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“When it comes to weird, wacky and wonderful trends, the beauty market has seen it all,” notes feminist writer Lizzie Mulherin. “Last year it was vampire facials, breast slapping and nipple tattooing.

“This year one of the beauty trends gaining great popularity is very low maintenance. In fact, it requires no maintenance at all. Women are growing their armpit hair and aren’t afraid to raise their hands to show it.”

Unless she’s a superheroine … in the summer’s smash hit movie!

“Twitter users have taken issue with Wonder Woman actress Gal Godot’s cleanly shaven armpits in the film,” reports the Daily Mail, “arguing that as an Amazon her underarms should be visibly hairy.”

“Shots of her arms outstretched above her head reveal hairless armpits—provoking fierce debate among fans over the superheroine’s grooming routine.”

“Wait …Wonder Woman shaves her armpits?” tweeted Olivier Lejade, while Laura Lioness asked, “My question is—why is an Amazon with no previous contact with humankind clean shaven?”

Prompting one fan of fuzz to take matters into her own glands

But as World War II raged—and Wonder Woman became a symbol of American strength—things seem to get more hairy as the armistice approached!

One aspect that remained constant, however, was the originator’s obsession with bondage. “The secret allure of women is that they enjoy submission—being bound,” declared William Moulton Marston, the kinky psychologist who created the comic book character. His childhood sweetheart Betty Holloway had noticed that her blood pressure rose whenever she was angry or excited, so after they wed in 1915 Marston “passed off her idea as his own, which led to him developing the lie detector machine!”

“But being the sex obsessive that he was,” reveals Live2Use.com, “Marston found the invention was useful for more than just finding fibbers. It could also be used to measure women’s erotic arousal when they were watching raunchy films—and he concluded that brunettes were friskier than blondes” {hence Wonder Woman’s jet black hair color}.

“Then he met librarian Marjorie Huntley,” the site continues, “a women’s rights campaigner, who set his ownpulse racing. A believer in the psychic power of the orgasm, she became his lover and introduced him to bondage.

“Marston took her back to his marital home in Massachusetts, where she and the couple became what Marjorie later described as ‘a threesome.’ Teaching at Tufts University in 1926, the pervy prof grew infatuated with one of his students, 22-year-old Olive Byrne after she invited him to an extraordinary party, where girls dressed as babies were tied up and blindfolded. Olive quickly joined Marston’s bohemian household and the foursome developed a free-love cult called the Love Unit.”

Left to right, the three adult women flanking the Wonder Woman creator above are: Marjorie, young Olive and wife Betty.

“The nature of this familial arrangement was kept a secret,” notes The Stake blog, “even from the children (Marston fathered four children—two were Betty’s and two Olive’s). The family was not just polyamorous, it would seem, but also bisexual: when William died in 1947, Betty and Olive lived together” until the latter died 43 years later!

Importantly, Olive’s aunt was the legendary women’s rights and birth control activist Margaret Sanger—who used bondage as a tool (below left) to show how her sex had been enslaved. A half century later, birth control ‘instigator’ Lynda Carter would regularly ‘tie one on’ in the TV version.

Inspiring a generation of fantasy buffs to picture the bondage brunette in the buff !

The youngest and prettiest of Marston’s trio of live-in lovers, Olive Byrne (below left) was the model for his Wonder Woman character and inspired the look—her penchant for “wearing short hair and golden bracelets” led to the sexy superheroine’s source of strength {she's 2nd from left with hands clasped in the 'Love Unit' group shot, below}.

And being the free-love feminist niece of suffragette Sanger, Olive didn’t shave under her arms … which naturally inspired today’s leading Wonder Woman burlesque queen—the cleverly named Shan De Leers—to follow hirsute:

“I am now undeniably a fancy naked lady, with luxurious armpit hair,” Shan De Leers sheds ‘light’ on her dark pits. “I don’t know how long it will be staying, but I love my fur. Initially I stopped shaving so I could have hairy armpits for the Wonder Woman act, “but it turned into something so much more meaningful and powerful. And isn’t that what this whole life thing is about—growth?”

