Female Forces: Beauty, Brains, and a Badge

As a lens through which gender is negotiated and reproduced, this study examines Female Forces, a reality television show, which follows women police in the highly contested task of crime fighting. Results suggest that the media depictions of women police reify the stereotypes that women police are caretakers and nurturers, rather than crime fighters. This is accomplished through an overemphasis on femininity, domestication, and beauty in the officers' behaviors and narratives. The implications for women police, citizens, and the administrators who hire them are critical as our notions of what female police are and should be are represented, digested, and re-created through television.