So Spidey being the head of high tech company is more relatable than him being married?
Asked by Anonymous
mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker:
Yep!
According to the National Center of Health Statistics, over 70% of Americans aged 25 - 44 have been married at least once. Peter Parker is 28 according to Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #1; he’ll be 29 or close to it in Vol. 4 thanks to the eight month time skip. That’s the average age when an American man marries.
Worldwide, billionaires make up 0.000033% of the population.
So someone’s math is off.
As is someone’s use of the word “relatable.” Marriage indeed made Peter relatable, as a very large swathe of the population has a reasonable expectation to be married or to have been married at some point in their life, no matter their current age - or gender, or race, or religion, or class, or educational status, and now sexual orientation.
Most people do not have a reasonable expectation to be a billionaire businessman. And it’s a status still mostly reserved mostly for white males of a certain educational and social class.
What the apparent new status quo does is not make Peter relatable - that’s a laughable and nonsensical assertion - but it does turn Peter into an aspirational figure for a certain sect of males. So really, for once drop the pretense and properly call Peter what he is becoming: a male midlife crisis fantasy. There’s even a sports car, for cliche’s pathetic sake.
Not to mention Peter canonically is over 30 and many people can relate to a married character merely by virtue of knowing people who are married (like idk, their parents?)
Marriage or serious relationships aren’t something necesarilly universally relatable but it is an incredibly far reaching human experience and thus more than appropriate for Spider-Man to showcase and go through, just like going to High School was.
As you say, being a billionaire playboy isn’t. It’s relatable only in so far as large swathes of people have fantasized about living that life.
Throw in the ladies on both arms as part of the midlife crisis. Which especially poignant considering Slott is nearing 50.
You know when Stan was in his 30s-40s and possibly hitting his midlife…he co-created Spider-Man and the rest of the Marvel universe.
Yep.
Also, can I just say: what a really misogynistic attitude toward marriage. Not to mention sexist, because it’s presuming only males can find Peter Parker relatable, thus the boring, cliched and trite white middle class male midlife crisis tropes. While I guess we females get Jessica Drew, pregnant for no real reason except to drive clicks (and to give chiropractors a poster for their offices to illustrate spinal column extreme don’ts). It’s certainly not consistent with Jessica’s established character, at all. But she’s a GURL, so deep down she desires nothing more than to be pregnant and barefoot, amirite?
(I think Stan Lee has yet to hit midlife. He’ll outlive us all.)