Grrrl Power Connections

As I was reading "Toughest Chick in the Alien World: 'Girl Power' and the Cartoon Network," I was having flashbacks and making connections to other cartoons, dramas, songs, groups, and fads. Do you all remember the GODDESS craze in the late 90s early 2000s? Every girl-geared store had GODDESS T-Shirts, bumper stickers, posters, and even underwear. The entire fad had the 'girl power' feel with almost unlimited consumer appeal.

Around the same time, The Spice Girls, gave young girls several different "looks" that were girl-power-friendly, but still stereotypical and very sexualized. I also thought of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, which were both network dramas that debuted and aired throughout the early Grrrl Power social movement in the late 90s and early 2000s. I never watched Buffy, but I was an avid Charmed fan.  These shows were followed by ABC's Alias, which stared Jenifer Garner as a butt-kicking secret agent/spy, who also led a double-life. Recently, I watched a Saturday morning episode of Disney's KimPossible with my daughter.  It was not much different from the Cartoon Network shows mentioned in the reading: she is a spy that lives a double-life fighting evil and cheering for the high school squad in between violent brawls. Needless to say we only watched it once. 

One commonality between all of these shows is that the female characters almost always fit the same description: young and thin with big hips, big eyes, and a constant need to shop and talk. And some are more intelligent than others. How is this breaking any molds or stereotypes?  It's actually creating a new stereotype on top of the old stereotypical foundation of homemaker, caretaker, and maker of the man's dinner. Now, we will have to dig our way out from under the new stereotypes created for a new generation of young girls.