What Are (Fatal) Little Girls Made of?

Abstract

So far, the focus of the book has been on the femme fatale. However, postfeminism is marked by a preoccupation with youth. Part of this discourse involves the increasing centrality of girls in popular culture and their attachment to notions of female empowerment. On screen, action and fantasy genres in particular are punctuated by the presence of self-determining adolescent female protagonists. Similarly, in neo-noir, powerful young women who are not yet femmes but are just as deadly as their adult counterparts are prevalent figures and have been since the early 1990s.