"She's so strong," the little girl seated next to me at Wonder Woman said repeatedly to her mother. It was the first fight scene of the movie, and I was trying not to sob.

I hadn't read the comics, nor had I ever been much of a superhero movie fan. But tears began streaming uncontrollably during that first fight scene — the Amazonia women muscular and graceful at once, engaged in battle moves that looked as if they were choreographed for women’s bodies. There was something almost visceral about it; a depiction of a hero we never knew we needed, a hero whose gender was everything but also nothing. She was a girl superhero — something most of us have never seen. She was also simply a mighty superhero... who happened to be a woman. 

So much of the messaging we send children is subliminal — the absence of what’s missing more even than what's there. It's the lack of voices, of speaking roles, of perspectives. The invisibility of certain types of characters. It appears in film and advertising and media and action films and video games and stock photos. Sometimes we don't even notice. But then sometimes you see the thing that was missing — the boss, the doctor, the president, or the superhero who happens to be a woman — and it all makes sense. Representation *matters*. 

Read the rest of the column in The New York Times.

(Photo by Chandelle Higa)