what's so super about that?

So, in the new movie, Lois Lane’s won a Pulitzer prize for her essay about why the world doesn’t need Superman.  Clever chick.  It got me thinking… surely in this day and age the concept of a super man is different for everyone?  Particularly if you’re a woman.  Who exactly is Superman anyway? And if there was only one of him, soaring his red-panted way across the London skies, would he actually be doing us more harm than good?

Think about it. Every woman would want him.  And every woman would compare her own man to the ultimate embodiment of masculinity – the one she could never even have.  No normal man would be good enough, not really, not even those men we previously ogled at in awe.  Brad, Orlando, Beckham, sure, they’re alright, but they’re not… well…. they’re not super, are they?

No matter how strong your boyfriend might be, he’ll never quite be able to lift your house and relocate it to the South of France in ten seconds, just for a change of scenery.  No matter how sexy he is, he’ll never really quite get the knack of undressing you with his eyes, literally.  And no matter how brainy your well-chosen piece of horn might be, he’ll still never fool the world with a pair of glasses from Specsavers.  The truth is, if Superman existed, the woman-needs-man rule would go to pot.  Because we wouldn’t just need man.  We’d need Superman.  And there wouldn’t be enough of him for everyone.

I like to think I’d be the Lois Lane of them all of course.  I and I alone would steal his heart, the only woman in all of this bustling metropolis to make him melt like a Magnum on a sun drenched paving slab.  I’d be his kryptonite, his weakness, and at the end of a long, hard crime-fighting day he’d hover at my window, his red cape fluttering in the breeze, before swooping in and showing me something else that was really super under the covers.

We’d get invited to parties all the time - my specially designed ball gown would compliment the red of his cape, my heels would match the blue of his tights.  I’d tie a little yellow flower in my hair to match the ‘S’ on his spandex suit.  We’d be the perfect couple, ‘Supey’ and I.  On the outside.  But actually… while other women were dropping their ‘normal’ men in resentment, green with envy over my fabulous prize, I’m not so sure I’d be smiling on the inside.

My man would have to rush off every five seconds to stop a car crash, redirect a tsunami or seal the states of America back together before a giant earthquake claimed millions of lives.  I’d be OK about it of course, I mean… I’d have to understand.  It’s his job.  But after five hours at another party, wearing a spandex dress in ‘super’ colours and drinking super cocktails on my own, I’d be watching other couples laughing, joking, being normal, wishing I could be like them.

I’d also age before him.  I wouldn’t let him surgically correct me, even though he’d offer, using the complex laser beams in his crystal blue eyes.  That would be akin to being ashamed of my age, even though he’d live forever at my wrinkled side.  I’d bleed, he wouldn’t.  I’d cry, he couldn’t.  In the evening, I’d stuff my face with chocolate as he saved an entire cocoa farm in Columbia, and in the morning, as I struggled to cook him an omelette without burning the flat down, he’d fly to a little farm in Dorset and gather a batch of eggs, fresh from a chicken’s ass. So annoying.

I don’t think we’d last, me and Supey.  I, like most of the girls I’ve befriended here in London and throughout my life, am an independent woman. I’d end up feeling smothered by my own inadequacies, the things I would never be able to do as well as him. 

So all in all, if Superman did come to London and set about becoming a saviour, perhaps it would be best if we didn’t all kick up a fuss. Before we throw it all out of proportion, maybe us ladies should consider the fact that perhaps the most perfect man for all of us is never going to be the one who’s super. 

Perhaps he’s the one who makes us feel super about ourselves.