One of the Boys?

Abstract

This article argues that American media reports of the Jessica Lynch case illustrate some of the ways in which gender has been reordered, policed and disciplined within the United States (and North America more broadly) in the wake of 9/11 and in the context of war. The study of a key gendered representation of the war – and of the way gender interlocks with race, class, nationality and sexuality in these representations – tells us not only about how the war was sold to the American public, but also about the degree to which normative and disciplinary gender roles can be stretched, or not, within domestic society and the ways in which contemporary media portrayals of foreign adventures serve to reinforce these gender norms. Ultimately we argue that media portraits of Jessica Lynch demonstrate how little the simple inclusion of women in the military acts to disrupt sexist systems of power and meaning.

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