{"id":1038,"date":"2005-09-15T22:36:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-16T03:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinepage.com\/wp\/2005\/09\/15\/in-praise-of-girl-power\/"},"modified":"2005-09-15T22:36:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-16T03:36:00","slug":"in-praise-of-girl-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/15\/in-praise-of-girl-power\/","title":{"rendered":"In praise of Girl Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&laquo; How was Xena a female pioneer? Let me count the ways. She had no male support or regular romantic interest. She didn&rsquo;t, unlike Wonder Woman or the Bionic Woman, have a conventionally feminine day-to-day alternate identity, though on a mission she could pose as a Roman matron, a virgin priestess or an exotic dancer. Xena was not &laquo; strong but feminine &raquo;; she was unapologetically strong and unapologetically female, sexy and powerful, unafraid to get sweaty and dirty on the job, and all the more beautiful for it.<\/p>\n<p> The fan-driven growth of the subtext illustrates another &laquo; Xena &raquo; phenomenon: the special relationship between the show and the fandom. Other than &laquo; The X-Files, &raquo; &laquo; Xena &raquo; was the first cult hit of the Internet age: the face that launched a thousand Web sites. One of the producers and principal writers on &laquo; Xena, &raquo; Steven Sears, participated in discussions on &laquo; Xena &raquo; message boards (and occasionally still does); other staff members and actors reportedly lurked there as well, and seemed well aware of fandom debates. In the last season, popular fan-fiction writer Melissa Good was hired to write several scripts for the series, two of which were made into episodes. &raquo;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/ent\/feature\/2005\/09\/15\/xena\/index.html\">What we owe Xena<\/a> in Salon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&laquo; How was Xena a female pioneer? Let me count the ways. She had no male support or regular romantic interest. She didn&rsquo;t, unlike Wonder Woman or the Bionic Woman, have a conventionally feminine day-to-day alternate identity, though on a mission she could pose as a Roman matron, a virgin priestess or an exotic dancer.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/15\/in-praise-of-girl-power\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">In praise of Girl Power<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martinepage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}