Cat Women

Women are cats. The sinuous way they move. Their cool, distant disdain. Their grace, softness, and power all bound together. One moment, they are a purring bundle of pleasure, and the next they are all claws and teeth and shrill voice, scratching and biting and warning, often in that order. This is a truism of man's experience with woman, so we often call them "cats" of one type or another: kitties or cougars or bearcats. They have cat fights and get their claws in men. And they have pussies.

Cat Woman is not merely a villainess of the Batman universe. She is an expression of an archetypal view of woman. Similarly, "The Lady or the Tiger" is interesting not only really for itself, but because its ambiguity creates a state in which what resides behind both doors is both lady and tiger unresolved and blended in an unobserved uncertain state. Cat Woman is a true form, and all incarnations of her mere shadows. She is sexier, stronger, and more compelling in concept than she ever is in realization.

Cat Woman was essentially created with Batman, with The Joker, but she has a much more fluid existence. Now a villain, now a love interest, now a heroine, the struggle over Cat Woman's identity is every man's ambivalence toward the women in his life. We don't love them despite the claws, the leather, the whip, we love them because of these things. Men fight so hard to be in control of our lives, but the woman we truly love is the one that tames the beast within us with an exquisite combination of pleasure and pain. Ideally, this struggle never fully resolves, but remains with beast and tamer eying each other closely in admiration and desire.

No matter what incarnation, Cat Woman is never able to embody the promise of her essence for very many men, leaving most of us disappointed that she seems mere flesh and blood, not the Form of Woman we had desired.

Attempts to portray her with an actress are generally ludicrous. As always, drawn versions are better because they escape the confines of the flesh into the more conceptual realm. I love this image of Cat Woman holding Batman's flaccid costume just below the head. Oh, yeah, we know who is in control. And we know how.