Uniforms for Female S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents

 

While viewing many Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films and television productions over the years, I have noticed something. I find it rather interesting . . . or perplexing that the clothes worn by the majority of female S.H.I.E.L.D. field agents wore tight-fitting uniforms.



UNIFORMS FOR FEMALE S.H.I.E.L.D. AGENTS

My question is . . . why? Before I continue, I will acknowledge there is one female character who wears a tight-fitting uniform - namely Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel:



However, Carol Danvers was a U.S. Air Force pilot before she became an enhanced being. The uniform she wore was a variation of the Kree uniform that she originally wore after disappearing from Earth. And it was based on the uniform created for her in Marvel Comics. Could Marvel Comics and later, the MCU have created a less sexualized uniform for her? Yes. But that is nothing in compare to the uniforms worn by most S.H.I.E.L.D. agents within the franchise. And aside from two men - most female S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Like Captain Marvel's uniform, they are basically tight-fitting leather uniforms with a few variations. Below are following examples:



Agent Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow





Agent Maria Hill





Agent Melinda May aka "the Calvary"





Agent Daisy Johnson aka Skye aka Quake





Agent Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird





Agent Elena Rodriguez aka Yo-Yo


There were at least three male S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives who constantly wore tight fitting leather uniforms:



Steve Rogers aka Captain America





Agent Clint Barton aka Hawkeye





Director Jeffrey Mace aka the Patriot

Out of eight S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and one agency director, only three were men. Three out of nine. And only one of them - Agent Barton - was not an enhanced (genuine or otherwise) individual. Yet, the majority of male S.H.I.E.L.D. field operatives usually wore what the situation called for - whether it was a military-style uniform, casual clothes or a suit.

I can only recall three female field operatives who did not wear any style of a leather unitard:



S.S.R. Agent/S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Peggy Carter - She never wore any kind of unitard or leather uniform during her years as a S.S.R. (forerunner of S.H.I.E.L.D. agency) agent. She wore an Army uniform or a military-style jumpsuit in the field during World War II and the early months of the post-war years.





Agent Sharon Carter - I have only seen her in pants, a blouse and a jacket in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER"; and in jeans/pants, a blouse and a vest (or jacket) in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR".





Agent Piper - Like many of her male colleagues, she wore either a military-style uniform or a casual outfit that consists of jeans/pants, a blouse and a jacket. How she managed to avoid being squeezed into a tight, leather unitard is a mystery. And great luck for her.


This brings me back to my original question. Why did the Marvel Cinematic Universe found it necessary to have its S.H.I.E.L.D. female characters dress in a tight, leather unitard (or something close to it)? Why have these characters dress like Cathy Gale and Emma Peel from the old "THE AVENGERS" television series? And why is it that most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. characters that dressed this way were women?

"Nick Fury and the Fall of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"NICK FURY AND THE FALL OF S.H.I.E.L.D."

I feel that characters like Phil Coulson and Steve Rogers should kneel down and kiss Nicholas J. Fury’s ass for his actions in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER". Why? Because his actions before, during and after the 2014 movie prevented terrorist groups like HYDRA and an Inhumanity community called Afterlife to create more major catastrophes following the fall of the intelligence agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). 

In the past three years, I have noticed that a lot of MCU fans like to blame Fury for HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. Why, I do not know. HYDRA's infiltration of the agency and other organizations had begun a few years before Fury's birth in 1951. In fact, a scene in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" made it perfectly clear how HYDRA managed to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. The newly formed agency had recruited HYDRA scientist Arnim Zola and a few other to form a think tank under the program known as Operation Paperclip. As many know, this program allowed S.H.I.E.L.D. and other intelligence services to recruit Nazi (or HYDRA) scientists for the benefit of their countries around the start of the Cold War. The 2014 movie also made it clear who had founded S.H.I.E.L.D. around this time - U.S. Army Colonel Chester Phillips, Peggy Carter and Howard Stark. 

Not only were Phillips, Carter and Stark responsible for Operation Paperclip; which allowed Arnim Zola to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and kick start HYDRA’s infiltration of the agency; they allowed this infiltration to grow for . . . how many decades? And even following Chester Phillips' death, Howard and Peggy allowed HYDRA mole Mitchell Carson to become the Head of Defense of S.H.I.E.L.D. Another HYDRA mole who eventually became part of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a former State Department diplomat named Alexander Pierce. Following Howard’s death and Peggy’s retirement, Pierce became Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and later, the World Security Council’s Secretary. As Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Pierce made one major mistake. He promoted Fury, whom he had first met while serving the State Department in Bogota, to the position of the agency’s new director after he joined the World Security Council.

