[Rainbow Christmas 2020] Girl Power Under the Mistletoe: How Catwoman Taught Me About Female Strength

It’s Christmas Eve, and Kate is having the worst shift of her life. She’s tending bar at Dory’s Tavern, the small-town institution, and at the moment none of her customers are human. They’re all vicious, demanding Gremlins, and she’s desperately trying to keep them all happy with beers and popcorn—so they won’t turn on her with their claws and sharp teeth. But then she tries to light a Gremlin’s cigarette and he recoils from the match.

They don’t like light, she realizes.

Thinking fast, she seizes a Polaroid camera and uses its flash to incapacitate the creatures surrounding her at the bar. Then she turns the ceiling fan way up, sending the Gremlin on it careening into the wall. She faces off against a gun waving Gremlin, but when her friend Billy’s car arrives and floods the window with its headlights, the creature shrieks and covers its eyes. Kate knocks it over and flees the bar.

Watching this scene last December, I had an interesting thought. The original Gremlins (1984) was a childhood favorite; I all but wore out the videotape. Since I first saw it when I was maybe six, this was one of the first movies I saw that made me realize women could be strong, capable, and confident. I don’t know that I ever thought women were weak or incapable or whatever bullshit it is society tries to reinforce about women. And I have this Christmas horror comedy classic, in part, to thank for that.

Fortunately for a young queer genre fan, strong women were in a lot of the media I consumed as a kid. I had Catherine O’Hara’s Kate declaring that she’d “sell my soul to the Devil himself” to reach her son Kevin on Christmas in Home Alone (1990). I had Anjelica Huston as the fabulous and diabolical Grand High Witch in The Witches (1990). I had plucky paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (our divine Ms. Laura Dern) in Jurassic Park (1993).

And I had Catwoman. Oh, I had Catwoman.

I still have Catwoman. I don’t know that she ever leaves any of us. As embodied by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s creepy Christmas classic Batman Returns (1992), Catwoman was the most incredible female character I’d ever seen. Frankly she was the most incredible character of any gender I’d seen at that point. Her look is breathtaking: “skintight vinyl and a whip,” to quote Batman Forever (1995)’s Chase Meridian. (Chase is pretty sexy, but stacked against Catwoman/Selina Kyle, she’s hopeless.) Her spirit is indomitable. She’s world weary but defiant, struggling but strong. She embodies the mess of contradictions that so many of us try to reconcile, especially gay men. Michelle Pfeiffer plays her to the hilt, from her dowdy beginnings (“stupid corndog!”) to her mesmerizing transformation to her final impassioned speech to Batman.

I’d love to know women’s thoughts about Catwoman. I’d love to know straight men’s. How many sexual awakenings is she responsible for? How many? And yes, I know this surely includes women and nonbinary people. I’ll never forget the story my dad’s coworker told him about his daughter and the film. They ran into each other at the theater where we saw a matinee of Batman Returns. The other man said his daughter was enraptured by Catwoman, and was very sad when she seemingly died at the climax. Then, when she appeared in the final frame, his kid stood up in the theater and yelled, “Yay, Catwoman!”

I, too, fell in love with the character. Whenever my friends and I played Batman Returns, I’d be her. (I was always cool playing the female characters, like Ellie Sattler.) I tried to get her “Meow” just right. I searched high and low for the frustratingly elusive Kenner action figure (I did finally find one, complete with arm scratching action!). This year I’ve witnessed the continued power of the character first hand.

I work as a preschool teacher and have worn some Catwoman buttons (Eartha Kitt in the 60’s Batman series and, of course, Pfeiffer), which have provoked delighted reactions from some of the girls in my class. One child told me she’d seen Batman Returns…she also loves Lord of the Rings and Hocus Pocus. This kid is being raised correctly. Another kept asking me about it all day long, and demanded I wear it again the following day. There’s something really inspiring and exciting about little girls discovering strong female characters for themselves. I hope that Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman is a dynamic iteration of the character and captivates a new generation in The Batman.

But for me, there will never be any representation of Catwoman that holds a candle to Michelle Pfeiffer’s. She simply is Catwoman. Hear her roar.