Action Chicks New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture

Xena, Buffy, Lara Croft. WWF, The Sopranos, Witchblade, La Femme Nikita. The women of pop culture are center stage and as tough as ever. Action Chicks is a groundbreaking collection high-lighting the heroines we've grown to worship-and their impact on society. What can they tell us about women in 2003? How does popular culture depict women? Do the characters escape traditional gender role expectations? Or do they adhere to sexual, racial, ethnic, and class stereotypes? The essays in Action Chicks provide fans with a new look at their favorite icons and their relationship to the popular media machine.

Sherrie A. Inness is Professor of English at Miami University. She is the author/editor of several books including Disco Divas: Women, Gender, and Popular Culture in the 1970s, Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food, and Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls' Cultures.