Project Oversight was a S.H.I.E.L.D. program that involved three heavily armed, satellite-linked Helicarriers designed to proactively strike out against potential threats - usually humans- before they actually happened. I do not know who was originally responsible for the creation of this program - Pierce or Fury. Pierce wanted to use the helicarriers and Arnim Zola's algorithm to root out individuals that would oppose or threaten HYDRA's goals. Fury had supported Project Oversight, as a means to defend Earth from any future non-Human threat. He had even revealed the project to a disapproving Steve Rogers aka Captain America. But in the end, Fury had misgivings about it. By setting in motion the hijacking of a S.H.I.E.L.D. ship called the Lemurian Star, Fury had an excuse to order one of his top agents, Natasha Romanoff, to accompany Rogers and a STRIKE team to free the ship’s hostages. Natasha’s mission was to download information that proved to be very . . . very important. Moviegoers eventually learned that the files that Natasha had downloaded from the Lemurian Star revealed the history of HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D., Zola’s part in it and the real plans for Project Oversight. 

Think about it. If Fury had not developed misgivings about Project Oversight, no one would have learned the truth about it. And no one would have learned about HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other organizations like the KGB, the World Security Council and the U.S. Senate. Worse, Alexander Pierce would have gone ahead with Project Oversight, which would have led to the deaths of many people. And even though S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen, Fury once again stepped up to the bat and re-created the agency, with Phil Coulson as the new Director. Coulson and his team stood between the world and disaster on several occasions.

Ironically, instead of realizing that Fury's actions in "THE WINTER SOLDIER" had outed HYDRA and stopped both Project Oversight and the Centipede Project; both Steve Rogers in the 2014 movie and Phil Coulson in the current television series had went into rants by criticizing . . . or blaming Fury for failing to learn about HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past. Steve was angry over his discovery that his childhood friend, James "Bucky" Barnes, was still alive (after being declared dead during the last year of World War II) and a brainwashed HYDRA assassin. In his anger, he lashed out at Fury and used the latter as a scapegoat. Coulson was angry over Fury using the dangerous Project T.A.H.I.T.I. to resurrect him. His anger was more justified. Unfortunately, in the midst of his anger, Coulson also blamed Fury for HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson knew nothing of Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and Chester Phillips’ roles in the disastrous Operation Paperclip. But Steve did. He and Natasha had learned everything when they first downloaded the Lemurian Star’s file at an old S.H.I.E.L.D. base. He should have known better. 

But what I found astounding about all of this is that a good number of Marvel fans still continued to blame Nick Fury for HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the latter's downfall. If any of them had viewed that scene between Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff and Arnim Zola's computer image in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER", they should also know better than to blame Fury.

Peggy Carter's Post-World War II Career

PEGGY CARTER’S POST-WORLD WAR II CAREER

Recently, I did a re-watch of Season One of "AGENT CARTER". While watching Scientific Strategic Reserve (SSR) Agent Peggy Carter endure the patronizing slights from her boss and fellow agents, I found myself wondering how she ended up as a mere agent, reduced to acting as the office’s secretary/coffee girl after two years as a code breaker at Bletchley Park and four years in the SSR during World War II. 

I am certain that many of you would answer . . . duh, sexism! Like many women after World War II, Peggy had found her wartime activities dismissed by men, who were more concerned with regulating her and other women to traditional roles. This became doubly so for the likes of her post-war supervisors - Captain John Flynn and Chief Roger Dooley; and the latter's Lead Investigator/Agent, Jack Thompson. It was easier for them to treat Peggy as someone who should have held a secretarial or clerical position at the SSR, instead of an agent.

This was the conclusion I had come to after viewing both the 2013 short film, "MARVEL ONE-SHOT: AGENT CARTER"and Season One of the 2015-2016 series for the first time. It took a recent viewing of Season One for me to harbor some doubts about this story arc for Peggy. Between the creation of the SSR in 1940 and its absorption into the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.) as one of the latter’s subdivision near the end of the 1940s; Colonel Chester Phillips served as Director. If Colonel Phillips had served as Director of the SSR during the 2013 short film, along with Seasons One and Two of "AGENT CARTER", how did Peggy end up being reduced as some lowly field agent whom most of her colleagues dismissed, due to her gender? How did she get into this situation?

While working as a MI-5 agent in 1940, Peggy was loaned out to the SSR. Later that year, she managed to infiltrate HYDRA’s German headquarters at Castle Kaufmann and rescue Dr. Abraham Erskine, creator of the Super Soldier Serum. She also engaged in missions in Brooklyn, New York and the Soviet Union. In June 1943, she was assigned by Phillips to train the potential candidates - one of them, a physically undeveloped Steve Rogers - for Erskine’s serum. By the end of the war, she had more or less become Phillips’ top aide. And following the death (or disappearance) of Steve Rogers, who had been transformed into Captain America by Erskine's serum, she took command of the Howling Commandos and led the operation to mop up the last remnants of HYDRA in Europe. They managed to capture one of the last HYDRA commanders, General Werner Reinhardt, and an artifact in his possession called the obelisk. Within a year of this operation, Peggy found herself first assigned to the SSR's Brooklyn, New York office under Captain John Flynn; and later assigned to the SSR's Manhattan office, which was supervised by Roger Dooley.

