Push Comes to Shove: New Images of Aggressive Women Review

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(More customer reviews)Push Comes to Shove is a fantastic book on women and aggression. From "Kill Bill" to "Bring it On" to Kara Walker, the images she uses are fascinating and diverse. Lavin views aggression not as a negative force, but as a necessary catalyst in creating change. Interesting to read into this in pop culture. I especially loved the chapter on Blue Crush, Stick It, and Bring it On. Who knew these charming sports girl movies could mean so much?

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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 thanaggression was seen as woman's domain. But recently there's been a noticeablecultural shift. With growing frequency, women's aggression is now celebrated incontemporary culture--in movies and TV, online ventures, and art. In Push Comes toShove, Maud Lavin examines these new images of aggressive women and how they affectwomen's lives. Aggression, says Lavin, is necessary, large, messy, psychological,and physical. Aggression need not entail causing harm to another; we can think of itas the use of force to create change--fruitful, destructive, or both. And over thepast twenty years, contemporary culture has shown women seizing this power. Lavinchooses provocative examples to explore the complexity of aggression: the surfergirls in Blue Crush; Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect; the homicidalwomen in Kill Bill and artist Marlene McCarty's mural-sized Murder Girls; theerotica of Zane and the art of Kara Walker; the group dynamics of artists (includingthe artists group Toxic Titties) and activists; and YouTube videos of a woman boxertraining and fighting. Women need aggression and need to use it consciously, Lavinwrites. With Push Comes to Shove, she explores the crucial questions of how tomanifest aggression, how to represent it, and how to keep open a cultural space forit

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