Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture

Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture. Ed. Sherrie A. Inness. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.

The ten essays in this fine collection examine portrayals of the female action hero in contemporary comics, toys, video games, and television. Not surprisingly, the consensus is that stereotypes of gender and sexuality hinder the action woman's potential to model female empowerment. More interesting are the authors' divergent views on other problematic aspects of the "Action Chick."

Claudia Herbst sees complicity between the producers of military, video game, and reproductive technologies. She argues that visual products like Tomb Raider's, Lara Croft are never liberatory; rather, they only represent the sacrilegious abuse of women's maternal and reproductive powers by male militarism and sexual sadism. Other authors similarly venerate essentialized femininity in female action heroes, as long as it arises "naturally"; but if imposed upon-by male producers or by patriarchy-these authors react with criticism that reinforces, rather than challenges, gender divisions....