
Bitch Planet is a story about Penelope, a young African-American woman, struggling with being accepted for who she is. The theme of this comic was to show you that when you are different from the norm, the people of this world will try to conform you to the norm or just ridicule you for your difference.

The first thing the author accomplished was giving you a view of Penelope. This sets up how differently she looks to the reader. She gets right into it on the very first page. She’s massive and very masculine. She has an unusual hair style which is half shaven and half curls and a very unwarming face which looks like she’s always angry at the world. In this comic the author subtly shows you what is considered the “norm”.  Every other female character, besides Penelope grandmother, is the prototype woman and what the author wants to portray as the normal American woman. You have Mother Siebertling, the women splitting the muffing at the diner, and the women on the television screen at the diner. All these characters come in at different times within the story but they all share similar features. They are all Caucasian, slender, nicely kept woman. This is very different from the appearance of Penelope, which is ultimately the reason for her being judged throughout the story.

Now what I would like to focus on is the various instances of her being judged and what’s happening in these scenes to help build that interpretation. On page 177 it starts with one of the fathers reading aloud Penelope charges. On the fourth picture the guy then looks up at the inmate and says “GOOD GOD WOMAN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOURSELF.” (Deconnick 177). Along with this statement the character is making a shocked and disgusted facial expression. This reaction is generated by him finally laying eyes on Penelope and her physical appearance. What helps build this assumption that the guy is appalled by Penelope appearance is the strategical placement of the two pictures right before it. The second and third pictures on the page shows you how the guy is focusing on reading the paper and have not yet laid eyes on Penelope and when he finally does on the fourth picture he acts out. Now on the fifth picture you get to see the rest of the guys who are labeled as “the fathers” and they display a mixture of facial expressions. You see shocked, confused, angry, curious and even a few terrified faces which are all a result of viewing Penelope. This helps you see how Penelope is viewed by other characters and how she is different from what they are accustom to seeing. 

Next on page 188 with have the ending of a scene where Penelope is being lecture by Mother Siebertling. This is another instance of where you see the main character not being accepted. Here is where Mother Siebertling makes the comparison of how Penelope is like her hair. Mother Siebertling is telling Penelope her hair refuses to behave just like her and is trying to change it right there on the spot. In this scene Penelope’s hair actually represents her as a person so the author makes sure to show Penelope from the shoulders up so the reader can get a good view of Penelope’s hair. After getting told that people don’t know what to make of her hair because they don’t know wat it is, Penelope defensively responds “… AIN’T IT ENOUGH TO KNOW WHO I AM?” (DeConnick 188). What makes this hair analogy vital is that Mother Siebertling is trying to change the hair just as she tries to change Penelope. What makes the analogy even more interesting is the flat iron. We all know females uses flat irons to straighten their hair, this is Mother Siebertling subtly telling Penelope that I will straighten you out just like she’s about to do her hair.

Lastly we have page 194 where Penelope is in the middle of a flashback where she’s working in a diner. As we all know this is the scene where the two guys watching the feed is making fun of Penelope about here physical appearance. There’s a lot of things going on in this particular section of the comic besides the jokes by the two guys. Penelope is also being annoyed by the prototype woman, as I said earlier, that she has been repeatedly judged for not looking or acting like them. These are the two women on the television screen and also the three women splitting a muffin in the diner. This really angers Penelope and the layout of the pictures on this page and the subsequent pages creates a buildup of her anger and it dramatize her explosion. The author uses a nifty pattern to show you how each character in the scene is adding to her anger. It’s sort of like a 1-2 pattern where every other character in the scene is 1 and Penelope 2. Along with that you have Penelope punching the dough which helps you gauge how angry she is. The enlargement of the sound of her fist hitting dough helps the reader get a sense of the amount of force she is using.

Penelope possesses many different features we’re not accustom too from our typical woman. The massive size, the unusual hairdo, and the low tolerance for disrespect to name a few. But out of all of those qualities the ability to genuinely accept you for who you are and not try to change yourself has to be the most out of this world quality of them all. Especially in a society where we are all slaves to chasing physical perfection.
