Anonymous asked:

Allow me to present the defense case for Peggy Carter.

I don't mean the PC who is in What If BTW. I don't know who she is, but she's not Peggy. I mean the original version from 2011-2014, especially from recently re-watching The First Avenger.

Peggy comes off as being very aloof, detached and rather condascending at times. I argue that's because she had to be. Its very hard for women in the armed forces even today- but back in the 1940s it would have been even more difficult for a woman to hold her own in a male dominated context like the army. She'd have had to worked many times harder to prove herself and to gain the respect which her male counterparts took for granted purely by virtue of their gender and rank. If she showed any kind of emotional vulnerability or it seemed like she didn't know what she was doing, the men would have pounced on it and taken it as "evidence" she was just a weak and feeble woman who didn't belong in "thier" world. Even then... we still see people being insubordinate and talking down to her. When she punched that soldier who was making lewd remarks (can't remember his name) I don't see her being a bully.I see a woman having to deal with the type of casual sexism she probably experienced on a daily basis. When men who were far below her in rank treated her with contempt or just saw her as a sex object. No way that soldier would *ever* have spoken to a senior ranking male like that...She was also dealing with it in a very masculine way. Like another soldier would. In regards to Steve: again I don't think Peggy is ever intentionally mean or cruel to him. Yes, she's sassy and snarky, but I think she had to learn to be like that to hold her own among men. Her interactions with him in the movie are actually quite positive overall: she smiles when he uses his ingenuity and jumps on a dummy grenade, she doesn't talk about how weak he was she views him as a proper soldier when a lot of others don't: including Colonel Phillips. Even after the Serum Philips just sees him as some glorified performer whereas she trusts his judgement: reluctantly at first but willingly afterwards.

For his own part, Steve never talks down to her or views her as inferior. He was probably one of first men who did that only after Howard Stark perhaps.

When she said that Bucky was probably dead: again I don't think she was being uncaring. That line came after just after saying the 107th had been through "more than most" upon seeing an ambulance bringing an injured soldier back from the front. It seems to me she didn't want to see *another* man die in what she had every reason to think was a suicide mission. I mean, its very likely she'd lost friends before, maybe even had family members killed. Besides of which, she ended up helping Steve go on that rescue mission by persauding Howard to drop him near the HYDRA facility on his plane. Then didn't apologize for her actions afterwards even though Colonel Philipps basically threatened to basically demote her.

Finally, that scene where she fires her gun at Steve's shield: again I don't see that as bullying. When he kissed that other woman (*who did it very deliberately in front of Peggy*) it was quite obviously an attempt to make her jealous. (Not on Steve's part, but the other woman). I think in that moment she felt betrayed, because she believed Steve was different to the other men she encountered. Men who just saw her as a conquest or an airhead. She thought he was behaving "just like the other soldiers"- i.e treating women as objects, and she had an emotional reaction. She was actually wrong, but that proves she's flawed. She's human after all!

So yeah, Peggy in The First Avenger is great. She's sassy and snarky but she does seem to genuinely care for Steve as well. I see them as having a lot in common: both people who struggle to be accepted by others but find their place eventually.

luna-rainbow answered:

Okay, before I start, I want to say that I did like her mannerisms when I first saw CATFA, because I like no-nonsense female characters. However, movies!Peggy was not a fully formed character — just as movies!Bucky wasn’t. One was the token love interest, the other was the token best friend. Hence, there are specific traits embedded in Peggy’s characterisation, or rather her story roles, that are factors of a male author writing a female love interest for a genre about macho superhero men. Which in itself is a product of the misogynistic nature of 2010 MCU.

