Action Heroes, Female

Scholars have long debated if female action heroes-represented in comics, genre literature, cinema, television series, cartoons, and videogames as strong women, expert fighters, muscular, and independent, [Page 19]but often emotionally fragile-are empowering for women or not. “Tough girls,” inspired by the classical portrayal of the Amazons, were already part of the imagination of modern culture when, in 1941, Wonder Woman, the Amazon super-heroine, made her appearance in comics strips. The introduction of this female action hero, as Mitra C. Emad has pointed out, was related to the social situation created by World War II, when U.S. women took jobs outside of the home and held responsibilities traditionally reserved for men. Subsequent shifts in the representation of action heroines have also been produced or influenced ...