Yes, Every Woman Should Be Waiting for Superman

You all know the story.

There’s a young man from the country hoping to make it in the big city. He quickly falls in love with one of his co-workers, a smart, driven career woman who likes to tease him about his small-town background. She’s beautiful, sophisticated, tough, and seems completely unattainable…all the more so because she, in turn, is smitten with an idealized demigod who appears out of nowhere to help her when she needs him the most, who can win every fight, conquer every obstacle, and who has dedicated himself to the cause of righteousness.

The twist, and what makes the story so compelling that it has stuck around for about eighty years, is that the two men are one and same; the awkward coworker she teases over coffee or sits through staff meetings with is the same god-like figure who serves as her personal knight in shining armor.

Like I say, you all know the story. The love-triangle of Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Superman has been told and retold a hundred times across all mediums. Through parody, pretension, affection, and ridicule it’s been presented to the public so many times that it has entered into our common vocabulary, so that even if you’ve never seen a Superman film or read a single comic book, you know exactly how the story goes.

Well…maybe not exactly.

Have you ever heard the phrase “waiting for Superman?” It refers to someone who is holding out for an idealized figure or situation, while taking no steps to help themselves. It’s hardly a fair image to Miss Lane, who is a pretty take-charge figure in her own right, not to mention misses the whole point of a fantasy like this, which we don’t really have time to get into (short version; it’s less about the specific details than about the emotional responses it teaches us to have).

Besides, I think every woman should be waiting for Superman. Or at least someone like him; I haven’t seen anything to convince me he actually exists, and even if he does, he’s spoken for. But what really makes Superman the ideal figure that he is isn’t the fact that he can fly faster than light or pick up a planet. As far as that goes, someone like Zod or Darkseid can do the same thing, but no one’s waiting for them. Rather, what makes him the real super man is this—Clark could quite literally do anything he wanted. If he decided to waltz off with the Crown Jewels or the contents of Fort Knox, there’s not a whole lot anyone could do to stop him. But with the power to do anything, what he chooses to do is serve his country, his community, and the woman he loves.

Nietzsche need not apply

In other words, Clark is more or less the opposite of the Nietzschean conception of the super man—rather than subjecting all to his own will and rising above ‘conventional morality,’ Clark subjects his will wholly to the service of higher ideals. That’s what makes him the ideal man— not just the fact that he can win every fight, but that he always strives to do the right thing, no matter how difficult. With all the power in the world, he places it all at the service of eternal values: family and friends, community and country, truth, justice, and the American way.

Such is the ideal every man should strive to imitate, and if you’re thinking this is insufficiently Catholic, let me clarify that this is merely a simplistic (and hence easier to grasp) image of Christ and the saints. A good man may be defined as one who places whatever power or skill he has at the service of righteousness, and as far as modern literature goes, Superman is pretty much the supreme example.

If Superman is the ideal man, then Lois Lane might be considered, if not the ideal woman, at least in an ideal situation, because she is the woman the ideal man loves with a selfless devotion. But if it were left there, it would merely be a shallow fantasy. What makes it a classic is the crucial element of Clark Kent: the average Joe down the hall who is also the ideal man in disguise. Lois is in an ideal situation, not just because she’s beloved by the perfect man, but because the perfect man is the guy she hangs out with by the water cooler every day. The drama and tension of the story comes from the fact that she can’t see it.

It's all in the glasses

Much mockery has been made of Lois’s inability to recognize Superman because he puts on a pair of glasses, but whether such a disguise would work in real life is beside the point. The point is that, for whatever reason, Lois cannot reconcile the god-like figure who haunts her dreams with the polite, awkward guy she sees at work every day. The apparent ordinariness of Clark Kent blinds her to the very possibility that he might actually be something extraordinary.

So, what’s the point of all this? Well, first of all, the point is that yes, you should be waiting for Superman—not necessarily for someone who can fly and catch bullets with his bare hands (such men are getting hard to find), but for someone who is a real Superman. That is, a man who believes in truth, justice, and the rest, and who always strives to act righteously. That is, a strong, confident man of firm convictions who uses his ‘powers’ in the service of good.

That’s your Superman, the man you should be waiting for. Whatever else he is, make sure he has those qualities, and I don’t think you’ll ever have cause to be disappointed.

How to find him

Where can such a man be found? That’s the second point—anywhere. Such men are not exactly common, but they can be found all over. If he’s the kind of man I mean, he won’t brag or show off, and you probably won’t recognize him at first. That’s the idea. When searching for Superman, you have to look below the surface, because a real Superman won’t be looking for superficiality, but deep, committed love. You have to take time and look past the obvious to find a man’s true self.

When you look deeper, you should be looking for a real Superman—someone who, if given the powers of a god, would fight for truth, justice, freedom, and, of course, the woman he loves. You’ll find he’s worth waiting for.