Firstly, she’s never actually had her rank or her professional role specified. She introduced herself as an “agent supervising all operations of this division”, but all she does is hover around Howard and Philips in their offices. She’s not on the battlefield with Steve (no matter how her own series tried to rewrite it). She’s not in the field acting as a spy/agent. We are told she’s important, because somehow as an agent she’s giving orders to military trainees — a weird role but we can give her that suspension of disbelief — but we are never shown her doing anything important to contribute to war efforts. More than this being Peggy is a useless person, it’s a symptom of the writer not knowing how to handle a female professional in WW2, to the point of calling her an agent but having her both being in the science division and giving military trainee orders but hanging around looking like a secretary. And why exactly could Philips threaten to demote her? Who does she even work for? He could demote her if she’s military but she’s not. So it’s never clear that those soldiers are her subordinates, because they’re not. She’s not in the chain of command! And so why should they respect someone who’s not in their chain of command telling them that she’s going to give orders? She does have to earn it.

You and I remember that kissing scene very differently. Firstly, Lorraine pulled him into a kiss, Steve didn’t kiss her. We need to get the instigator clear here. We can debate how much of a willing participant Steve was, because that scene can be read anywhere from “Steve was unsure at first but then started to enjoy it” to “Steve was in shock the whole time and his hands came up to push her away”. Secondly, there’s no suggestion that either Lorraine or Steve knew Peggy was within watching distance, so I don’t agree with the interpretation that anyone did it to make Peggy jealous. Thirdly, Peggy and Steve were not an item at that stage, so it’s rather presumptuous of her to “feel betrayed”. What did he betray? He said he was waiting for the right partner, he didn’t say the right partner was her. She’s the one who’s taken it upon herself to demand his faithfulness. He never indicated he was happy to enter into that social contract. Fourthly, you’ve acknowledged that her emotional response to another woman kissing Steve was “flawed”, but object to that violent retaliation being called “bullying”. So let’s call it for what it is: unprofessional, unethical, unromantic, and bloody unhinged.

I’m sorry, there is no possible justification for discharging a gun at a man (and specifically in this case a man who is not in a relationship with you) over a kiss in an enclosed space at work where other bystanders could get injured.

But you know what? That scene is another symptom of male writers not knowing how to write a strong female love interest. In 2010 everyone knew it would be bad form if a man hit a woman for being kissed by another man, but violent anger from a woman directed at a man? That was seen as cute and funny and sweet. And that view exists because of the infantilisation of women. Female anger is seen as “not that hurtful” and “not that important”, dismissed as a momentary “emotional outburst” because women are prone to emotional outbursts, it’s a womanly thing to suddenly lose grip on logic over a jilted love. Where in a man that emotional volatility and violence would be a major character flaw that would turn him into a villain, in a woman that’s…cute and harmless.

So you know, Peggy was at the same level of neglect that Bucky-with-two-birthdates was. She was not a character they cared enough about to even give her a proper professional role in the army. She’s there because the movie needed a love interest. She’s there to show how unwanted Steve was before the serum, and how desirable he became after the serum. She appears, every now and then, to remind the audience she exists, but never in a way that directly affects the plot. @amarriageoftrueminds has multiple excellent metas explaining why the story could have proceeded without Peggy being present. She’s a character we are continuously told is important, but the narrative gives her only counselling type dialogues, and while those conversations are placed at narratively important milestones, none of her suggestions make any sway on Steve’s original plans before he started talking to her, making her someone who has minimal impact on Steve’s arc and on the story as a whole.

amarriageoftrueminds

@luna-rainbow is right; she’s not a fleshed out, well-written female character.

She’s also not well-played; Atwell is just playing herself (which is how her improvs end up as characterisation in the movie, and nobody argues they’re OOC; just like RDJ is just playing himself when he’s playing Tony and no one argues that’s OCC. CEvans, ScarJo, Stan, etc. aren’t doing that.)

A lot of the qualities people erroneously assign to canon Peggy are just… Atwell’s mannerisms and headcanons. You could watch her in other roles and it’s just Peggy in another dress.

I don’t know who she is, but she’s not Peggy.

There is no difference between the WhatIf Peggy / CATFA / AC short & show / AOS / Ant-Man Peggy personality, they’re all the same personality. (Unless Anon means ‘because they’ve stolen everyone else’s story (Bucky’s, Steve’s, Sam’s, Natasha’s) and put her in their place to try and make her look relevant.’ Which is a valid point.)

very hard for women in the armed forces (then)

1) women weren’t in the armed forces then, because they had yet to acquire that right; we had to fight for that. (Women weren’t ‘in’ the Army in the same way men weren’t ‘in’ the ATS. The people women in the ATS were competing with were… also women.)

