The Amazon in My Office

by Laura Bickle

Wonder Woman oversees my writing.

Okay, slight exaggeration. I’m sure that the *real* Wonder Woman would have much better things to do than watch me stare at the computer screen, shovel cats in and out of my lap, and swill Coca-Cola. I’m sure that she’d have no interest whatsoever in my barely-legible index cards, my swearing, and the crunching noise my broken backspace key makes. She has better things to do than watch me work – things like saving the planet from alien invaders or plagues of mutant robots.

But she still watches me write. Not her, but a sixteen-inch Wonder Woman replica doll, perched on my desk. She’s powerful, fearless of my mistakes and indecision. She doesn’t snicker when I read a run-on sentence aloud. Being plastic, she’s not terribly judgmental.

I've admired her since I was a little girl, when I got my first Wonder Woman doll and pored over her adventures in comics. I admired her - she always made her own way, leaving behind a very nice gig as a princess on Paradise Island to go fight evil in our world. Wonder Woman wasn't a fainting, helpless little fleur in need of perpetual rescue  - she was brave and brilliant, self-reliant and powerful. And beautiful and gentle. She had a career and a secret identity and a love interest she rescued every other week - what more could a girl want to be?

She was intended to be that way, an ideal of what a powerful woman can be. She was created by a psychologist, William Moulton Marston. Marston was also the creator of the lie detector, which flowers nicely into the idea of her lasso of truth. He created Wonder Woman to be a feminist ideal for young girls. And she certainly inspired me.

She still does. When I sit down at the desk, I feel a bit different. Like Diana Prince becoming Wonder Woman, I’m transformed into a writer. It's a subtle change, but I feel as if I'm in command of this little world I'm creating.

I sit and chew on a pen, staring at the Wonder Woman doll, my silent cheering squad. She reminds me to forge ahead, to be powerful. That if the entire word can be saved from hordes of alien invaders by one woman… one woman wearing high-heeled boots, no less… I can put on my own Wonder Woman boots to power through this story.

Resolutely, I put pen to paper.