Entertainment

Before Title IX, before cable and satellite television, before the Internet, young boys and girls went to the circus and sat awestruck as they watched well-muscled women perform extraordinary feats of strength and stamina high in the air. The circus was one of the few places you could see athletic women in their element then, but by the time Vicki Unus (aka La Toria), the star of this clip, began her career in the early 1960s, there had already been a long tradition of great female aerialists:

There has been no other actress more tailor-made for the role of a superheroine than Brooke Shields. At six feet, Brooke's stature alone affords her a commanding screen presence. That she also has a powerful physique makes her an even more formidable heroine. (No stranger to the gym, she is a fitness buff and has mighty arms to show for it.) Indeed, her Amazonian frame overwhelms the camera in a mere car commercial:



Thus it's a pity that we've not seen Brooke kicking ass on television or the big screen. This is no fault of hers, though—blame Hollywood for not making enough superheroine roles available. Consider Wonder Woman, for instance. Brooke seems like an obvious candidate for the role (if not now because of her age, then certainly in the past). But we are still waiting for a movie to materialize, despite years of talk.

Perhaps we will yet see Brooke, her muscles flexed, pummeling bad guys and saving the world. But so far all we have is her turn as Brenda Starr:

E! Online story

As Jessica Biel shows us here, much effort goes into becoming an action heroine: strenuous exercise, martial arts training, special dieting, and, yes, even drinking "protein powder things" (sorry, Angelina). Natural ability, which Biel has in spades, of course also helps. And contrary to what Dominic Purcell says in the clip, we have expected our heroes to look able-bodied since classical antiquity; the distinction is—now, finally, the same is true for our heroines: