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Machine generated contents note: Introduction: Impossible bodies, compromised positions 1 -- PART I -- Gesturing toward genres 13 -- 1 Visible difference and flex appeal: The body, sex, sexuality and race in the Pumping Iron films 15 -- 2 When is a lesbian not a lesbian? The lesbian continuum and the mainstream femme film 31 -- 3 Nouveaux westerns for the 1990s: Genre offshoots, audience reroutes 51 -- PART II -- Siding with sidekicks 69 -- 4 Cruisin' for a bruisin': Hollywood's deadly (lesbian) dolls 71 -- 5 Swede as "Other" 91 -- 6 Latinas in La-La Land: From bit part to starlet in "indie" and mainstream films 109 -- PART III -- Staring at stars 123 -- 7 Channeling desire, making Whoopi 125 -- 8 The aging Clint 141 -- 9 Marketing Dolly dialectics: "The Sky is Green, the Grass is Blue" 157

Introduction : conceptualizing Canada's gendered pasts / Kathryn McPherson, Cecilia Morgan, and Nancy M. Forestell -- When bad men conspire, good men must unite! : gender and political discourses in upper Canada, 1820's-1830's / Cecilia Morgan -- The homeless, the whore, the drunkard, and the disorderly : contours of female vagrancy in the Montreal courts, 1810-1842 / Mary Ann Poutanen -- No double standard? : leisure, sex, and sin in upper Canadian church discipline records, 1800-1860 / Lynne Marks -- It was only a matter of passion : masculinity and sexual danger / Karen Dubinsky and Adam Givertz -- Gender and work in Lekwammen families, 1843-1970 / John Lutz -- To take an orphan : gender and family roles following the 1917 Halifax explosion / Suzanne Morton -- A fit and proper person : the moral regulation of single mothers in Ontario, 1920-1940 / Margaret Hillyard Little -- The miner's wife : working-class femininity in a masculine context, 1920-1950 / Nancy M. Forestell -- Sex fiends or swish kids? : gay men in Hush Free Press, 1946-1956 / Eric Setliff -- The case of the kissing nurse : femininity, sexuality, and Canadian nursing, 1900-1970 / Kathryn McPherson -- Defending honour, demanding respect : manly discourse and gendered practice in two construction strikes, Toronto, 1960-1961 / Franca Iacovetta.

One important theme attached to pop culture is the politics of representation and sub-cultural identity. The pop singer Madonna and then the Spice Girls are frequently regarded as the representation of modern women offering a different face of feminism ideology. Successfully entering the market competition, Madonna, through her cry of 'material girl', characterizes herself as an independent woman in the still dominating patriarchal world while challenging the burden of morality placed on the shoulders of women. She asks young women to rebel against male-centred traditions and unashamedly exposes her sensuality as a source of power and even domination, or in short celebrating 'being women'. The flag of Girl Power is also waved by the 1990'sBritish female singers, the Spice Girls, who call young girls to "be strong, be brave, be loud and control your own destiny. Believe that your self can do anything you want to do and be confident. We have to be independent, but it does not mean that you don't need a boy" (Swastika 2004: 66).

"The history of women's struggle for equality during the last two centuries is relatively well documented; studies of women's history often construct a meliorate narrative in which the progress women have made in recent times represents the final stage in a long upward trajectory. Women's power and authority extended beyond the limits of their families. The example of the Tudor queens Mary and Elizabeth is well known, and the 'anomaly' of Elizabeth's position has been endlessly noted; but they were not the only women who exercised political authority. Generations of women have found a source of their own empowerment in the power of Shakespeare's writing and in the cultural authority it carried. In the recent years, as we have seen, the validity of these enthusiastic responses has been called into question by arguments that mobilize the authority of history to insist that the original productions of Shakespeare's plays-written by a male author to be performed by an exclusively male company of players-expressed an overwhelmingly masculine point of view. The most compelling of these arguments rest on the fact that the presence of a male body beneath the costume of a female character was never far from the awareness of Shakespeare's original audiences."

The discourse on feminism and ecology is familiar in literary studies as well as in socio-cultural scenario. But it seldom merged with each other-it has probably only been five decades since Indian literature has started discussing Eco feminism. Eco feminism, in short, blends the theories of feminism and ecology. This research paper critically analyses poems of the prolific Indian writers Sugathakumari and Kamala Das who always fought for upholding the women's issues and conserving the nature. The paper aims to study their writings through the lenses of Ecofeminism, to treat them as their unabashed political commentaries on women and nature.