Synopses & Reviews
Xena, Buffy, Lara Croft, La Femme Nikita. The women of pop culture are center stage and tougher than ever.
Action Chicks is a groundbreaking collection highlighting the heroines who fascinate us. What can they tell us about how popular culture depicts women? Do the characters escape traditional gender role expectations? Or do they adhere to sexual, racial, ethnic, and class stereotypes? The essays in
Action Chicks provide a new look at these icons and their relationship to the popular media machine. This is a thought-provoking anthology that is bound to change how we think about gender and toughness.
Review
"Action Chicks is insightful, provocative, and fun to read. From action figures to video games, this book explains who the chicks are and what they mean. Trenchant and compelling analysis."--Robin Roberts, Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies, Louisiana State University author of
Sexual Generations: Star Trek:The Next Generation and
Ladies First: Women in Music Videos"Lara Croft and Barb Wire: Role models or boy toys? Xena and Buffy: Why did they have to die? Action chicks are here--in movies and TV, in comics and video games--in our lives, and they're not going away, nor do we want them to go away. Aside from the obvious-- that if La Femme Nikita can be buffed and beautiful, kick butt and wear fabulous clothes, so can we--what message do these women have for us? In ten mind-opening chapters, Action Chicks, takes on the positive and the negative of tough babes from comic books to the World Wrestling Federation, and gave this Xena fan enough meaty subject matter to chew on that I didn't feel hungry after reading the book."--Trina Robbins, author of From Girls to Grrrlz and The Great Women Cartoonists
About the Author
Sherrie A. Inness is Professor of English at Miami University. She is the author/editor of several books including
Disco Divas: Women, Gender, and Popular Culture in the 1970s,
Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food, and
Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls' Cultures.
Table of Contents
"Boxing Gloves and Bustiers": New Images of Tough Women--Sherrie A. Inness * Lara's Lethal and Loaded Mission: Transposing Reproduction and Destruction--Claudia Herbst * Gender, Sexuality, and Toughness: The Bad Girls of Action Film and Comic Books--Jeffrey A. Brown * "It's a Girl Thing": Tough Female Action Figures in the Toy Store--Sherrie A. Inness * Embodying an Image: Gender, Race, and Sexuality in
La Femme Nikita--Charlene Tung * Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Defiant Women, Decadent Men, Objects of Power, and
Witchblade--David Greven * The Cruelest Season: Female Heroes Snapped into Sacrificial Heroines--Sara Crosby * Can No Cage Hold Her Rage? Gender, Transgression, and the World Wrestling Federation's Chyna-Dawn Heinecken * Tough Love: Mamas, Molls, and Mob Wives--Marilyn Yaquinto * "Tough Enough": Female Friendship and Heroism in
Xena and
Buffy--Sharon Ross * Little Miss Tough Chick of the Universe:
Farscape's Inverted Sexual Dynamics--Renny Christopher