If Aunt May made Spiderman's costume

Mark Newport's knitted batman suit is at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC, along with some of his other pieces. It's a very small exhibit, but it is fun, and since the Smithsonian doesn't charge admittance, it is worth droppingn by next time you are in the area and have a few minutes to kill.

Newport's pieces, all knitted, are purposely oldly proportioned and ill-fitting; in short, a caricature of the sleek and colorful outfit I imagine myself wearing while saving the world. (Although there is a very long outfit that I think would work out well with Mr. Fantastic's talents.) It's a fun melange of things from childhood: comic book characters, silly pajamas, and lumpy sweaters. The placard at the Renwick says that his work plays on gender stereotypes by mixing knitting with comic book heroes. I wonder if it also serves as a metaphor for how many men feel about pressure to meet masculine stereotypes: they try to act out those roles, to put on the superhero costume, but in the end they feel frumpy and lumpy and somehow not masculine at all. I wish that there were a corresponding art project for women, serving as an allegory for how we feel when we try to live up to the pressure to be elegant, beautiful and sexy, and end up falling over in our stillettos. 

Here, Mark Newport knits in his knitted Spiderman suit, which is unfortunately not among those at the Renwick