Certainly this whole ‘Wonder Woman’ thing was about … Marston’s fondness for what he called ‘love binding.’ As Jill Lepore details in The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014): “In episode after episode Wonder Woman is chained, bound, gagged, lassoed, tied, fettered and manacled.” Indeed, her creator’s “bondage fetish dominated, as it were, the early issues of the comics.”

And fans are still ‘locked in’ and confined to the concept: “The leading fetish-bondage model in the adult entertainment business for over 10 years,” Christina Carter specializes in dressing up as a bound Wonder Woman (below left)—charging $100 more per hour for her “WW Super Heroine” routine {complete with Armpit Tufts, where Marston taught, inset}. Taking her stage surname from Lynda Carter, Christina goes further than TV ever allowed, baring her 34DD-27-36 shape whenever you give her enough rope (below right).

Revelations in the recent block•bust•er movie prompted Colorado State coed and feminist Emery Love to lament: “Why can male superheroes just be strong and heroic while women have to be incredibly sexy, exposed and strong and heroic? Femininity does not have to come from limited clothing, cleavage and perfectly flowing hair”—though Emery embodies all three … plus pit hair … while having a beer with a beau below.

“I hope to one day see a Wonder Woman who is a true feminist icon,” Love sums up … and the superheroine already has a leg up toward that goal: “Wonder Woman is queer,” confirms Greg Rucka, who’s written the comic strip throughout the 2000s.

“When you think about the concept of her island Themyscira, which is populated solely by female warriors,” Rucka reflects, “how can they not all be in same sex relationships? You’re supposed to be able to have a fulfilling romantic and sexual relationship. And the only options are women.”

So this particular Amazon is Prime.

In fact, surely the most powerful ‘superheroine’ in politics at present is that Vunder Voman from Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel—who, before assuming high office, refused to shave her underarms (below left) … or under charms (below right)!

Meanwhile, a Massachusetts ‘Wonder Woman’ who does it all—“Mother, daughter, partner, friend, nurse, cat lady, adventurer, seeker of both truth mystery” reads her Facebook intro—has become an Instagram icon for daring to bare … her hair:

“I started it a few months ago before I knew it was a trend,” explained Raynham (Mass.) registered nurse Katherine Anne True after posting her pits on 6/12/15. “At first it was just for fun.”

Then “the extra hair was met by cringes” from her 5-year-old daughter (below left) and 9-year-old niece. “When the girls told me I ‘had to shave those’ (below right) and were grossed out, it was kind of startling that these gender stereotypes were already so ingrained at these ages.”

“I do it—or rather don’t do it {shave}—for me, but also as a reminder to my daughter that’s it up to the individual what we decide to do with our bodies.”

So the big question is: Does the self-proclaimed ‘Cat Lady’ also refuse to shave her pussy?

“My 15 minutes is gonna be 5 seconds as prop/dead actress,” True told her Instagram followers {and fully clothed at that, top left below). The skin was fur•nished by the rest of “its entirely female cast which,” according to a rave review in Starburst magazine, “ultimately reveals itself to be a great deal more than the sum of its parts” (or pits, below).

“The advantage of the film being from a female perspective,” the reviewer relates, “means that some of the otherwise exploitative aspects, such as the Model stripping naked or the Coed nose-bleeding into her immensecleavage (bottom row, above), appear more matter-of-fact than cheaply gratuitous.”

The cheap {i.e., free} and gratuitous {e.g., showing off rather than solidarity} can be found in the profusion of Instagram shrines that sprouted up in the wake of Katherine Anne True’s brave post.

“Women from across the world are now challenging social norms and embracing their natural armpit hair by sharing images on social media,” the Associated Press reported just six days after True grew a following.

“Some regard it as an empowering display of feminism and instantly many women are even flaunting their untrimmed underarms via social media. Instagram accounts such as ‘Pitangels’ and ‘ladypithair’—which encourage women and girls to show their bushy bits, have been joined by ‘armpit_museum’ and are gaining in popularity” (below).

And rival Tumblr trumpets its ‘Hairy Pits Club’ (below) and ‘HaiRy ArMpiTS’ posting boards. Clearly the trend is growing.

Please keep going ... and growing ... as Armpits4August goes global in Part 4 ...