From Whence the Kick-Ass Heroine?

I've been wondering lately about the origins of the phrase "kick-ass heroine." According to the OED, the verb phrase "to kick ass," as well as its adjectival form, "kick-ass," refer to a person who is, or acts, "roughly, aggressively, powerfully, or assertively." Today the phrase kick-ass heroine is ubiquitous, used to describe protagonists of urban fantasy and paranormal romance on page and screen, from Kristin Cashore's Katsa to Suzanne Collins's Katniss, from Xena, Warrior Princess to Buffy, Vampire Slayer. But before the late 1970s, the phrase was simply unheard of, the gender-breaking combination of the masculine "kick-ass" with the feminine "heroine" not something English cared to name. Just who coined this phrase, and why was its coinage suddenly necessary?

The OED suggests we have Rolling Stone to thank for the first appearances of both "to kick ass" and "kick-ass" in print; two different 1977 articles describe the playing of male jazz and rock musicians as "kick-ass." Four years later, in her novel Tar Baby, Toni Morrison used the phrase to describe the black women of New York City, "Snapping whips behind the tellers' windows, kicking ass at Con Edison offices, barking orders in the record companies, hospitals, public schools.... The manifesto was simple: 'Talk shit. Take none'." The above usages suggest the term originated in African-American culture, but don't say much about the origins of the hybrid term "kick-ass heroine" in the current-day sense of the phrase.

I've not yet been able to find an instance of the combined term "kick-ass heroine" before 1996, although the existence of female protagonists to whom one might apply the phrase certainly predate this: Ripley of 1979's film Alien; Robin McKinley's literary characters Harry Crewe (from the YA fantasy novel The Blue Sword, 1982) and Aerin (from The Hero and the Crown, 1984). A Google Books search limited by date suggests that Julius Marshall's 1996 film guide, Action! The Action Movie A-Z, may be the first appearance of the phrase in book form. Using it to describe Rene Russo's character in Lethal Weapon 3, Internal Affairs detective Lorna Cole, Marshall writes, "Besides offering Riggs some spirited romantic interest (with a wacky game of 'I'll show you my scar, if you show me yours'), head butts and spin kicks confirm that Lorna's one gal who knows how to take care of herself, a kick-ass heroine in league with T2's Linda Hamilton and Aliens' Sigourney Weaver" (119). A "kick-ass heroine" knows how to fight, perhaps even enjoys fighting. And though her role may in part be to function as romantic interest for an equally-adventurous male hero, she doesn't rely upon said hero to help or save her: she "knows how to take care of herself."

I also found the term in, or rather, on, another 1996 book, Bitches, Bimbos, and Virgins: Women in the Horror Film, an essay collection edited by Gary J. and A. Susan Svehla. The cover copy describes the book as "the history of women in the horror cinema, profiling their evolution from coffee-maker to scientist, from seductress and victim to kick-ass heroine, and finally detailing their emergence as well-drawn characters who play important roles in horror movie history—past, present, and future." The "kick-ass heroine" is a sign of growth in the role of women in the movies; she serves not simply as backdrop or romantic reward/threat for our protagonist hero, or as the symbolic trophy of his conquest over the forces of evil, as she did in the early days of cinema, but instead as the heroine of her own story.

I'm guessing, though, that there must be many examples of the term in magazines or in scholarship produced between 1981 and 1996, works that Google has not yet got its digitalizing hands on. And I'm eager to find out when the term was first applied to heroines in romance fiction. If anyone out there knows of in-print examples of the term "kick-ass heroine" that date from this period, I'd love to hear from you. Especially if the author of the phrase turns out to be a woman...

Do you think the "kick-ass heroine" has changed since her first appearances in the 1980s? Who are your favorite kick-ass romance novel heroines?


Photo credits:
Sigourney Weaver in Aliens: Allstar/Cinetext/20th Century Fox, via The Guardian web site
Buffy and crossbow: SciFi, Fantasy, and Historical Writing