Getting the Fit Right: Capturing the Majestic Jiggle of Wonder Woman
Objectively speaking, it’s astonishing the way Lynda Carter’s legacy has been so vibrant and long-lasting. Astonishing because her claim to fame was a TV show that ran for three seasons in the 70s. That it was a comic book series or that it was one third of the iconic trio of one of the biggest comic publishing companies, DC Comics, is almost beside the point. Because Lynda Carter, while forever linked to Wonder Woman, is famous because she is Lynda Carter.
It has been over forty years, and there has never been anyone close to comparable, either personality-wise or knocker-wise, to Carter to don the golden tiara or wear the stars and stripes bustier. It has instead been a string of flat-physically and personality-wise actors or models turned actors who have failed to fill Carter’s boots, never mind her bra.
Carter went on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" and, despite her obvious nerves, kept everybody raptured by her mere presence.
That “Wonder Woman”, or as it was known in later seasons as “The New Adventures of Wonder Woman,” was a family show, it nevertheless kept generations of audiences captivated by both Wonder Woman’s adventures and the sheer unabashed cleavage aesthetic embraced by the showrunner Stanely Ralph Ross.
Re-runs during the 80s and 90s kept the show alive, but it’s been GIFs that have kept the image of the buxom Wonder Woman enacting every form of recoil cinema imaginable so fresh in the culture’s imagination. It would be easy to write off “Wonder Woman” the show as merely jiggle TV and its buxom star as a bouncy special effect. But if Carter’s Wonder Woman was merely a sex symbol, she would not have lasted as long. Nor would she be more popular and respected than any actor or model who followed in her footsteps to play the character.
Say what you will, but if you mention Wonder Woman, chances are the first image any non-comic reader conjures is going to be Lynda Carter. Yet I’d reckon even comic connoisseurs would also cite Carter’s Wonder Woman as not merely comic-accurate but simply the best to ever play the role.
Carter had long dark hair, captivating blue-grey eyes, and a rack that somehow refused to be contained by ABC or CBS costume departments. (Thank God!”) Look, say what you will about emoting and reacting, but there’s something about seeing a 5’9 statuesque brunette bombshell running in knee-high boots with 3–4-inch heels across your TV that changes you.
Does anyone else hear angels? No? Just me?
The boots, incidentally, were designed by Pasqualle Di Fabrizio, a legendary Los Angeles shoemaker who was known as “Shoemaker to the stars” back when that meant something. Her outfit was by Donfeld, an Oscar-nominated art director for films such as They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Prizzi’s Honor, and he was nominated for 4 Oscars for his film work.
But the real star was Carter. A far cry from the skinny, twig-like waif we were used to seeing on TV at the time. Her measurements were something you found in comic books but were often lacking in any live-action adaptation. The result was more than television magic; it was an enduring legacy in the hearts and minds of pop culture. An impressive feat considering how much pop culture ebbs and flows with every generation. Unlike her other counterparts, Lindsey Wagner (The Bionic Woman), Lee Majors (The Bionic Man), Bill Bixby (The Incredible Hulk), and others, both Carter and Wonder Woman have survived fads and trends and remained the standard bearer of quality for a character.
Remarkably, Carter may be one of the earliest examples of a television actor understanding grip-framing. What's more, I'd go further and argue that Carter may be one of the first women onscreen to use her chest as a tool to enhance her performance. Call it grip-acting, if you will. Her bouncy breasts make her more photogenic, more kinetic for the camera, but Carter slyly uses her assets as part of her performance.
I'm semi-serious here. It's hard to watch Carter in the show and not be impressed by how she seems to be working with the camera to highlight her jiggly assets. Crossing her arms in such a way to make them seem even bigger. Far from being ashamed of her fuller chest, Carter is not only proud, but going along with the showrunners to actively show off their size.
The grip-framing on this show is first-rate. But it's only possible because of that outfit. But it wouldn't be hitting nearly as hard if Carter wasn't leaning into the costume and playing it to the hilt. You wanna know what talent is? Talent is taking something as simple as breathing and making it visually exciting.