2) even if women were in the Army IRL then (and, more relevant, were shown as being in the Army in CATFA’s universe), as LR said Peggy is not in the Army. She’s in Intelligence.

3) all these arguments:

a) aren’t describing Peggy, they’re describing a generic lower-class white woman, whose circumstances are not the same as hers, who is serving in the Army (which couldn’t happen then and doesn’t apply to Peggy even if it could).

b) aren’t describing the circumstances actually shown in the movie either.

Example:

“She’d have had to worked many times harder to prove herself and to gain the respect which her male counterparts took for granted”

That is a generic generalisation and a guess, which is probably true for a lower-class white woman who isn’t in WWII and is in the Army (if that could happen in this movie’s universe). But is not true and not shown in the movie for non-Army, non-meritorious, nepotism-hire Intelligence-officer WWII upper class white woman Peggy.

(Who is revealed as a nepotism hire in her own show, and short film, and is told in CATFA movie that she doesn’t owe her current job to merit or hard work or men being scarce; just to Phillips taking a chance on her. So we know she’s a nepotism hire from the beginning.)

c) it’s ignoring the fact that WWII was the one time women were doing all the same jobs as men (except for being soldiers, in UK).

4) being female in a male-dominated world doesn’t give Peggy the right to be abusive or attack people, who question an authority she does not in fact possess.

And Peggy didn’t punch Hodge because he said something sexist.

If you go back and watch again, you’ll notice that was just the strawman excuse they introduced after he said something else.

But before he said it, Peggy had already told him to step forward and brace his feet, ready to be punched.

She was gearing up to punch him… when he hadn’t said anything wrong.

It was because he questioned her authority.

(Remember in Avengers 1, where cops asked Steve why they should listen to him, and he demonstrated why, by punching the cops for questioning him? Yeah, that didn’t happen. Because Steve wouldn’t abuse his position of power as an excuse to hurt people, just because they’re undermining his authority. You can’t argue she has to act like this because this is how men act when the men… don’t.)

That’s what she was going to punch Hodge for; she would’ve punched him even if he hadn’t said anything else.

But the writers realise that isn’t good enough (and want to distract you from that), so they gave Hodge something off-colour to say as an excuse; to throw sand in credulous viewers’ eyes.

Kind of like how, random example: Matthew Vaughn in Kingsman wants an excuse to have Colin Firth wreck a church. So he makes it a homophobic Church expy and has Colin Firth say a very rad-leftwing thing right before he starts killing everybody. Yay, violence!!

Hodge is there in CATFA to be a strawman to make sure we never go ‘hey! wait a minute, he’s right? why would a bunch of US soldiers listen to some non-American non-soldier non-ranked woman??’

(Sidenotes: Hodge also says what he says in reaction to Peggy humiliating him.

So:

a) Problem: the writing frames sexist remarks as a result of mens’ hurt feelings caused by women.

b) The ‘strong women are physically violent like men!’ framing is also… boring victim-blamey 1990s sexual politics (a real woman would fight back!!), which is a dated-even-then style issue as much as anything else. The Whedon influence showing.

c) It’s also a white feminist / ‘male power fantasy’ notion of what female emancipation is (viz. emancipated women just want to be like white men, right? violently abuse people without consequence, like white men, right? that’s the dream?)

As Anon unwittingly confirmed when they said:

“She was also dealing with it in a very masculine way.”

A very white masculine (privileged) way. Despite what Atwell and the writers think, men doing it doesn’t make it okay for a woman to do it. 🤦‍♀️

“Like another soldier would.”

No. Like a bad soldier would. Steve Rogers would never. (And she’s not a soldier.)

“I don’t see her being a bully I see-”

…I bet I can guess who!

That’s what M&M wanted white women viewers (especially) to see; not what they were being distracting from.

