Deborah Lipp

Via Carnival of Feminists 7, I found this post on Bond girls vs. Bond women. The writer deplores the sexualization of girls (“Bond girls” says one actress, is a “sexier” phrase than “Bond women”), and that is certainly a good point. On the other hand, the writer admits to neither knowing nor liking Bond films.

In my book, I do use the term Bond girls, and I also go to some length explaining why I do, and why a feminist can love Bond. The short version of the use of the term is that “Bond girl” is a meme. It isn’t the same as a “Bond woman.” A Bond woman is a woman in a Bond film. She could be Judi Dench, playing Bond’s boss with great skill. She could be eye candy, a woman hanging out poolside in a bikini but never interacting with 007. Both of these are Bond women, but neither plugs into the “Bond girl” meme. For that reason, I persist in using the sexist terminology.

The other thing is that every Bond girl has said she’s not “just” a Bond girl “like the others.” Honor Blackman says it all the time, and she was in the third movie; that’s pretty early on, isn’t it? Well, Ursula Andress has also said it, and she was in the first movie! The fact is, the “bubble-headed bleach blonde” stereotype attached to the meme has never been all that true.

Virtually every woman in the first seven Bond films has been self-directed, independent, strong, owned her own sexuality, and sometimes beat Bond at his own game. Okay, not all of them were exactly as independent or strong as all of the others, but the trend was there from Day (or Film) One. It wasn’t until Roger Moore came along that Bond girls were helpless eye candy in desperate need of rescue. The first four women (in his first two films) were all wimpering idiots. But then, I’ve never been a Moore fan.

What is more interesting to me, as a feminist, is not the whole “girl” vs. “woman” thing, but how a stereotype developed despite the existing evidence. (That stereotype was solidly in place by the early 1960s, and Moore didn’t come along until 1972.) I think the sexual aggression and independence of these women was so threatening that it was easier, and safer, to see them just as beautiful and objectified. (True, they were cast for looks, but so was Connery, so was Moore.) I think to be a beautiful woman in an action film engendered the stereotype despite the evidence. And I think that Bond girls rock.