Carter's Wonder Woman was a multifaceted figure. She wasn't merely a bimbo with big tits-not that there's anything wrong with that. (There's not!) But when you look at the outfit and what Carter does with it, you can see shades of a seductress, a warrior, vulnerable, and maternal. There's a scene where she fights a man-in-a-suit gorilla. It's par for the course for the show's late embrace of camp.
But within that aesthetic, both camp and cleavage, Carter found a symphony of notes to play. In other words, the sex is part of the fabric of the show; it's woven into the aesthetic. Fitting since the character of Wonder Woman is herself born in BDSM fetish.
The Wonder Woman costume allows for the fetishistic aspect of the original comic created by William Marston to flourish while also taming it down for mainstream audiences. The kink is still there, but the attitude is goofy and outlandish so it's never taken all that seriously. The outfit and Carter somehow allow for all these conflicting beats to meld seamlessly.
A scene that is at once kinky and fetish-inspired but also action-packed and tender. Like something out of an abandoned Russ Meyer script.
Most actors who play superheroes find themselves usurped by the next new thing to don tights. I remember when The Amazing Spider-Man came out, and my co-workers were excited because, suddenly, Tobey McQuire wasn’t the best Spider-Man ever. Like actors who play the Doctor in “Doctor Who”, the fans are fickle and plagued by recency bias. But Carter, even in the wake of Patty Jenkins’s seminal movie, which remains one of the best comic book movies, Gal Gadot, notwithstanding, still couldn’t erase Carter. Whenever any actor dons the star-spangled bustier, they are always measured against Carter's portrayal.
This happens all the time with superhero movies. But remarkably, other than perhaps Christopher Reeve, Lynda Carter more often than not creams the competition. Even when the newer version has more money and is more modernized, and has a "better" costume. But they never capture the complex facets of Marston's creation. Or more to the point, they try to pretend like she's not sexy, as if the kink isn't part of Wonder Woman.
Donfeld's design marries the cacophony of tones. For without the outfit, Carter would have likely still been the best Wonder Woman. But with it, she lives on, not only on television, but within our imaginations. Little wonder that within the span of one month, Carter went from being merely a struggling musician to Miss Phoenix, to Miss Arizona, to Miss USA World. Quite a feat even for a Princess of a mythical Amazonian island.
During the press tour for the 2017 Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot infamously responded to the fan backlash about her too svelte figure by citing that the Amazons of Greek mythology only had one boob. Fair play to Gadot, but the issue was not that she wasn’t stacked enough but that she didn’t have the BTE. To say nothing of how her model physique, all sharp angles, while filled with regality, it lacked anything else visually interesting.
Carter’s physique was vital to Wonder Woman. Not simply because she had a 38D bra size. But because on Carter it felt like a 38 triple D. Carter has BTE oozing out of every pore. To say nothing of that, unlike so many models, then and now, her measurements cause “technical difficulties” for the designers and the show’s producers.
Some more sketches from Feldman, and you can see the bikini design as well as the typical physique he was expecting to design for.
A planned bikini for Diana was scrapped because of these technical difficulties and replaced with a wetsuit. The “technical difficulties” were a pair of jiggly gazongas that refused to stay still. Melon Felons everywhere weep for what might have been. Imagine scenes of Carter's Wonder Woman emerging from the water in a two-piece bikini, those magnificent golden globes glistening. Oh, the humanity!
But she also wears a jumpsuit when she rides a motorcycle. Again, “technical difficulties” crop up. Though this time you can see the knockers knocking even in the jumpsuit. The overlapping issue in all of this is implicit; Carter’s rack was looked at as a problem to be solved rather than an effect to be embraced.
A problem producers never had to worry about with Gadot. Her outfit, while cinematic, is ungainly and like Gadot, ungainly. She has a Goddess aura but little else. Whereas Carter’s Diana feels ethereal but also flesh and blood, she feels alive and kinetic compared to Gadot’s stilted runway performance.
Wonder Woman is the OG 2busty2hide
Luckily, the producers were able to overcome Carter's two wobbly obstacles and create some amazing television. But they wouldn't have been able to do it if the fit wasn't right.
Images courtesy of ABC and CBS studios