(viz. the fact that this is a Nazi character from the comics behaving in a Nazi way. Cover it in a thin veneer of leftwing language and no one will notice for years! Bad writers of female characters can really relax, knowing it will never be called out. They can just cry 'misogyny’ if it is.

And also, they haven’t bothered to give this female character any rank / institutional power / authority / significance in the plot.

Which you’d think lovers of well-written female characters would also be annoyed about! But anyway… )

How many times has an Army movie introduced the character of the Abusive Drill Sergeant who establishes his 'bad ass’ (read: bully) credentials by punching a newbie soldier who talks back?

It’s what an authoritarian figure does, to establish that 'might is right’, which means they’re in charge whether you like it or not, because they’ll hurt you if you question it.

But if you pointed that out, you’d get a bunch of toxic men saying you’re overreacting because they personally don’t see the Drill Sergeant as a bully. That’s just how you ’have’ to act in that situation, they’d say (while every other character doesn’t.)

“when men who were far below her in rank-”

…but there are no men far below her in rank, because she has no rank [see above.]

Even if she could, the timeline of when she theoretically could’ve acquired a rank isn’t long enough for her to have acquired a rank high enough to warrant her throwing her weight around the way she does.

(You can see how this is really a problem of lazy script writers + costume designers knowing they can just act as if they’ve shown you something and you would believe you have seen it.)

“No way that soldier would ever have spoken to a senior ranking male like that…”

That exact same soldier character also heckles Captain America when he’s on stage, calling him 'sweetheart’ and 'tinkerbell.’

So not only would that soldier do that to a 'senior ranking male’ he literally does do that to the eponymous senior ranking male in the same movie. 🤦‍♀️

“she had to learn to be like that to hold her own among men.”

Listen. We cannot make claims of canonicity for something that is not shown in the movie, or say that a specific generalisation about certain women applies to this specific woman, just because it theoretically might, or that an action is okay just because other (bad) people do it.

However:

1) in AC, we do get to see pre-CATFA Peggy…

And her behaviour is exactly the same around women as it is around men, both then and in the present-day. (Also, there are men around her both in CATFA and her show, who succeed… and don’t act like this.)

She isn’t acting like this to fit in with men. This is just what she’s like.

And she’s not a reluctant participant in this regrettable behaviour; she’s an enthusiastic instigator, and think it’s fine.

2) acting like a bad white man might be what 'A’ white woman, of lower class, might say she 'had’ to do. (Still not an excuse for corrupt abusive behaviour btw! Very white feminism!) But it’s not what this specific upper class woman is shown as having had to do.

Again: she is just like this, regardless.

And she is a nepotism baby. Peggy isn’t competent in the movie. She fails 99% of whatever she attempts. Peggy hasn’t held her own. She has had everything held for her by the powerful white men in her life giving her jobs and homes. (In CATFA and her short film and her show/s.) Intersectionality is a thing.

(If Steve had one line of dialogue in CATFA where he claimed, say, that he was a Frost Giant… but nothing else in his actions or dialogue supported it.

That would be- well, first of all bad writing -but it would make that line seem more like a delusion, a joke, or a lie than a fact.

Now look again at Peggy’s claim that she is in charge? or that she has had doors shut in her face? 👀)

“I don’t think Peggy is ever intentionally mean or cruel to him.”

Does Anon think her hand slipped and she accidentally picked up the gun and accidentally fired it right at his head several times and then accidentally sighed happily and made a quip about it, afterwards? ~~She fired a gun at his head, Karen! At his fucking head!!!~~

(Of course, we can’t identify Lorraine’s sexual assault as a sexual assault, because then we’d have to question Peggy’s re-enactment, wouldn’t we?)

“she smiles when he uses his ingenuity and jumps on a dummy grenade”

Ah yes, thanks for reminding me of when she:

a) failed to stop a grenade (proving she isn’t as competent as pre-serum Steve, who succeeded where she failed).

b) a grenade that she would’ve known was a dummy if she was actually militarily trained to a higher standard than a clueless private (like Steve).

c) or if she actually had an important military rank where she was privy to that kind of information (like Phillips).

d) was happy to watch Steve kill himself,

e) still didn’t bother to talk to him before or after any of that? (that grenade would’ve killed her, if it had been real. Still not worth a thanks? Not important enough to talk to yet?)

f) Unlike Erskine! Who shows his admiration for Steve with. Actual words.

