How do these women depart from traditional representations of femininity?
Ripley and Sarah Conner or even Trinity will be useful in comparing with typical sexually objectified action women such as Lara Croft or Elektra or Resident Evil.



In 'Gender, Sexuality and Toughness: The Bad Girls of Action Films and Comic Books' interesting comments are made: are women allowed to access a posisition of power, or are they instead further fetishized as dangerous sex objects? Characters such as Sarah Conner or Ripley are popular not for their beauty, but for their ruthlessness, masculine traits and appearences in the genre. It could be fair to say that these characters are just enacting masculinity, or are they just strong women, who face up to the threat, not prancing around in a dominatrix? The action genre is dominated by the male, female's are usually the 'princess' or wife who gets killed, in order to fuel the males revenge mission. In the overall picture males usually commit violent acts and handle the weapons etc, so its surely going to be hard for female's to delve into a very much masculine dominated genre.