To be a Supergirl

Originally published January 5, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1416

The following arrived via email the other day:

I’ve always wanted to be Supergirl. I’m 12 years old, my name is Ashley. I have prayed and prayed for it to come true but nothing ever happened. So one day I went to school this boy named Justin who says he was Superman and he could fly that day I was wearing my Supergirl shirt. He looked at my shirt and laughed. No one believes in me. I don’t even believe in me. So please let me know if you can help me or if you could believe in me. It makes me sad to think about how me myself doesn’t believe in me. Please write me back.

Your Friend Always,

Ashley

We live in difficult and cynical times, Ashley. It is hard for anyone to believe in anyone else. For all I know, you’re not a 12-year-old girl at all, but an older fan who thinks it would be funny to pretend he or she is a young, confused, and frustrated girl, looking for advice.

But you know what? I’m going to proceed in the hope that you’re exactly who and what you say you are. Because, if you are, then you certainly deserve a response. And if you aren’t, well—maybe there’s another Ashley out there with dreams and aspirations of being a Supergirl. Someone who looks to the clouds and wishes she could dance among them or sees bad things happen to good people and knows only frustration because she feels helpless.

There’s something about the world that you have to understand, Ashley: It’s easier to knock things down than to build them up. It’s easier to destroy than create. Look at a sand castle, which takes hours to construct and then is dashed by a single wave. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

And it’s easier to be jealous of things that someone else does than to do great things yourself. When people look at others’ accomplishments, often they look, not at the positive aspects of it, but, instead, at all the things that they think are wrong with it. Yes, there is such thing as constructive criticism. When your teachers or your parents tell you how to improve yourself or your work, they’re doing it in order to help you do better in the future. But when other children criticize you or make fun of you, often they’re trying to build themselves up by tearing you down.

I’d like to tell you that they’ll stop doing it when they grow up. Some of them will. Many of them won’t. There will always be people around, even when you’re an adult, who will think that it’s somehow an acceptable thing to make fun of you. Many of them will call you names or say all manner of cruel things for no good reason. They do this because making you feel bad about yourself makes them feel good about themselves. Those people who can’t be big themselves try to make others feel small, so they think they look big in comparison.

But they can only do that if you let them.

Are you Supergirl, Ashley? I don’t know. I don’t know you, really. Can you be Supergirl? Absolutely.

Does that mean you can jump off a building and fly? No, definitely not. Can someone shoot a gun at you and you laugh while bullets bounce off you? Again, definitely not.

But that’s not what Supergirl is about.

When Supergirl first showed up in the comics, 40 years ago (back when your mom and dad were little, or maybe even before they were born), it wasn’t her powers that made her so special. Her powers weren’t that different from Superman’s. What made her special was her innocence. Her ready smile, her dedication to helping people, her determination to serve as a “guardian angel” to other kids, and her belief that she could make a difference in the world. That she could make it a better place. And she did.

I’m sure that other kids in your school don’t think that Supergirl exists. But when Supergirl first started out, she was Superman’s “secret.” Nobody knew she existed. That didn’t stop her from doing good deeds, from aiding people in trouble, from making things better for the children around her. It didn’t matter whether people believed in her. Because she believed in herself, and from that belief she gained strength. Not the kind of strength you use to lift cars. A more important strength: the strength that comes from knowing that you’re helping people instead of hurting them. The kind of strength that makes you so big, so sure of yourself, that not all the laughing children in the world can bring you down.

You want to do the things Supergirl can do? That’s easy. You want to be able to fly? Dream of being a pilot. Bend steel? A welder. Faster than a speeding bullet? A racecar driver. All things are possible if you’re willing to do the work to make it happen.

And as for those who laugh at the idea of a Supergirl: Do not let them bother you. For if you truly are a Supergirl, as I think you can be, then you can fly above them, and not all their words or laughter or taunts can pull you down. Rather than be angry with them, you should feel sorry for them. For they are not people of vision. They are not the type who will climb mighty mountains or do great things. They are the ones who will remain below, while you soar with the eagles, the ones who know deep down that they do not have the vision or insight or drive to do what you can do, but can only carp at the accomplishments of others. Don’t get mad at the Justins of the world; instead, try to provide an example of what they can aspire to, whether they realize what you’re doing or not. Lead by example.

Every time you rise above their taunts or laughter, you’re being a Supergirl. Every time you let their words bounce off you as if they were harmless bullets thumping against steel-hard skin, you’re being a Supergirl. Every time you watch out for a little kid crossing the street or help your folks around the house without being asked, or read just for the sake or reading and expanding your mind, you’re being a Supergirl.

Every time you smile and greet a policeman making his rounds or thank the mailman for delivering the mail—every time you volunteer to read to a blind person or help out at an old folks’ home or bundle up clothes to give to the needy or work in any and every way that you can work to make the world a better place for the people in it, that’s how you can be a Supergirl.

Supergirl lives to help people. The “S” on her chest stands for “sacrifice” and “support” and “service” and “supreme effort,” and everything that you do in that spirit brings you that much closer, not only to the Supergirl who is, but also the Supergirl you can be.

Someone laughs at you because of your beliefs? Join the club, Ashley. Join that group of inventors and far-thinkers and dreamers who had mundane people with no imagination laughing at them, convinced that they were wasting their foolish time. Join an assembly that includes Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Fulton, Albert Einstein, the Wright Brothers, and others too numerous to name. None of them could take three running steps and fly or laugh off bullets. But they all shared a power that is Supergirl’s greatest strength: the power to look at the world and see it, not as it is, but as it could be. If you do that, and never stop believing in yourself, you can be as super as any of them.

Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.