Action Girl

So much for Disney girls only being damsels in distress

There was a time when the vast majority of women in media who weren’t ugly, evil, or both, did nothing more than sit around, be pretty and let the hero save them from the dragon, riding of in the sunset with them. Or baking them a cake.  That time has since passed. While the damsel in distress is still used in some settings, and gender issues have not left media entirely, the last decades has seen a huge increase of female characters who are not scared of getting their hands dirty and kicking as much, or even more, ass as their male cast members.

These characters come in a wide variety of flavours, from cat-suit clad sexy spies to friendly moms who go mama bear-mode when their children are in danger, all share one trait, and that is their capability of dishing out some serious ass-whooping. This stock character actively defies the ‘women stay in the kitchen’ attitude that is associated with traditional female gender roles. However, the character itself is not without gender issues of its own, depending on the way it is handled. Some action girls are subject to objectification and are mostly in the show because their hot; after all, running around performing martial arts, sword fighting, gun slinging or spell casting can’t help but keeping you in shape. Additionally, there is sometimes a correlation between level of viciousness and badassery and moral standards. Dark action girls fighting on the villain’s side get more action, but it seems to imply that good girls can be part of some of the action, but shouldn’t overindulge. On the other hand, there’s the faux action girl, who is stated to be an action girl and to be on par with the guys, but somehow always ends up being kidnapped, curb-stomped or for whatever reason in need of saving or excluded from the actual fighting.

As illustrated with the above picture, Disney’s animated films have increasingly shown characters like this; early works such as Snow White and Cinderella showed rather passive heroines, as opposed to characters such as Mulan (who saves the whole of frickin’ China) and Esmeralda (remember those ten guards who failed rather miserably in capturing her? Also, she stood her own quite nicely against Phoebus) from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Some other examples:

Izumi Curtis, a bear-wrestling housewife 

from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Eowyn of The Lord of the Rings is no man, as the Witch King would do well to remember

Kung Fu Panda’s Tigress (nearly) putting the Dragon Warrior out of a job

Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender never misses out on any action. 

Bonus points for being a tiny girl. And blind.

Lucy Lui as the compelling dark action girl O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill

Van Hellsing’s Anna Valarious apparently only has the sword for show: 

Out of the ten significant brawls in the film, she’s won two