Review of Sherrie A. Inness (ed.): Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture.

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review: 

This collection of essays is a testimony of a relevantly recent efflorescence of tough women in mass media. As Sherrie A. Inness, its editor, states in the introductory chapter, the book is a natural continuation of numerous studies about the impact of tough women on popular culture, such as her own publication Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture (1999), her edited anthology Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls' Cultures (1998), or Martha McCaughey and Neal King's compilation, Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies (2001). Whereas these collections focus on the earlier hard-boiled protagonists from the 1980s and 1990s-including Sarah Connor of "Terminator", Ripley of "Alien" or Thelma and Louise-Inness's most recent book analyzes images of tough heroines from the last decade, exploring the cultural role these strong women really play in contemporary society. As the essays delineated in continuation corroborate, tough women are still designed to appeal to a primarily male audience, since they are expected to be womanly, physically attractive and heterosexually appealing. On the other hand, their sex appeal is not reminiscent of traditional passivity, as these heroines challenge the patriarchal social structure by defending other women and fighting the men who threaten them. These female protagonists exhibit aggressive behavior, quick wit, and intellectual skills, an array of attributes allotted traditionally to men. They become popular heroines and as such, they shake up women's role in American pop culture.