I’ve got a really bad habit, and I bet you do, too-a sapphic double standard that should revile every feminist bone in our respective bodies. I absolutely adore it when two women engage in sexist romantic tropes. When Gabrielle shouts “Save me, Xena!” I swoon but when Kagome cries out for Inuyasha my eyes roll so hard I hurt something. Supergirl is my current stupidly offensive bag of tropes. Superpowered Kara Danvers is determined to hide her powers from exactly one person, Cat Grant, and I’m fanning myself like a 19th-century debutante. And fandom is too.
The secret identity trope-where a hero hides their identity from the people they love-is one of the original “squee” tropes. The Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, and Superman all hid their identity from lovers. It was intended, especially in Superman’s case, to create some romantic drama between a perfect hero and the love of their life.
Superman is a romantic ideal, but his notoriety means he has to keep Lois Lane at arm’s length. The only way they can be together is when he’s Clark Kent, the mild-mannered reporter Lois can barely stand. For nearly 50 years there was a very rigid love triangle in place between Lois and Clark and Superman. She’d swoon at Superman, he’d lie to her while thinking about how much he loves her, and then she’d drag Clark like she was Nicki and he was Miley.
John Byrne collapsed the triangle in the late ’80s by turning Clark into a hero every bit as attractive as Superman. He became a daring reporter that Lois quickly found herself falling for and the live-action show, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, aped that story. Then it went a step further. When Clark was finally outed as Superman to Lois in the beginning of Season 3, it set off a series of honest conversations that delved into the emotional truth of that kind of lie.
Seeing how wounded Lois was by the lie, and how dishonest Clark’s secret identity made him ruined the cute factor. The show’s aggressively realistic approach to a love story between a superhero and a hotshot reporter effectively scuttled the romanticism of the Secret Identity Trope.
That, naturally, didn’t end the use of the trope. Because when a show calls out a narrative habit for being a big pile of sexist drivel naturally writers have to double down. Bruce Wayne grimaced and looked away so Rachel wouldn’t know his identity and Peter Parker acted like a toolbag to Mary Jane and in Superman Returns Lois got to be the chief idiot of idiotsville, having a kid with Superman without ever learning he was also Clark Kent (girl, what the hell?).
Things managed a little better on TV. All the superhero cartoons carefully sidestepped the trope altogether, and Smallville, the Superman origin story on CW, attempted to subvert the trope by turning it into a haphazard allegory for coming out.
Clark’s identity stays secret because he’s worried how Lois and other will react–not because of any mortal danger the knowledge might put them in. When Lois does figure it out she’s a good little ally who sits on the knowledge and waits for Clark to come to her. It was a cool approach to the Secret Identity trope, but unfortunately, it appeared on a show straighter than the 2016 GOP Primary lineup.
The most recent superhero shows, Supergirl excluded, have ignored all the lessons Lois and Clark taught us about secret identities and have gone back to the tried and true 80-plus-year-old trope, health of their romantic relationships be damned. On The CW, the heroes of Arrow and The Flash go out of their way to hide their superhero identities from prospective love interests as if it’s a requirement on these women’s Tinder profiles.
Applying 1938’s idea of hot and heavy romance to a relationship between a modern woman and man is absolutely absurd and with each attempt at using the Secret Identity Trope it has felt less like an attempt to protect a love interest and more like an attempt to assert some control over the women-corralling them into very specific sections of the hero’s lives. Consequently, both Arrow and The Flash have received a lot of flack.
And made no attempt to fix the problem. Arrow now sidesteps it by keeping the romance all in the family and The Flash just ignores the criticism and continues full speed ahead letting woman after woman look like an idiot while her boyfriend runs speedy circles around her.
As sexist as the Secret Identity trope can be there’s still something thrillingly romantic about it. The angst of a well-meaning secret, the eventual reveal, and the ghost of 80 years of Lois and Clark romances linger around the trope. As awful as it is we’re culturally wired to swoon when a superhero steps close to their wide-eyed amore and pretends to be someone else.
On the next page: The gayness of “Supergirl.”
In early episodes of Supergirl, it appeared as if the Secret Identity Trope was off the table. Kara’s entire support system, including two male love interests, are in on her secret before the pilot is over. It felt a little fitting that the big “feminist” superhero show was the one to chuck out superheroics’ most exasperatingly sexist trope.
Yet there was a note of irritation too. Of course, it’s the girl superhero that doesn’t get to pull one over on a love interest. The double standard was especially glaring because Supergirl is developed and produced by the same creative team as Arrow and The Flash.
Then Kara’s boss, Cat Grant, demands an interview with Supergirl or Kara’s crush, James Olsen, would lose his job. Everything changes. Kara agrees to the interview and steals Cat away to a remote locale beneath a starry date-worthy night sky. The interview is about two steps from a midnight couples flight and Margot Kidder reading a lousy poem.
It feels romantic not because interviews on bluff tops are romantic, but because 80 years of daring super do’s have taught us that the reporters interviewing the heroes are always romantic. It’s like holding hands and walking on the beach or nuzzling meatballs across plates with your nose.
Since it became clear Cat would be the one person Kara would hide her identity from the show has carefully ticked all the common bits of the Secret Identity Trope off their list. There’s the moments where Cat praises Supergirl in the same breath that she denigrates Kara, and the ones where she thanks Supergirl for her help while staring at her with the kind of wide-eyed wonder she’d never muster for her “lowly assistant” and the ones where she and Supergirl confide in one another when they have no one else to confide in–lifting each other up emotionally in a way no love interest, sister, or assistant could.
Finally, there is the confrontation on a balcony in episode 8. Cat steps up close and softly tells Kara to take off her glasses and prove Cat’s own suspicions and it’s more erotic than all the lingering looks thrown around Kara’s hetero love triangle.
When you step far, far, far away from the show, and the rising fandom on Tumblr and Twitter, it appears that this new “SuperCat” pairing isn’t even intended to be a romance. If anything, the show appears to be setting Cat up as another maternal figure/mentor. Kara already has Astra, her aunt. She is a radical eco-terrorist, and she is played by Laura Benanti, and she rocks one very long white hair extension that I marvel at every time I see it. Cat is intended to be the human yin to Astra’s Kryptonian yang.
Only, and fandom undoubtedly agrees, if that’s the case someone should probably tell the show that mentors aren’t supposed to have a soft glow around them as they step close to their mentee, drop their voice a hundred octaves, and thank them with a toast of bourbon.
In many ways, CBS’s Supergirl is trying to have its cake and eat it too. They want to revel in the romanticism of the Secret Identity trope and give Kara all those fun Secret Identity-related beats that her cousin gets, but they don’t actually want to develop a romance using the tropes. They’re not necessarily shouting NO HOMO from the rooftop of CatCo, but Kara’s most romantic moments with Cat are often juxtaposed with side plots featuring her supremely hetero love triangle or announcements of new love interests (the latest one will be played by Melissa Benoist‘s real-life husband).
Fandom has witnessed this outstanding hetero behavior and they’ve watched the development of the SuperCat relationship and they have elected to ignore the dudes and embrace the lady. On Archive of Our Own stories starring Cat Grant and Kara Danvers outnumber those of Kara’s straight pairings by a ratio of 7 to 1 and sites like io9 and the A.V. Club have labelled it the most entertaining romance on the show.
It doesn’t matter that it’s between two women with an age difference of 20-years. The Secret Identity trope is stronger than the gay or May/December issues. When a superhero softly lands on a balcony and tells a mere mortal that they’re the real hero we’re all obliged to swoon. And all the problematic elements of the trope? Fanfiction can fix those.
Supergirl airs Monday nights on CBS.