Please, please, stop crediting these people with having written a female character they have not actually written.

“she doesn’t talk about how weak he was she views him as a proper soldier when a lot of others don’t”

1) that isn’t true, she talks about why he should run away from fights.

2) outside of that, she doesn’t talk about how weak he was because she… doesn’t talk about him at all? or to him? 🤦‍♀️

(That, btw, makes it impossible to claim that she values him pre-serum because you physically cannot value a thing you don’t even acknowledge.)

And this is not how characterisation works. I could claim any trait for any character on the basis of what they didn’t talk about. 🤷‍♀️

2) The movie specifically establishes what it looks like to value Steve pre-serum, and the movie’s own metric for that is: what Erskine and Bucky do.

(Tell Steve they value who he is pre-serum + defend him from bullies.)

Peggy does the opposite.

She doesn’t speak to Steve at all for the 1 week they are in the same place, until a minute before he gets serum, and only to sneer at him.(And then smile patronisingly at the idea of him getting a girlfriend. 😬 Note she doesn’t ask him out until after he’s big n’ famous.)

And when Steve is bullied in front of her repeatedly (Hodge, Phillips, Stark) she never sticks up for him.

This is why they deleted all of her scenes in What If and Rogers: The Musical and put her in Bucky’s scenes instead.

(If these scenes actually did any of the things Anon thinks they did, they would’ve kept them.)

“she trusts his judgement: reluctantly at first but willingly afterwards.”

She doesn’t trust his judgement and doesn’t help willingly, either.

Steve had to throw her own words back in her face (suggesting that he knew her claim to believe in him was bullshit? 🤔) This forced her into a position where she had to either shut up and get out of his way, or (admit she’s wrong and) join in.

That’s not proving her trust; it’s proving her pride.

Just because she takes offence when Phillips calls her out for it and claims she had faith in Steve, that doesn’t make that true. Words are meaningless if they’re not supported by actions. ('Steve is a Frost Giant’ Logic again).

Her actions are: having to be manipulated into not interfering, by Steve, by having her pride piqued. Twice, in that movie, but also by Edwin Jarvis in her show.

(Also, if she trusted Steve’s judgement she wouldn’t have betrayed his wishes, both in her own show and for decades after. But anyway!)

“For his own part, Steve never talks down to her or views her as inferior.”

This is only true to a certain extent.

Steve never listened to or did anything Peggy said.

He always did the exact opposite.

(They establish her as a foil who disagrees with everything Steve says because the straights think a) that’s what chemistry is, b) you can 'bothsides’ an argument that has 'let’s fight Nazis’ on the Hero’s side. 😬 If Peggy is his moral compass, then her needle must be pointing south!)

Being silent while she speaks (to offer an opinion he never asks for) and then dismissing whatever she said (even if he is 1000% correct to do so) …isn’t treating her as an equal. 🤷‍♀️

Contrast this with, for example, Steve and Natasha.

Steve repeatedly exchanges non-verbal questions with Natasha, and then acts based on her response.

(Example: Steve taking Clint into the Avengers in A1 after checking with her.)

Natasha doesn’t even need to physically speak in order to be listened to by Steve! Now that’s equality!

Peggy, however, is never listened to.

On this note: the only circumstance in which Steve doesn’t ignore Peggy’s words is when he needs to throw them back in her face to get her to shut up/stop interfering.

Also: there’s a moment in CATFA when Peggy tells Steve about a responder and he completely ignores her, right to her face; turns away, and then asks Howard Stark (like 10 feet away) whether what she just said is correct.

Treating her as an equal?

Treating her slightly better than other men treat her is not a high bar, if other men treat her like crap.

It’s the halo effect making people believe Steve treats Peggy as an equal just because it’s what we would like to think he would do for any woman. But that doesn’t make it canon.

(Note: I’m not trying to claim canon Steve is doing something other than what he actually does, just because he is m'Blorbo.

