The day I meet Wonder Woman by the seaside is a perfect beach day, bounded on each side by unbroken chains of perfect beach days. The sun is splendidious. The sky is a show-off blue. The people of Israel are wearing white sneakers and performing vigorous calisthenics in the free fitness parks that stipple the Tel Aviv shoreline in primary colors. The water is as warm and as salty as a basin of tears. The egg sandwich is unexpected.

Wonder Woman has brought me the egg sandwich wrapped in cellophane, and when she arrives, she delivers it to me as confidently as if I had specifically requested it. She also packed me a fluffy white bath towel from her own home. Wonder Woman is used to taking care of everything because she is the protector of mankind.

Here in the real world, Wonder Woman is Gal Gadot, and off-camera Gal Gadot's personal style is like that of a desert-island inhabitant who receives regular airdrops of au courant garments from the world's top luxury fashion houses. She arrives at the beach with her hair in a bun, wearing old rubber flip-flops, denim cut-offs so distressed as to be inconsolable, and a couture black swimsuit boasting cap sleeves; leather; a deep, plunging bustier neckline; and a field's worth of laser-cut and embroidered flowers and leaves. It's a bathing costume designed to be worn more in theory than in practice, yet it also seems to function as Gadot's casual swimwear for bumming around. I recognize it from a recent Instagram post of Gadot in a pool with friends. When I mention this, she contorts her face in mock misery: "I cannot believe I wore the same swimsuit twice!" I express my concern she'll be spotted by fans, because she has essentially arrived at the beach wearing a Gal Gadot costume. She laughs and flops down under the shade of a public cabana.

The most beautiful thing about Gal Gadot is her smile—a real one, devastating, whipped out frequently to the peril of those around her—but the other stuff is very good, too. She has features that make the notion of cosmetics seem garish, like using Hi-Liter to trace over a butterfly's wings. Her height—she's just over 5'10"—and her leanness behave like complementary colors, her stature emphasizing her slenderness and vice versa. Gadot's thinness doesn't make her seem small, though. She has the bone structure of a delicately carved statue, but her physical presence is more akin to the rod that runs up the statue's back to absorb lightning strikes.

She is spotted. She is spotted over and over again, probably a dozen times before we leave. She obliges virtually everyone, perhaps calculating that it will take longer to disappoint a fan than to smile and pose. Her trick is to offer an immediate "Thanks!" the instant a photo has been taken—her polite signal the interaction has concluded.

It's already as hot as a charcoal grill in an attic on the sun, but at 10 A.M., there are few enough people at this beach on the far outskirts of Tel Aviv that everyone can fit within the cool, gray squares of shade provided by a smattering of tented canopies. The catch is that you have to share your square with strangers, which is why Gadot and I are joined first by an old man and, a little later, by a woman in her late 50s, who sits behind Gadot and faces the sea. How do the logistics of personal safety change when you abruptly become a global public figure?

"I'm much more aware and alert," Gadot says, stretching out on the sand. "I don't want to seclude myself from society. I want to be part of everyone, and I enjoy talking to random people sometimes. It's easier for me here [in Israel], 'cause profiling people is really easy for me." She gestures toward a group of about 20 young people in a neighboring cabana, many of whom have already asked her for photos.