Where are the female superheroes?

The action-adventure genre has always struggled with the perception and portrayal of women.

It began with complaints of women being severely under-represented. They were deemed too delicate and fragile, the typical damsels in distress. Then they just felt like token stock characters.

While powerful women have populated comic books for decades, that formula has mostly failed on the big screen. A Wonder Woman motion picture has sat in development hell for years, and a TV pilot for the golden-lassoed crusader was recently passed over by all the major networks. Since 2002, when Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” made superhero films the box office draw they are today, there has yet to be a successful superhero franchise based on a woman. But this past year offered some much-needed hope to the cause.

With the release of “The Hunger Games” last March, Hollywood had its first driven and reputable female hero with Jennifer Lawrence’s fiery portrayal of Katniss Everdeen. Based on the popular book series, it isn’t too much of a surprise that the film was one of the highest grossing of the year. Katniss might not be the textbook definition of a “superhero,” but in the vein of fellow literary darling Harry Potter, she’s an archetypal everywoman put through an impossible ringer of struggle and survival.

While “The Hunger Games” never glorifies Lawrence’s, and by extension Katniss’, beauty, many complain modern action-adventure heroines are too sexualized.

In May, we saw the release of 2012’s most successful film, “The Avengers.” Scarlett Johansson played the deadly — and sexy — Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff. While the film is immensely enjoyable, and one of the best of the year, Johansson’s character too often feels like the token gal in the boy’s club. In one shot, the camera pans around all the Avengers as they prepare to battle. Thor wields his mighty hammer, Hulk smashes, Captain America strikes defensibly with his impregnable shield. Then Black Widow cocks a handgun. Really? She brings a gun to a missile fight? Get real.

Similarly, in July’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” Anne Hathaway portrays cat burglar Selena Kyle with oodles of sex appeal. But in this instance, in a colossal franchise with a distinct lack of female charisma, it worked. Yes, she was classically beautiful — not to mention sexy — and slinked around Gotham in a skin-tight leather suit. But she held her own against both Bane and Batman. Her sexuality was a weapon, not a postscript that defined her character.

Maybe this isn’t what feminism is going for in the long run. But it isn’t as if our male superheroes aren’t sexualized as well. Christian Bale, Robert Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire aren’t exactly hard to look at. Plus, they tend to bounce around fighting crime in layers of spandex and chest enhancing breast plates.

Pardon me for having my cake and eating it, too, but it seems to me that our superheroes, regardless of gender, can be evocative, deep characters without losing an ounce of sex appeal. Plus, let’s face it: No one wants to watch a superhero movie where an overweight and paunchy actress or actor squeezes themselves into some hot, skintight number. We’re just not ready for that as a society.