"Empowering" Women of the 90's

The 90's was not a good time for women in terms of action movies...I mean, probably for other reasons involving actual problems, but that's a can of worms for another time. The 90's was an odd time in the media, it's the time when they wanted to represent other groups and cultures except they had no idea how to do it, nor did they want to risk losing what was considered the major demographic (Straight dudes). So this odd compromise was made for what I call "Babe Women" basically, take an incredibly sexy woman, have her kicks someone's ass and then when someone points out that she's sexy she goes "don't call me babe". There's a paradox with these women, they don't want men to sexualize them, yet they dress in very tight and revealing clothing, i mean take a look at that picture, i doubt she's wearing that for practical use, hell the heels alone make it a bad choice for fighting gear.

And this was the paradox, straight dudes ruled (and still kinda do) the Hollywood industry, they didn't know how to write strong women because they knew very little about how to write women, especially in a way that felt realistic yet also action packed. Now we could get into the semantics of it all and talk about the male gaze and all that shit, but i personally don't buy into it, just because these days I feel like it's used more of an excuse to complain about any sexy woman in film rather than when it is an actual problem (Barb Wire is a good example of when it IS a problem). Like I said, they wanted to appeal to women by making these tough characters who can kick ass, but didn't want to alienate the other half of the population so they also made them sexy while doing it, thus they go for two half measures, pleasing no one because they overthought it. Back in the 80's, while there were far less female action stars, when there were, they didn't care about appealing to different demographics, they just wrote an awesome character that happened to be female (Ripley is a great example of this).

I can only think of a handful of badass women from the 90's that didn't have sex appeal as a selling point, like Sarah Conner, Buffy, Mulan. And do you know why these people succeeded as empowering women? Because that wasn't the point. These women weren't presented with Hollywood saying "These are your empowering women!" they were badass characters who ended up with that honour. I'm sure they were written with the intention of being good role models, but nothing in their films/shows would suggest it, no one is trying to force it on their audience or say you have to be inspired by them. They just present them the way they should be, cool without having to be told that they're cool.

So even though people still complain that this problem is still going on (which it is) atleast be grateful that it's a lot better than it was back then.

-Danny