherent contradictions lurking beneath the façade unsettles the ambitious endeavour of the little superheroines perpetually tying them to the stereotype of the marginalized.