Last week, the United Nations held a ceremony to showcase their new honorary ambassador to champion the empowerment of women and girls, Wonder Woman.

This reveal came with both criticism and praise. While many people support the UN’s choice of ambassador, many also feel that this was a poor choice.

The UN’s decision to have Wonder Woman as the honorary ambassador was announced earlier this month, and since then a petition has been started by UN employees asking the UN secretary general to reconsider the distinction.

Their petition cites concerns over her sexualized image and concerns that her character is not culturally encompassing.

During the official ceremony, some employees who signed the petition held a silent protest, with their fists raised and back turned.

As the honorary ambassador, Wonder Woman’s image will be used as part of the UN’s campaign on the subject and DC Comics is developing a Wonder Woman comic that will focus on empowerment, justice and equality and be available in multiple languages.

While I love Wonder Woman, I do not think she should be the one to spearhead this movement for the UN.

I do believe that Wonder Woman is an amazing role model for people, especially women and girls, but the problem is that she is fictional.

Even though her character is one that is inspiring and fights for justice, there is no real life physical person that can be attributed to her.  During the ceremony commemorating Wonder Woman as an honorary ambassador, people were only able to take their pictures with a life-size cutout of her.

There are so many real life figures that they could have picked from to spearhead this movement, such as Malala Yousafzai or Amal Clooney.  Both women have fought for the empowerment of women and would be able to be a figure that could travel around the world to advocate and champion this cause.  They could also speak with world leaders on how to advance and further the empowerment of women.

Overall, while I think Wonder Woman is a good role model, I do not believe she is the right person to be the face of the United Nations Women Empowerment Campaign.