Trend: Lady Ass-Kickers

So I am home watching the '3 Stooges Slap Happy Hour' on Spike TV (insert your jokes here), and noticed a lengthy advert for an upcoming movie called Ultraviolet. It is another in the new Hollywood Blockbuster template of action-heroines with big guns and bad-ass martial arts moves (and a bit of low-cut-tight-fitting leather, and spiked heels to boot).


It then occurs to me that the past 10 years have seen a massive barrage of Lady Ass-Kickers. Notice, too, how the Lady Ass-Kicker has become so ubiquitous that she's actually replaced the Blockbuster Hero Guy template that we all grew up on. Muscleheaded Heroes have become an endangered species at the Cineplex.

I suppose the original Lady Ass-Kicker goes back to Jane Fonda in Barbarella.


Fast-forward to the late 70s-80s as Sigorney Weaver portrayed Ripley in Alien (1-4) who defended herself, and a prepubescent girl from the menancing, single-minded, icky phallic invaders who fought to get inside of her (to make them unwilling hosts to more alien spawn). What Ripley specifically brought us was an archetypal image of Strong Lady with Big Guns - a new symbol of strength on par with the male standard. This image was the 70s Virginia Slims woman on steroids - outdoing the corporate and military dudes with a combination of decisiveness, endurance, power, and a fierce moral-compass. This image, at the time, was actually a refreshing change of pace amidst a schedule of overly-muscled dude actioners starring Chuck Norris, Arnold, Stallone and their many cheap clones.



Later, Thelma and Louise arrived and sparked a new gun-toting tough girl prototype that signaled the new sexy.


Since then, the Lady Ass-Kicker has become the new normal in film, she has single-handedly resuscitated the dying tradition of the action-movie - imposing her politically correct ideal of "woman in charge" on the unpolitically correct expectation of gratuitous violence and simplistic storyline. Typical of Hollywood to reframe the same bad movies as being "better" with the mere addition of a tough woman holding the guns.

















But is this trend good or bad? And are these Lady Ass-Kickers truly appealing to women and drawing more women to the action genre (I only notice the ads on Spike and Comedy Central, never on Oxygen and Lifetime)? Or is this simply another compromise to the same male geek consumer who may now get his action and soft porn in one production? And truly, is this Lady Ass-Kicker image indicative of Hollywood's growth since the days of Barbarella?