You’ve got to bear in mind, this Steve is being written by men who do not want him to have any of the Leftwing New Deal Democrat Socialist Antifa Anti-Capitalism *runs out of breath* values of the comics… because that would be icky for the American 'mainstream’ and shareholders.

They think Steve is a provincially minded 'small town boy’, despite he fact that he is from friggin 1940s Brooklyn, ffs. Any decency MCU Steve has is often there despite the script, not because of it.)

“When she said that Bucky was probably dead: again I don’t think she was being uncaring.”

W o w .

“It seems to me-”

Is Anon part of a HOA, I wonder…

“she didn’t want to see another man die in what she had every reason to think was a suicide mission.”

1) I thought she was smiling at Steve killing himself (throwing himself on a grenade) because she believes in him as a soldier when nobody else does. Which is it? It can’t be both.

2) if she actually had faith in Steve she would have every reason to believe it isn’t a suicide mission.

“she ended up helping Steve go on that rescue mission”

1) Steve was going on that rescue mission without her, he was going on foot if necessary, but he already had a jeep so he really didn’t need any of her interference. He also had all the intel he needed already because he made sure to acquire it (with his photographic memory).

2) delete her from the sequence entirely and nothing changes.

(This is what @luna-rainbow is referencing when we say Peggy fails the ’Sexy Lamp Test’ for good characterisation of female characters.)

3) The plane was a bad idea anyway; hence Steve abandoned it (while ignoring Peggy’s wishes and refusal to admit she was wrong, in typical style. Also note: Steve pointing out he can give her orders because he’s a Captain. Meaning whatever her 'agent’ rank is equivalent to, if there is any equivalent, it’s still below a Captain.)

4) Steve has spent just as much time in Howard Stark’s company as hers. Who’s to say he’d need her to talk Stark into flying him? Which was a bad plan, anyway. Also consider how in character it would be for Howard Stark to be lurking backstage where the chorus girls are…

“even though Colonel Philipps basically threatened to basically demote her.”

He was in the process of firing her, because she isn’t important (as he tells her).

Steve’s competence saved her job; and it was his willingness to take full responsibility for her collaborative (but completely unnecessary) disobedience that also saved her from more dire consequences.

(When he comes back to camp, he spots her behind Phillips, seems to clock that she’s in trouble, and then surrenders himself for disciplinary action.)

If only he’d waited five more minutes… 😟

“Finally, that scene where she fires her gun at Steve’s shield: again I don’t see that as bullying”

I almost hesitate to ask what Anon would consider bullying, if firing a gun in someone’s face doesn’t qualify.

(Note to Anon’s friends: never go paintballing with them. 😬)

Not only is it straight up abuse, from a Romance arc POV.

(Has Anon tried watching Hannibal? I think they’d vibe with Hannigram, if this is their idea of Romance; Hannigram is a very dark ship!)

It’s also what that very same movie uses as proof of Red Skull’s psychopathy:

[ TW FLASHING ]

…complete with pithy quip, just like Peggy!

And also Alexander Pierce’s psychopathy in the next Cap movie…

And Aldrich Killian’s psychopathy in Iron Man 3…

And the reaction you’re supposed to have is:

But obviously it doesn’t count for Peggy because those are all men!

It’s not Protagonist Centered Morality but Love-Interest Centered Morality.

“She does seem to genuinely care for Steve as well.”

She and Steve spoke on a total of 8 days over the 20.5 months they knew of each others’ existence. In which time he explicitly said he didn’t want to date anyone and she also said she would not be available to date during the war. They are strangers.

And speaking of 'having’ to act like a man…

On top of groping Steve when he came out of the Vitaray tube (~~because Atwell is a creep and also thinks that’s funny~~) and shoving in between him and the actually-useful medical professionals…

Peggy’s 'caring’ attitude only lasted only as long as Steve seemed sexually available to her.

The second that ended, she turned on him.

She jumped to conclusions about Steve (because she doesn’t know him). Victim-blamed him for being sexually assaulted.