So, how did Peggy get into this situation? How did she become the butt of contempt, bigotry and many jokes by her fellow agents? Dismissed as a woman who had no business in what they regarded as a "man's world"? Both Flynn and Dooley must have seen her personnel file and learned about her exemplary wartime activities. Yet, both continued to dismiss her . . . until she managed to discover a deadly liquid called "the Zodiac", while working at the SSR's Brooklyn office. Later, she managed to decrypt an encoded message for the Manhattan office, which was received from a Soviet intelligence group called the Leviathan through its agent, Sascha Demidov's typewriter. Roger Dooley's regard for Peggy increased following Thompson's glowing report of her actions during a mission in the Soviet Union. By the end of Season One's penultimate episode, Dooley, Thompson and the rest of the agents had learned to accept Peggy for the competent intelligence agent that she was. 

After a good deal of thinking, it finally occurred to me what problems I had with this scenario regarding Season One of "AGENT CARTER". One of them happened to be Colonel Chester Phillips, Director of the SSR. The other problems proved to be the series' creators, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely; and Eric Pearson, who wrote the 2013 one-shot film. According to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Wiki website, Colonel Phillips was the sole director of the SSR throughout the 1940s. If so, why did he assign Peggy to serve under a pair of sexists like John Flynn and Roger Dooley? Peggy was one of Phillips' best operatives during the war and his top aide. Hell, she was by his side when he and Steve Rogers led the assault on the last base of operations commanded by HYDRA leader Johann Schmidt during the last year of World War II. It made no sense to me that Phillips would assign Peggy to serve under men who obviously had no true professional regard for her. I found this especially hard to believe, considering that by the end of the decade, Phillips had no problems regarding Peggy as a co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D. And her service under Flynn and Dooley seemed like a step down from her activities during the war. 

When Eric Pearson wrote the one-shot film, did he not consider that Chester Phillips had continued to serve as the SSR's director after the war? Did Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, when they created "AGENT CARTER"? Could any of them consider a different scenario that did not call for Peggy serve the SSR in such a lowly fashion following the war? Peggy could have ended up leading her own field unit . . . and still face the sexism of her colleagues.

But this never happened. And knowing that Chester Phillips continued to serve as Director of the SSR throughout the 1940s, I found the troubles - especially the kind of sexism that Peggy Carter had faced as an agent working in New York City during the immediate post-war years somewhat difficult to swallow. I would have found Peggy facing sexism, while serving in a slightly higher position within the SSR's hierarchy easier to believe. Or . . . I would have found Peggy's experiences in New York City easier to swallow if Chester Phillips had been replaced as the SSR's Director following the end of World War II.

Five Favorite Episodes of "AGENT CARTER" Season Two (2016)

Below is a list of my five favorite episodes from ABC's "AGENT CARTER". Created by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the series starred Hayley Atwell as Agent Margaret "Peggy" Carter: 


FIVE FAVORITE EPISODES OF "AGENT CARTER" SEASON TWO (2016)



1. (2.02) "A View in the Dark" - SSR Agent Peggy Carter's investigation into the death of an Isodyne Energy employee in Los Angeles ends up with huge ramifications; when the wife of Isodyne's owner, Hollywood actress Whitney Frost and another employee from the company, Dr. Jason Wilkes (who has volunteered to help Peggy), are exposed to the Zero Matter from the company's particle accelerator.





2. (2.07) "Monsters" - While Peggy plans a rescue mission for former Leviathan agent Dottie Underwood, who had been captured in the previous episode, Whitney Frost covers up her murder of husband Calvin Chadwick and some members of the Council of Nine, a secret organization of U.S. industrialists. Whitney tortures Dottie into revealing why Peggy is interested in the Zero Matter and sets a trap that involves Jason Wilkes, along with Edwin and Anna Jarvis.





3. (2.05) "The Atomic Job" - Peggy and her colleagues must find a way to prevent Whitney Frost and Calvin Chadwick from stealing and using an atomic blast to test the Zero Matter.





4. (2.03) "Better Angels" - Whitney Frost convinces hubby Calvin Chadwick to frame Jason Wilkes as a Communist spy, while Peggy's investigation of Isodyne and the Zero Matter puts her in conflict with SSR Director Jack Thompson and War Department official Vernon Masters, who is also a member of the Council of Nine.





5. (2.06) "Life of the Party" - When Peggy realizes she cannot save Jason Wilkes on her own, she turns to former adversary Dottie Underwood for help, while Whitney Frost makes a move to control the deadly Zero Matter.

"AGENT CARTER" Season Two (2016) Photo Gallery

Below are images from Season Two of the ABC series, "AGENT CARTER". Created by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the series stars Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter: 


"AGENT CARTER" SEASON TWO (2016) Photo Gallery