Black Widow

The Avenger's, Marvel's group of superheros and super-spies tasked with saving the world by any means possible.  This group of highly intelligent and highly trained individuals comes to the rescue of not just a country or a high priority person but the entire planet, sometimes even the universe.  While Marvel has incorporated a few female character's into the franchise, the heroes are mostly white males with either a mutation, the gift of being from a different universe and being a god, or the luck of inheriting a weapons company with endless resources and a mind that could solve almost any problem.  There is one male character who is simply a fantastic super-spy who for some reason is uncommonly good with a bow and arrow, but the one female character who stands out in the avengers is the female lead, Natasha Romanova.

 

Romanova is an inclusion to the Avenger's team because of her abilities as a spy, along with her abilities to combat but she still stands out as the only female.  While Marvel took a big step in cutting out the damsel in distress role, and instead giving Romanova a position of power, leadership and giving her the ability to dish out just as much damage as any of her male counterparts, there is still the view of her as just a female agent.

 While every other individual in the Avengers is given something that sets them apart from the rest of the world, Romanova is simply kept as a seemingly regular individual.  Not only is Romanova the only Avenger who is kept as a vulnerable human, while the rest of the crew can take a ridiculously high amount of damage to their body or suit without being damaged.  In this way, Romanova - as a woman -  is the only vulnerable individual on the whole team.  Along with her representation of the only vulnerable individual, Romanova is also the only individual wearing a skin-tight leather suit throughout any of the scenes she is featured in.  This aspect of her character is one that can't be overlooked, all of the other characters have suits that seem to be functional towards their roles, but the only female is wearing a suit that accentuates her physical characteristics.

All of the characteristics given to Romanova throughout the films play into the first approach that Rakow writes about in her article Feminist Approaches to Popular Culture.  The first approach she discusses is the Images and Representations Approach, which analyzes characteristics of women's representations in pop culture.  This approach aims to answer 4 questions, those being "(1) what kind of images are present and what do they reveal about women's position in that culture? (2) whose images are they and whom do they serve? (3) what are the consequences of those images? (4) and how do those images have meaning?" (Rakow 203).

Using the 4 questions that Rakow presents in this approach, one could say that Romanova of the Avengers is in a position of power, although she is still presented as a female character as they don't want that aspect of the character to be lost.   One could also say that the images result in the viewer thinking that she is a bit out of place, considering that she doesn't possess anything extraordinary in the way that she is as a piece of this super group.  Finally one could interpret the meaning behind the images in whatever way they see fitting, but there are many signs that point to her being slightly at a disadvantage as she doesn't have any special godlike or superhuman abilities.