(Despite assuming the woman was the victim, she didn’t bother to check if the woman was okay; just assumed she couldn’t possibly be to blame for sexual harrassment… y'know, just how men do for other men?)

She said he was 'just like all the rest,’ then sneered at his inexperience with women, and then after she tried and failed to humiliate him by bringing it up in front of his colleague (and it didn’t work because… frankly Steve looked like he’d already forgotten all about her) …she became violent to 'punish’ him. And very obviously enjoyed frightening him, because she sighed happily afterwards, like a sadist.

In other words, her response was the typical creepy man’s response to rejection.

(Call woman you’ve been following around who has rejected you: stupid, a slut, somehow simultaneously also a prude, and then become violent when she seems unbothered). 👍

Caring like Beauty and the Beast’s Gaston.

(But Steve is cowed and carries her photo afterwards, so suddenly she’s nice to him again.)

“I see them as-”

…An AITA thread??

“-having a lot in common: both people who struggle to be accepted by others but find their place eventually.”

They don’t have anything in common but race.

She’s rich, he’s poor, she’s English, he’s American, she has perfect health, he is multiply disabled, she has every door opened for her (brother, Phillips, Stark, giving her jobs she hasn’t even asked for, provided with a personal Butler and more thtan one mansion), Steve has to beg five times just to get his foot in the door.

Peggy defends the status quo (don’t disobey Phillips, don’t make your own plan, don’t look my fascistic org’s past, Steve).

Steve disrupts it (fuck authority figures I’m going to do what’s right).

She, a non-superhuman, is given a job on the basis of zero merit in CATFA (just Phillips having a whim) or steals it (WhatIf).

Steve is proven qualified and yet is still relegated to the USO or science labs, even when he is qualified and a supersoldier and male.

They are not alike. They are diametric opposites. That’s the whole point: she’s the foil. That’s why Steve never does anything she says.

(That’s also the point of Cap love interests in the comics; to generate conflict from Steve dating a contrasting morally-charcoal spy, while being honest/open himself.)

Steve doesn’t give a shit about mens’ approval. He only want to be 'one of the guys’ when 'the guys’ are doing the right thing; laying down his life to fight Nazis. He’s not chasing power.

(This is why it’s enough for him to be seen as someone who could get asked to dance, in front of the boys… but it’s the boys he actually stays with, not the woman. Their goal is his priority, not getting a girl. Also why he tells Peggy to respect his wish to die (to vanquish Nazis) and not to be with her.)

Peggy doesn’t even like men, but she desperately wants their approval (she spends her whole show chasing it, despite believing she doesn’t care about other peoples’ opinions of her. She desperately does. Whether that’s Steve’s, her colleagues, Jarvis’s, her brother’s, etc. etc.)

And unlike Steve (who never asked for the Cap title, let alone assigning it to himself out of a sense of entitlement), she wants Power.

Which is why her reaction to serum (which should have melted her face off the way it did Red Skull's… but anyway!) was to throw yet more violent temper tantrums when she wasn’t handed yet more power (even though she is unqualified for it, as she isn’t a soldier, like Steve was), cackle giddily at how much more violent it allowed her to be, and assign herself a military rank she hadn’t earned.

And why Atwell thinks it’s totally reasonable for her to be the center of the universe in What If.

“So yeah, Peggy in The First Avenger is great.”

😬

Many people believed this, and it really does highlight how much people unwittingly hang on character aesthetics!

A Man: Northern Euopean, a naturally commanding voice, neatly dressed in a uniform, ordering people around (and being obeyed) because that’s his job, which he has earned through hard graft and heroism.

A Woman: Northern European, a naturally commanding voice, neatly dressed, in a uniform, bossing people around but not being listened to because that’s not her job / she hasn’t earned it.

'Oh look! two people required by work to dress to the same standard!! and they’re both bossing people around in their bossy voices! Ergo, they must have so much in common! equal competence, power, and ethics! and the writers must have shown that character being smart and moral, because they sound smart, and clearly they think they’re moral! they must have so much impact on the Hero, because they talk to him a lot! Their struggles must be the same because one of them said so! (And how he treats her must be fine and in line with my values because he’s the Hero and I like him!)’

