Since the beginning of horror, women have predominantly occupied the role of protagonists. This fact has a lot to do with outdated views that the women are the weaker sex and therefore could only be the victims or the ones that needed to be saved. While there have been improvements over the years, it was in the late 70s that things began to change more dramatically for female characters. The “final girl” trope was created in slasher films, where the final girl (the last character standing) is the only one able to kill the killer in the end. While this trope gave women more agency within the genre, it came with a bias. To be a final girl, one had to embody the 70s and '80s concept of “purity.”
United States (National)
