The first decade of the 21st century offers a complicated set of contradictions for analyzing representations of women in the media. These tensions come from changing ideas in feminist inquiry. Newer ideas accept and even celebrate displays of femininity, sexuality, and beauty through revealing clothes, styled hair, and makeup as forms of empowerment. Older ideas disregard the personal choices behind these displays as just reinforcing oppressions through dominant media. These tensions do not reduce readings of a representation but instead encourage negotiated ones. These multiple readings allow reconsiderations and appropriations of old stereotypes and revisions of them.

Mainstream films of the early part of the 21st century in some ways reify traditional stereotypes and roles, while at the same time adjusting to allow the [Page ...