Steve + being shook by Diana

annerbhp:

tchallasams:

annerbhp:

diana-prince:

Would you like to buy an ice cream?

Okay, so it’s even the small things. The way she eats the ice cream. She just eats it. No coy lick or self-conscious taste. There’s no male gaze here. No oral/sexual pleasure of the viewer. Just she eats the ice cream and it’s the kind of sloppy big bite of someone who is not self-conscious of eating, who hasn’t been trained from birth to think about how she looks as she does everything, even eating. Hasn’t spent her life being told that her purpose is in being attractive, even as she does a vital daily thing like eating. Doesn’t have a voice in her head saying, oh but ice cream, it’s kind of fatty, and what will people think.

She’s just, wow, this thing is delicious, I think it’s great, the person who makes it deserves to be told how great their skill is. How great their actions that have lead to this product are. Even in this she demonstrates valuing people by their actions and abilities and choices and who they are, not what they look like.

Fuck. This is agency. And the fact that is so rare and startling and obvious to me, the fact that Diana Prince eating ice cream moves me so much is So Terrible and makes me despair for our civilization and (nearly) all media produced before this.

And during the shot when she takes the first bite, Steve is reaching his arm out to pay the ice cream seller. That movement is much bigger and more eye-catching than Diana eating the ice cream. This scene normalizes females eating on screen (which shouldn’t have fucking been a problem in the first place), through both subverting the erotic eating trope and allowing women to eat and enjoy whatever they want without feeling self-conscious. Kudos to Patty Jenkins.

Yes! Excellent point!

And even more, Steve isn’t looking at Diana as she eats. A big part of the male gaze is that the default POV of films is generally that of the straight, white, male viewer. And generally Steve would be the stand in for that default gaze, but he doesn’t even look at her! He doesn’t buy it for her so he can watch. And he doesn’t even pull some Nice Guy bullshit like, I did something nice for you now do something nice for me, even as a vague joke or subtext. He isn’t trying to get anything out it. He just thinks she’s probably never had it and might enjoy it. It’s about her enjoyment, not his. Despite everything trying to tell us that women feed appetites but aren’t meant to have any of their own.

Apparently I am never going to get over Diana Prince eating ice cream.

Yes, all this. But I’d like to mention that IN ADDITION to that, there’s also the overt humor of the moment that could have been gross too but wasn’t.

The ice cream seller offers her the ice cream but Diana is not familiar with the concept of ‘goods for money’ so they could have made a big joke about it with Steve basically giving her an immediate ‘lesson’ about how she can’t just TAKE the ice cream and how you’re supposed to pay for it.

That’s basically how introducing a character from an Utopian society to a capitalist world always works. And that’s always the joke ‘oh look how silly and uneducated this person is, doesn’t even know they have to pay for stuff!’.

But here though Diana does take the ice cream without planning to pay (because yes, she doesn’t know that she’s supposed to) Steve doesn’t make it into a ‘big deal’, he just reaches over and pays.

And so the scene flawlessly skips over any need to publicly shame or embarrass Diana and we can just focus on how adorable Diana is when eating ice cream for the first time in her life.

And I really truly appreciate that a lot.

Steve Trevor is definitely trans hear me out

hill-creature:

– I’m going through this scene by scene y’all get
ready

– Kay so, when diana rescues him he’s immediately
anxious when she asks him “You’re a man…?” I could almost taste the “oh god am I
suddenly not passing??” fear in his eyes

– He doesn’t say something like “of course I am”
or “yes haven’t you ever seen a man??” instead he goes straight for “Yeah, uhm…don’t
I look like one?” this is not something a cis man worries about

– Side note: if y’all come at me with “oh he says
steve is his name when they use the lasso of truth on him so he must be cis” l i s ten his name is steve. Why would he answer that
question any other way? Also, I’d like to note, in the comics when Batman was
asked the same question while holding the lasso of truth, he answered with
Batman, not Bruce Wayne. The lasso makes you answer what YOU believe is the
truth. Steve’s deadname isn’t his “true name” steve trevor is obv

– Consider: we know there were LOTS of women who
cross-dressed in wwI in order to fight. What if that’s what steve did to join
the military when he was much younger, but then he realized oh…maybe there’s
more here going on than I thought

– HRT became available after WWII largely due to
this guy, and in this superhero universe of Scientific
Inaccuracies and Magical Goddesses Made From Clay, it’s not entirely
implausible that HRT couldn’t have become available a few decades earlier in
some capacity (alan hart is amazing, please read more about him)

– Okay, the bathroom scene: Steve panics at first
when diana walks in on him, because he’s like SHIT CANT REVEAL MY WEIRD JUNK
but when its clear shes not going to be weird about it, he stops trying to hide

– diana specifically says “are you considered
average for your sex” not gender. And
we know from later during the scene on the boat that she must know the
difference, because she read the 12 volume collection on genitals and what you
can do with them

– So diana’s like “well that’s not what I was
expecting at all” and what she says is basically the more subtle, educated way of saying: dude why
don’t you have a penis and balls

– And when steve answers above average, he’s basically
saying “yeah, im trans, go me, deal with it”

– Just saying, him being trans makes this entire interaction
and every one after that where steve is trying to explain western gender norms
to diana significantly more hilarious

– Moving on: the boat. Diana asks about marriage
and Steve answers two people go in front
of a judge etc etc. then when she asks why they get married, even if they’re
unhappy, steve says he doesn’t know. Marriage is as mystifying to him as it is
to her. If that isn’t queer then idk what queer is

– The “this confuses me just as much as it does
you” look on his face throughout this entire interaction

– His interest in her books about sex: as a trans
man in an age when sex for the pleasure of vagina owners was basically unheard
of/considered sinful, of course he’s
interested

– The soft “no” when she says the books ultimately
say men are unnecessary for pleasure; no as in utter disbelief, more like “no
way can I read this??” than “no omg sex needs a penis and a vagina what are you
talking about”

– Lastly: it makes SO much sense for steve to
become a spy. Trans people are excellent liars. They have to be in order to
survive. Steve obv would have made it through his entire military service
without letting on that he was trans, so he knows he’s totally capable of lying
his way into german high command

– This has so
much fanfic potential, I am dying

– Go forth and write all the fanfic about diana
teaching steve the secrets of her 12 volumes about sex