Abstract
The female action hero has received significant popular and academic attention. Whether gracing the posters of academic conferences on postfeminism1 or the cover of Vogue (April 2002), she is a catalyst for discussions of feminism, female agency and femininity. Images of girls ‘kicking ass’ proliferate in magazines and marketers have exploited the market potential of postfeminist girls who think it is cool that girls can kick ass — but are more interested in purchasing the designer stiletto the girl is kicking ass in. Stephanie Mencimer boasts that
the muscle-bound stars of the action-film blockbusters of the ’80s and ’90s have found themselves ungraciously drop-kicked out of the genre by, of all things, a bunch of girls. Girl power flicks like Charlie’s Angels, Crouching Tiger, and Tomb Raider are topping the $100 million mark once dominated by men like Schwarzenegger. (15)
For my mother, Vera, one of two women in the first Canadian police graduating class that assigned women to regular patrol duties.
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© 2007 Cristina Lucia Stasia
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Stasia, C.L. (2007). ‘My Guns Are in the Fendi!’. In: Gillis, S., Howie, G., Munford, R. (eds) Third Wave Feminism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593664_18
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