Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970-2006

With actress Pam Grier's breakthrough in Coffy and Foxy Brown, women entered action, science fiction, war, westerns and martial arts films--genres that had previously been considered the domain of male protagonists. This ground-breaking cinema, however, was--and still is--viewed with ambivalence.

While women were cast in new and exciting roles, they did not always arrive with their femininity intact, often functioning both as a sexualized spectacle and as a new female hero rather than fem...