Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture.(Book Review)

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. For example, Sharon Ross celebrates female communities in the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where harmonious consensus opposes male individualism and conflict. Like Herbst, Ross argues from unexamined generalizations about gender, leaving neither male nor female characters much room to demonstrate any but the most stereotypical polarized behaviors.

Other authors are as pessimistically determined to take for granted the female action hero's inability to transcend society's ideological constraints on gender, sexuality, race, or class. Charlene Tung (La Femme Nikita), David Greven (Witchblade), and Sarah Crosby (Dark Angel, Xena, and Buffy) all see the Action Chick balanced on a knife edge, where the combination of physical power and sexuality, which make her compelling, can also, as Crosby puts it, "snap" her back into a role of sacrificial exploitation. Inness examines the stubborn attachment of toy makers and parent-consumers to conventional gender representation in children's action ...