/rimshot.

There are others, surely. I have no idea what the proportionality of female action heroes in these poses is compared to male action heroes, but I don’t necessarily see it a exclusive to a single gender. It should be noted, however, that some of the examples I gave are one pose of several, where this set seems to show the stars posed this way exclusively.

I actually don’t see this pose as ‘passive’, either. To me it recalls the pose of Michelangelo’s David. While previous David sculptures showed him either in triumph or in battle, Michelangelo depicted the moment of contemplation before the defining event, which heightened the drama. This approach was so successful, one barely has to say “Michelangelo’s” when talking about this David, though no less an artist than Donatello has a pretty great David of his own.

SPOILER BELOW for a 22-year old movie, though: C’mon, people!

The half-torn-apart image is pretty disturbing. We’ve seen a masculine version of that, too, however (only in the movie, not on posters though). In Aliens, the male android character Bishop is torn in two and drags himself around by his arms for a while. It wouldn’t have made sense as a poster, because the character was new to the series, wouldn’t have meant anything to fans of the original film, and would have been a spoiler, to boot.

So anyway, those two images on the left are a little weird because of the dehumanization, but that ambiguity is the point of the character (caveat: I have not seen the TV series, but have seen all the films. No, I’m not proud.). The down-and-away gaze does not strike me as particularly sexist or passive given the popularity of this pose in contemporary action movie posters.

Great find, though.

I think this is a good example of cyborg, and the separation between the body and the machine. And where is exactly that limit. Schwarzenegger was man or machine (theres one picture where you can see both parts still theres not an simple organic union with the machine), and is in a woman where that union comes almost naturally. I don´t think we are talking about disembodiment of the character, but may be quite the opposite. Powerful women with mechanic, and more powerful parts.