NEW BREED OF FEMALE
ACTION HERO
Copyright 2001 www.tombraiderchronicles.com &
Associated Press
[ May 9th 2001 ]
Associated
Press writer Martha Irvine looks at the growing
trend of female action heros and their relationships
with their male counterparts:
Move
over Wonder Woman. There's a new generation of
tough girl in town - and she's not taking any
guff. From Japan's Powerpuff Girls cartoon to
the new movie "Tomb Raider,'' tough-talking, take-charge
female characters are tossing bad guys all over
movie and TV screens. Some wonder if they might
be taking it a little far by emulating aggressive
behavior traditionally associated with men. But
young, female fans - the same ones who are excelling
more than ever in the classroom and on the athletic
field - seem to like their rough-and-tumble heroines
just fine. Laura Fong, a 14-year-old from Hazlet,
N.J., thinks the characters are "clever'' and
"take action'' when they need to. Paula Garcia,
a freshman at the University of California-Riverside,
says they show that women can do pretty much anything,
"even if it means saving the world.''
And teens
aren't the only ones who think so. "It's a wholly
positive change in my eyes,'' says Emily Donahue,
a 26-year-old Boston resident who believes her
generation, too, has been hungering for a new
kind of role model. "The Barbie doll or Cinderella
image is no longer the goal, because girls are
no longer concerned solely with 'looking pretty'
or waiting for their prince to come.'' The "tough
girl'' phenomenon isn't altogether new. Hard-nosed,
women protagonists began emerging years ago in
the "Alien'' and "Terminator'' films, and on comedian
Roseanne Barr's self-titled TV show. "She broke
every rule for how to be a 'good girl,' from not
apologizing for being fat to making fun of men,''
says Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, a University of Oregon
professor and author of "The Unruly Woman: Gender
and the Genres of Laughter.'' Today, strong female
characters are even more popular, from TV's "Buffy,
the Vampire Slayer'' to the Powerpuff Girls, a
trio of cartoon characters who giggle after walloping
villains. "Tomb Raider,'' set for release in June
and starring Angelina Jolie, promises to bring
yet another to the screen: Lara Croft, a British
archaeologist, photojournalist and adventure-seeking
globe-trotter.
The trend
has everyone from pop culture experts to merchandise
marketers taking note. "Ten years ago, it was
more the waif - the skinny, soft, gentle girl
with little makeup, almost unisex - that young
girls were aspiring to be,'' says Cassie Ederer,
vice president of youth strategy for Convergence
Mediagroup, a San Francisco-based company that
helps companies create products for young people.
"Now you look at it and it's almost the antithesis
- it's healthy, strong, athletic.'' But not everyone's
convinced that women are being portrayed on equal
footing with their male counterparts. Consider
the title character in the syndicated TV series
"Xena: Warrior Princess,'' which is about to end
its six-year run. She's tough and independent
but also scantily clad, notes Sherrie Inness,
author of the book "Tough Girls: Women Warriors
and Wonder Women in Popular Culture.'' And, she
says, America still has a long way to go when
it comes to accepting real-life women who take
strong stands - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and
former Attorney General Janet Reno, for example.
"Even their looks are disparaged,'' says Inness,
an associate professor of English at Miami University
in Oxford, Ohio. Sarah Mercer, a 16-year-old from
Charlotte, N.C., has noticed that, too. "It doesn't
seem the same for men,'' she says. "It just seems
like women have to work a lot more and be more
manipulative to get power.''
Movies
like "Charlie's Angels'' don't help, she says,
because they perpetuate her feeling that "pretty
women get ahead quicker.'' And there are other
worries. Timothy Shary, who studies youth images
in film, says he was troubled when he watched
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'' - a movie in
which women warriors take the lead. The theater
was full of young men who were "cheering on the
girl-girl violence.'' "There's a perversity to
that on some level,'' says Shary, a professor
at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "It's
relatively bloodless fighting, but it still hinges
on an interesting drive toward physical violence
and conflict.'' Some wonder if such interest might
encourage girls - already becoming more violent,
according to federal crime statistics - to be
more aggressive. Fong, the New Jersey teen, doesn't
think so. "I think in real life, girls are more
interested in having friends and being accepted
than being bullies,'' she says.
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