Ok this makes it even more annoying – the Wonder Woman thing was suggested by Warner Bros. and DC Comics. NPR reports:

…the decision has outraged many women’s rights advocates, including hundreds who’ve signed a petition against it.

“It’s an insult, frankly,” says Anne Marie Goetz, a professor of global affairs at New York University and a former adviser on peace and security issues to the United Nations agency, U.N. Women. She says a big issue is the timing.

The U.N.’s anointing of Wonder Woman has actually been in the works since last spring. That’s when Warner Bros. and DC Comics — which owns rights to the character — approached the U.N. about celebrating her 75th birthday and an upcoming movie with a joint social media campaign promoting women’s rights through tweets and Facebook callouts.

But news of the plan only started to filter to women’s rights advocates over the past week — right on the heels of a disappointing, yearlong grass-roots effort to get the U.N. to choose its first female secretary-general.

“This was months and months of campaigning by feminist organizations around the world for a woman to be selected,” says Goetz.

And the result? “No, girls, you can’t be secretary-general of the UN, but you can be represented by a comic book character in a bustier and underpants! Run along now.”

Seven women — including a prime minister and other highly qualified individuals — were in the running, an unprecedented number. But earlier this month the Security Council went with a man — Antonio Guterres. So the selection of Wonder Woman to represent women’s issues for the U.N. came off to Goetz and others as a sort of demeaning consolation prize.

“It’s frivolous, it’s fatuous and it reduces an extremely serious human rights problem experienced by half of the world to a cartoon,” she says.

And not just any cartoon, adds Goetz. Wonder Woman in her view looks like a Barbie/Playboy pinup. Like most female comic action figures, she has big breasts bursting out of a skimpy outfit and an impossibly tiny waist.

“The message to girls is that you are expected to meet a male standard in which your significance is reduced to your role as a sexual object,” says Goetz.

Exactly. And the fact that some girls and women don’t notice that that’s a message just makes the message that much more powerful. It certainly does not demonstrate that it’s not a message at all.

Maher Nasser, the U.N. official who essentially brokered Wonder Woman’s appointment, says he and other U.N. colleagues were aware of those concerns.

“I mean we have had these discussions, of course, with our partners,” says Nasser, who directs the Outreach Division of the U.N.’s Department of Public Information, which handles partnerships with celebrities and entertainment figures.

Cool! He was aware of the concerns, and he ignored them! Because hey, they’re not his concerns, so who cares, right?

But then, boringly and frustratingly, NPR talks about and to Jill Lepore, and the point gets lost. Typical NPR.