This is how people can come away from the MCU thinking Tony is a rebel and Steve is a pro-America Boy Scout. Can’t see past the costumes, and mistake mannerisms for values.

Listen to the actual content of the words coming out of their mouths, plant! Look at their actions! This isn’t Hannibal. Ethics are not aesthetics.

tl;dr:

cosmicmechanism

In response to anon, let me answer from the perspective of someone who didn’t like her from the start. It’s important to be able to distinguish what you’re being told and what you’re actually seeing in the movie, especially CATFA. In CATFA, she is given a lot of screen time for a character who does very little. In fact, she’s given 3x the amount of screen time Bucky has even though he very heavily affects the plot. You can blame the writing for her not being a fully formed character if what you’re expecting is a woman who has been on the front lines longer than these new recruits and she certainly tries to come off that way, but as written, she’s actually just Phillips’ secretary and every portrayal of her henceforth has shown that she was given opportunities, not because she earned them, but because they were handed to her by men. At no point in any of her appearances is it shown that she’s deserving of these opportunities.

For the scenes where she punches Hodges and shoots Steve, imagine how you’d see her if she were a male character. That’s just not sane behavior. Steve raises the shield to his head to block where she’s aimed, by the way. In all logic, we should have seen multiple people jump on her and throw her in confinement for firing a gun in a room full of people in a bunker, much less at the only successful supersoldier, especially considering the events that got Erskine killed. All this shows is that instead of rising above or being witty in the face of difficulty, she immediately resorts to violence. She lacks impulse control for someone who supposedly has her position.

There is a very big difference between confidence in one’s self and unearned arrogance. The idea that she’s had to work harder because she’s in a field of men, that she’s justified in being angry at Steve for kissing someone else, that she can relate to Steve in being overlooked because of her physical appearance are all things the audience projects onto her because they’ve come to expect that sort of character, but none of that is true. She’s not competing with anyone for her position because she’s a spy who was given a chance by Phillips to take his notes in an underground bunker in London, not a soldier who was going to be fighting in the Europe and there were many female spies. There were a lot of women who fought in some way during WWII, but from the way Peggy is portrayed, she’s the only one who ever broke through that glass ceiling and Lorraine was just there to add momentary conflict. Steve never said a word when she came onto him at the bar so he had every right to go kiss another girl if he wanted to even though in this case he didn’t. She has no ownership over him and if she felt jealous about then that’s her problem. And like I mentioned previously, Peggy was handed her chances. She says she knows what it’s like to have every door shut in her face, but we don’t see this to be true at all. Peggy is an upper class white British woman. She’s a person of privilege. In AC, a US Senator writers her a recommendation for her housing. In both the AC short and the show, it’s either stated outright or implied that she only even has a job because everyone thinks she and Steve were a thing, but in reality he has one conversation with him in the car where she’s rather dismissive and snarky to him about twenty minutes before he gets the serum and later she spends a week being mad at him in a bunker before Steve and the Howlies head out to go fight in Europe for over a year. The movie tries to tell you their struggles are similar, but we don’t see Peggy struggle at all.

Also, recall, if your original version of Peggy includes CATWS, she spent her life building an organization that Steve immediately tore down within days of finding out she’d recruited the man who’d tortured Bucky and others like him.

luna-rainbow

Thank you @amarriageoftrueminds and @cosmicmechanism for your fantastic additions, as always.

I agree with both of their takes: I think a lot of Anon’s descriptions of Peggy are based on projection and/or fanon. It is a common presumption that Peggy was disrespected despite her hard work and she had to work twice as hard to get where she did — because that’s often what happened to women in those times. But her series directly contradicted that and it was clear she got where she did because of her family connections and the privileges afforded to her by being white and rich in a society that valued whiteness and affluence, to the point she was given station above her training. We do not see evidence of her contributing anything that would indicate her professional value. Her value is presumed, by the series and by fans, because of her comparative prominence in the story, but there is no evidence of it being there.

#long post #anti peggy carter #mcu #marvel meta

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