Push Comes to Shove

New Images of Aggressive Women

Author: Maud Lavin
ISBN: 9780262123099

In the past, more often than not, aggressive women have been rebuked, told to keep a lid on, turn the other cheek, get over it. Repression more than aggression was seen as woman’s domain. But recently there’s been a noticeable cultural shift. With growing frequency, women’s aggression is now celebrated in contemporary culture—in movies and TV, online ventures, and art. In Push Comes to Shove, Maud Lavin examines these new images of aggressive women and how they affect women’s lives. Aggression, says Lavin, is necessary, large, messy, psychological, and physical. Aggression need not entail causing harm to another; we can think of it as the use of force to create change—fruitful, destructive, or both. And over the past twenty years, contemporary culture has shown women seizing this power. Lavin chooses provocative examples to explore the complexity of aggression: the surfer girls in Blue Crush; Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect; the homicidal women in Kill Bill a

Publisher: MIT Press
Publish Date: 2010

Subjects: Art / Criticism & Theory, Art / Subjects & Themes / General, Social Science / Women's Studies

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: Psychology/Emotional Health)