Heroine Content is a feminist and anti-racist blog about women kicking ass. More specifically, we write about women kicking ass in action films, with a side order of television and video game commentary as things catch our eye.

What does feminist and anti-racist mean to us? It means that we look for portrayals of women and people of color that show them as people, not caricatures of what women or people of color are "supposed" to be.

Action films and other cultural products aren't always about reality, and that's often why we like them. We're not asking for campy action flix to become high art. But even in the silliest of action films, there's no reason that the woman always has to be a damsel in distress or an evil seductress, the African-American always has to be a thug or a prostitute, the Asian always has to be a martial arts expert, and the Latino/a always has to be a gang member or a maid.

Why do we care? Well, every genre has to start somewhere. Science fiction began as a stereotypical white man's paradise, full of gadgets and scantily clad women. Now it gives us a range of stories and experiences. Just as there were women avidly reading the early science fiction and hoping to someday see themselves represented, we hope to see ourselves and others represented well in the films we enjoy.

Why call it Heroine Content? First, not every woman who gets into a fight on screen is a heroine. All too often she's an imitation, dressed up to look like a heroine but just taking up space until the hero comes along to Save The Day. That's crap. But we keep going to the theater and giving them our money because we're hoping to see the real thing. A guy named Vincent Flanders used the term "heroin content" to describe what makes people keep coming back to a website, whether that's products they want, information they need, or whatever. What keeps us coming back is that we sometimes see the real heroines, or hints of them.

And we like seeing stuff get blown up.

We'll probably do a better job on calling out the sexism than the racism, because we're both white women and that means we were raised with some fucked up thought patterns about race. But we'll do our best. Let us know how you think we're doing.