We Need To Talk About Riri Williams

Riri Williams is a 15 year old black girl in the new line of Iron Man comic-books. She’s a genius, inventor, and engineer. Riri was named after her father, who died shortly after she was born. She grew up with her mother and sister, Sharon. As a certified genius, Riri was given a scholarship to M.I.T. By the age of 15, she was already attending the school.

After reverse engineering technology from the outdated Iron Man armor, she started creating a prototype of her own Iron Man armor from items she stole around campus. Once the school caught on to what she was doing, she put on her armor and flew away. While flying around the world she found some inmates trying to escape from prison in New Mexico. She stopped the truck and caught them, at the expense of her armor. She then returned home to finish building and perfecting her suit. Tony Stark then had been informed of her accomplishments and even went to visit her to endorse her desire to become a superhero.

Riri Williams is a true genius. Despite her youth and limited resources, she devised and created various contrivances! This impressive collection of creations includes her own version of the Iron Man armor, which she revere engineered from scratch! Her character is interesting and amazing enough, so why do the comic book illustrators continue to sexualize her?! When I was 15, I still had baby fat, stringy hair that I couldn’t do anything with, and braces.

Seeing such young girls oversexualized and painted as something they aren’t sends the wrong message to today’s youth.

We should be telling young girls that it’s okay to not look like a Victoria’s Secret Angel. This continuous and unwarranted sexualisation is something almost every female comic book hero endures. They’re all wearing skin tight suits, or like X-Men’s Psylocke, who only wears a leotard and tall boots. Comic book illustrators have got to stop drawing girls and women like this! It’s awful enough when they do that to characters like Psylocke and Black Widow, but it’s even worse in Riri’s case because she’s still a child, and such an important character to so many people. What can we, as individuals do to fix this? Part of the problem is that comic books are still marketed toward men. Why? Why can’t little girls enjoy comic-books too? Comic- book writers and illustrators need to broaden their horizons, market towards little girls too, give them a character that looks like them and they can relate too. Everyone should be able to enjoy comic-books, not just men.

Many people felt this way, therefore Marvel and Midtown Comics have made a joint decision to pull the illustration by J. Scott Williams. The original drawing of her in the Iron Man armor are available for preorder. This just goes to show if we use our voices and speak up we can make a change.