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The perpetuation and reinforcement of gender roles and stereotypes generally, and of negative myths about women's sexuality in particular, are still very much part of our western consumer culture. This persistence of negative myths and stereotypes may well be due, at least in part, to the fact that redressing the problem is still too often thought of in literal, representational terms -- the male doctors and female nurses of the medical soap-opera are to be counterbalanced by the male nurse and female vet of the old A Country Practice, the marginalisation of women's writing remedied by the affirmative publishing policy of Virago and the Women's Press. Valuable as these enterprises undoubtedly are, the problem, as most readers of Hecate would probably acknowledge, involves much more than the immediate and obvious level of the proportional representation of women in and by the media. Although the increased prominence of a previously under-represented group can be taken as indicating some growth in public awareness or acceptance of that group, the manner in which they are represented may simply confirm, rather than question or modify pre-existing stereotypes.(1) Quite a number of blacks now have major roles in the American television shows we see here in Australia, but are often shown in ways that reproduce white notions about their street-wise and spontaneous natures or, conversely, turned into whites with black skins. Take, too, the fact that even a novel put out by an alternative feminist publishing company can portray its heroine's first experience of romance in terms that would not seem out of place in an offering from Mills and Boon:
Yusuf took me into his arms. I succumbed to that first touch, but then, startled and wary, I pulled away.
`Don't be afraid.' He drew me into the circle of his arms again. At first I was stiff and awkward, but he lowered his face and covered my mouth, his body taut with expectation. My arms automatically slipped behind his head, our bodies knitting together, locked like two pieces of a jigsaw. One of his hands disengaged itself from my back and slid to the front, unbuttoning my blouse, which he slipped off my shoulder. He buried his face in my neck, gently lowering me on to the grassy...