In a recent interview, Scarlett Johansson shed light on her views about women superheroes, particularly in regard to how such heroes should embrace their "inherently female" traits on the big screen. With Johansson's Black Widow likely to continue the conversation on gender and superheroics that surrounded Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman before it, Johansson's comments provoke engaging questions about the relationship between gender identity and cultural perception.

Johansson identified many qualities that, according to her, set Black Widow apart from male heroes like Batman. Among those qualities were the character's emotional intelligence, problem-solving skills and pragmatism. Johansson said she considers these traits "inherently female," and that they helped to differentiate female superheroes from their masculine counterparts. While the statements can certainly be considered empowering, championing feminine qualities rather than deriding them, they beg the question of just how inherit the qualities she mentioned are to women versus men.

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Johansson credited Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman with helping to pave the way for Black Widow, so it makes sense to turn to those superheroines as possible exemplars of the traits Johansson points to as inherently female. The problem one immediately bumps into is that putting all three characters into a box with one another seems a little limiting. Both Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman undergo character development in their respective films that affords them greater emotional intelligence by their films' ends, and both seem to take a much more direct approach to problem-solving than the spies and shadows techniques of Black Widow.

Indeed, all three characters don't seem to share much more than any set of three characters would, regardless of gender. While certainly not known for his emotional intelligence, Batman's reputation for problem-solving and pragmatism are constantly reiterated aspects of the character. Being critical of Johansson's statements involves navigating something of a rhetorical minefield, however, as we seek to still celebrate the uniquely feminine without misidentifying what exactly that is.

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It's absolutely understandable that actors and audiences would want superheroines to embrace their femininity and make it an aspect of their character rather than something to be ignored or dressed up. In that sense, Johansson's admonishment against "Batman in heels" makes complete sense. But surely it's possible to celebrate a woman characters' femininity as an aspect of their humanity rather than identifying specific traits as intrinsically feminine in a way that could potentially alienate other women who don't identify with it.

Part of the problem comes in branding "female" superheroes as something separate from "male" superheroes; where Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and Black Widow are talked about in isolation from other heroes as if they're something else altogether. It does nobody any good to pretend they don't notice that these heroes are women, but as long as masculinity is treated as the default state for a superhero story, it's difficult to strike a balance between recognizing femininity adequately without reducing a character entirely to the feminine.

At the end of the day, as politically charged as such discussions on gender can get, this should be the aspect of the conversation that anyone can agree on regardless of their position: It's the character that matters. In as much as a character is the sum total of all of their qualities, it does not make sense to totally ignore the fact that Black Widow is a woman. But it's also reductive to say that she is always solely just a woman. That's truly the main thing she has in common with the former heroines who already enjoyed their solo silver-screen debuts.

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If we were to consider several different superheroines, it would be difficult to identify any common trait among their characters aside from the fact that they're women. Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman can be headstrong and stubborn, but Storm and Invisible Woman are both known for their calm demeanors and only unleashing fierce displays of power when provoked. Black Widow and Batgirl may be known as pragmatic, but Gwenpool and Harley Quinn are the furthest thing from it. Nonetheless, they're all women.

Perhaps there are no "inherently female" traits, as Johansson proposed, but the spirit of the actress' message remains intact. The countless women who feel empowered or otherwise enjoy seeing accurate representations of themselves onscreen deserve to neither be discounted nor pandered to, but instead deserve depictions of women as women -- real women in all their infinite human varieties.

Directed by Cate Shortland, Black Widow stars Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, O-T Fagbenle as Rick Mason and Rachel Weisz as Melina. The film was set to debut in theaters May 1, though its release has been postponed.

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