modern au: commander rogers and agent carter relax during some well deserved downtime after a particularly taxing assignment from shield.
Inevitably, the publicity materials for Agent Carter will show Atwell wearing pristine 1940s red lipstick and holding a gun. An accurate representation of the character, but certainly not the whole story.
Even in Captain America, Peggy Carter was more than this, but the rest was easy to miss if you weren’t paying close attention. As Atwell pointed out, the new TV series is a chance to flesh out the parts of the character that aren’t just about looking hot and being a super-competent spy. After this, hopefully fewer reviewers will talk about her character by comparing her to a pin-up.
“Even though [female action heroes are] strong you need to also see the messiness of everyday life, that complexity,” said Atwell. “Even with Peggy Carter… Can we see her have a really shit day, put her pyjamas on and eat loads of ice cream and weep into chick flick? Can we have her be neurotic, hysterical, funny, depressed and all those things that we all relate to that aren’t regularly depicted because they’re not seen as sexy or comfortable for men to watch and masturbate over?”
Essentially, this is every argument anyone has ever had about why heroic roles have to be given to a wider variety of characters, rather than just white dude protagonists like Captain America. Characters like Peggy Carter, Falcon, and Black Widow are popular, but they can never truly come into their own until they are allowed to be the main character in their own story, instead of the sidekick in somebody else’s.
