Tough Girls : : Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture / / Sherrie A. Inness.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Pennsylvania Press Package Archive 1898-1999
• VerfasserIn: Inness, Sherrie A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [1999]; ©1999
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Language: English
• Series: Feminist Cultural Studies, the Media, and Political Culture
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) :; 16 illus.

Tough girls are everywhere these days. Whether it is Ripley battling a swarm of monsters in the Aliens trilogy or Captain Janeway piloting the starship Voyager through space in the continuing Star Trek saga, women strong in both body and mind have become increasingly popular in the films, television series, advertisements, and comic books of recent decades. In Tough Girls, Sherrie A. Inness explores the changing representations of women in all forms of popular media and what those representations suggest about shifting social mores. She begins her examination of tough women in American popular culture with three popular television shows of the 1960s and '70s--The Avengers, Charlie's Angels, and The Bionic Woman--and continues through such contemporary pieces as a recent ad for Calvin Klein jeans and current television series such as The X-files and Xena: Warrior Princess. Although all these portrayals show women who can take care of themselves in ways that have historically been seen as uniquely male, they also variously undercut women's toughness. She argues that even some of the strongest depictions of women have perpetuated women's subordinate status, using toughness in complicated ways to break or bend gender stereotypes while simultaneously affirming them. Also of interest-- Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women: The Female Trickster in American Culture Lori Landay

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Beyond Muscles: What Does It Mean to Be Tough? -- Part I. Pseudo-Tough -- 2. Semi-Tough: Emma Peel, Charlie's Angels, the Bionic Woman, and Other Wanna-Bes -- 3. Pretty Tough: The Cult of Femininity in Women's Magazin -- 4. Lady Killers: Tough Enough? -- Part II. When the Going Gets Tough -- 5. A Tough Girl as One of the Boys: Jodie Foster, Gillian Anderson, and the Threat of Masculinity -- 6. Tough Women in Outer Space: The Final Frontier -- 7. Post-Apocalyptic Tough Girls: Has the Road Warrior Met His Match? -- 8. Tough Girls in Comic Books: Beyond Wonder Woman -- 9. A Tough Girl for a New Century: Xena, Warrior Princess -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Acknowledgments -- Index