Bond Girls

Since Ursula Andress’s white-bikini debut in Dr No, ‘Bond Girls’ have been simultaneously celebrated as fashion icons and dismissed as ‘eye-candy’. But the visual glamour of the women of James Bond reveals more than the sexual objectification of female beauty. Through the original joint perspectives of body and fashion, this exciting study throws a new, subversive light on Bond Girls. Like Coco Chanel, fashion’s ‘eternal’ mademoiselle, these ‘Girls’ are synonymous with an unconventional and dynamic femininity that does not play by the rules and refuses to sit still; far from being the passive objects of the male gaze, Bond Girls’ active bodies instead disrupt the stable frame of Bond’s voyeurism.Starting off with an original re-assessment of the cultural roots of Bond’s postwar masculinity, the book argues that Bond Girls emerge from masculine anxieties about the rise of female emancipation after the Second World War and persistent in the present day. Displaying parallels with the politics of race and colonialism, such tensions appear through sartorial practices as diverse as exoticism, power dressing and fetish wear, which reveal complex and often contradictory ideas about the patriarchal and imperial ideologies associated with Bond. Attention to costume, film and gender theory makes Bond Girls: Body, Gender and Fashion essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, media and cultural studies, and for anyone with an interest in Bond.

Bond Girls: Body, Fashion and Gender is at once everything its title promises and far more. It is an elaborate yet clear and compellingly argued cultural history of identity, expressed through nearly every installment of one of the most important franchises in recent times ... a provocative and rewarding reconsideration of the series’ place in the popular imagination., Rich in detail, Bond Girls: Body, Fashion and Gender effectively bridges the gap between academia and popular cultures as it paves a new avenue into the field of Bond studies, making it an invaluable resource for students and scholars of fashion, film, and cultural studies., Germanà’s examination of the many women in the Bond films … is nothing short of revolutionary, giving power and agency to women who continually challenge a seemingly patriarchal universe. Summing Up: Highly recommended., It’s hard to imagine a more thorough examination of the problematic heart of the James Bond franchise. Monica Germanà’s Bond Girls is endlessly fascinating and informative., Through the prisms of body and fashion, Monica Germanà provides a fascinating analysis of women in James Bond. With critical rigour she illustrates the complexity and strength behind the Bond Girl stereotype. Both persuasive and provocative, it makes for a compelling read.

Monica Germanà is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Westminster, UK. She is the author of Scottish Women's Gothic and Fantastic Writing: Fiction Since 1978 (2010).