Introduction: Bad Girls in Popular Culture

Abstract

Western literature, legend, and culture are replete with representations of the “Bad Girl.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the initial introduction of women into western cultural narrative coincides with the introduction of transgressive women: those who challenge, ignore, or cross over the patriarchal limits intended to circumscribe them. The essays included in this volume focus on the representation of transgressive girls and women in television, popular fiction, and mainstream film from the mid-twentieth to the early twenty-first century. The assessments of the writers vary as much as the actions, and ultimate fates, of the protagonists. What remains a constant among all of these bad girls, however, is the will to cross the boundaries of behavior deemed, by prevailing authorities, to be acceptable.