What Catwoman Taught Me About Sexuality and Power
Wearing the catsuit and embodying Pfeiffer’s slinkiness as best I could in my awkward, skinny body, I understood for the first time that I could be a sexual being, not just a sexual object.
ThisisFallen Women, a monthly column by Lilly Dancyger on women coded as villains in pop culture, the power in their badness, and how they shaped fans for good.
Batman Returns
Batman ReturnsReturns beautiful
Returns
I had a poster of Pfeiffer as Catwoman on my wall growing up, above my bed, her steely gaze protecting me from nightmares and intruders.
wasn’t
Batman Returns
Lilly Dancyger is the author of Negative Space, a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as one of the winners of the 2019 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards, and the editor of Burn it Down, a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women's anger from Seal Press. Lilly's writing has been published by Longreads, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, Glamour, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. Find her on Twitter here.
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