Meggan, Shapeshifting & Female Beauty Standards

Where most shapeshifters become empowered to choose their aesthetic, Meggan from Marvel’s “Excalibur” possesses shapeshifting abilities that instead serve to explore how (and why) society pressures women to conform to a generic beauty standard. #XMen #Excalibur 1/8

By building her character around insecurity, loneliness, and a deep desire to be loved, Meggan’s aesthetic transformation speaks to panopticism – the ways that society polices individual expression through the threat of isolation/shunning. 2/8

Complicit in all of this is Meggan’s partner, Brian (aka Captain Britain), who enables Meggan’s self-effacing transformations by valuing her for her appearance. Chris Claremont characterizes his love for her as superficial – they connect physically, but not intellectually. 3/8

That superficiality is further emphasized by Brian’s caddish behaviour, first in being a 30yr old man dating a teenager and second in cheating on her, quite openly – even confiding about his infidelity with Nightcrawler, a shared friend of his and Meggan’s. 4/8

Additionally, there is a compelling aspect to how Meggan’s shapeshifting involuntarily aligns her with hegemonic standards of beauty against her will (in a manner that reads somewhat similar to that of Kamala’s involuntary Carol Danvers’ transformation in Ms. Marvel). 5/8

Like Kamala, Meggan is particularly vulnerable to hegemonic norms through her worship of television (in contrast to Kamala’s worship of the Avengers). But Meggan’s lack of real-world lived experience makes it harder for her to question the veneer of media femininity. 6/8

In all of this, Meggan’s powers can be seen to, like Wolverine, put her at odds with her own character arc, which is grounded in self-discovery. Where Logan’s violent tools trap him in a violent life, Meggan’s shallow beauty likewise traps her in a shallow performance. 7/8

This can be powerful, though. Setting the pressures of hegemonic femininity as obstacles for a superhero to overcome can offer readers a platform by which to think about what aesthetic standards they might subconsciously align with and why. 8/8