Xena the Warrior Princess

By: Elisa Alvarez Outeirino

Xena the Princess Warrior was a TV show developed by R.J. Stewart and Sam Raimi. This show started in September of 1995 as a spin-off from Hercules. Soon the show got more important than Hercules at the same time that Xena accomplish the achievement of subverting the dominant paradigms of the representation of a hero and a princess. Xena is a warrior living in a fantastic version of ancient Greece, but she is also a princess that fights to help innocent people and help the peasants of her kingdom. She has her good friend Gabrielle that goes with her everywhere after she runs away from an arranged marriage. One of the reasons why this TV show got the historic importance that it had was because it was one of the first shows that broke the idea of a princess as a lady that lives in a castle, looking for a prince to become the queen, and one who  is gentle and quiet. Xena is the opposite of all those ideas, and that is one of the reasons why this character as an artifact, in 1995, had a big impact on the 90s generation. Xena was the first real role model that lots of little girls had. Some girls were considered by society in this decade not girly enough because they liked to play more physical games or just didn’t want to be a Disney princess, and society didn’t have a woman or girl that model this as normal. Xena's impact on society was important and necessary because it broke the old fashion princess role models. At the same time, since this happened during the 3rd wave of feminism, she still got sexualized in many ways, like with her outfit and the suggestion that she was a queer model.

During Xena’s the Warrior Princess' first episode, we can hear a voice-over that says “In a time of ancient gods, warlords and kings, a land in turmoil cried out for a hero. She was Xena, a mighty princess forged in the heat of battle” (“Sins of the Past”). Her fantastic Greek world was not the only one crying for a hero like her, our society also needed one. Xena helped to challenge the normative idea of girlhood, where a girl needed to be gentle, soft, and like dresses and Disney princesses. She was one of the first heroines or female protagonists that play this role without a male costar. The scholar, Wim Tigges reflects on this reminding the only other ones before Xena were “Sheena (1955) and Wonder Woman (1976–78)” (8). Xena offered something in between this dual problem of being girly or not girly enough. Tigges also explains how Xena gave society and girls a bigger range of possibilities: “Xena has a multidimensional personality. She can be vulnerable as well as moody or cynical, but mostly she is happily active” (137). In this show, Xena does not need to choose between being tough or feminine, she embodies both ideas. This is represented during the whole Tv show, where we can see how she fights when she has to fight, but she is also caring and gentle when she has to.

Another idea that Xena broke with this TV show is the notion that a girl cannot do those things alone, that maybe it is too risky for a woman to do everything she does, like traveling alone or fighting, without the help of a male. She does have help, from her best friend Gabrielle. In the first episode, we meet her, and we soon understand how they complement each other. Xena is mostly strong and brave and she is working on her gentle side, and Gabrielle has other abilities that Xena does not have, like the ability to persuade or reason with people. Gabrielle also starts the show as a shy character that is working on her strong and brave side. They complement each other.

Something else that was how we learned in this first episode how Xena does not need a justification for why she is that different and new type of princess. In other TV shows/movies, for example, in Mulan, who was also a brave woman that decided to fight for her dad, the audience learns that there is a reason behind this decision. Mulan does not choose to do this because it is what she really wants to do, she does it to protect her dad. She is forced to do it and this decision causes sadness in her family and lots of reactions when they find out that she is a woman fighting. That does not happen to Xena. She does not have to justify or explain why she wants to fight and be that type of princess. She is not a disappointment to her family. What she does is something normal that she can do. For all those reasons, Xena the warrior adds a lot to a generation of little girls that grew up having just one idea of a princess or female role model. They learned that there are other types of princesses and that girls can do more than one thing, they can be brave and caring at the same time. They don’t have to choose between one option or the other. This is really important for girls, younger and older because as Daniel Cook explains in his work, “children learn gender through imitation and modeling” (2). Xena also relates to Sarah Projansky’s ideas. We know how beneficial it is to have different models of girlhoods and girls in society because “produces a moderate transformation of hugely successful postfeminist discourse and is a cultural tool to make sense of contemporary gendered and neoliberal politics.” (Projansky, 12). In the 90s this was something really innovative and new. Nowadays we have more options and models of girls in the media, but in the 90s, this was one of the first examples that young and old girls had growing up during the third wave of feminism.

Also, Xena’s outfit is important to think about in relation to third wave feminism. First, we need to start by contextualizing the historical time of this show, ancient Greece. Warriors usually use armors to protect the most vulnerable parts of their bodies during the battle. Usually, they protect vital zones like the head or the heart. Xena’s usual armor during every episode consisted of a skirt that reminded us of the Roman Legionaries but visible shorter, as well as her top that is a breastplate that just covers her chest and defines it at the same time. If we compare this to her spin-off parallel, Hercules, he wears long and comfy pants and also a shirt. Both of these characters are unprotected for the battle but Xena is also sexualized showing parts of her body that are found “sexy” by society, mostly male society, like the legs or her chest. Tigges reflects on this choice from the producers and explains that “In order to be as ‘sexy’ as possible, women heroes wear ‘ridiculously impractical outfits for warriors,” and “even Xena’s armor leave[s] many vital parts vulnerable to attack” (137). This opens the possibility that maybe the producers thought that the first female heroine needed to be “Sexy” and wear short clothes so the audience will watch the show. Her outfit is not the only way that Xena is sexualized. There are many other ways to sexualize women in media, and one of them is through clothing or the body types that they show. Xena was a young woman, tall, skinny, white, with long black hair and beautiful for the beauty standards of the 90s. Every woman in this Tv show was white, tall, and skinny, creating nonrealistic role models for young women. Tv characters influence girls in a similar way that dolls do. As the scholar Emilie Zaslow explains in her book, “[girls] were learning about beauty, fashion and the body as they played with dolls whose ideal bodies were constructed to display high-end fashions” (42). Dolls and media are big influences for girls and the same happened in the 90s with dolls and Tv characters, none of them had a body that little girls could relate to most of the time.

Xena was not the only one sexualized in the TV show. As it was explained earlier, most of the “woke” girls that were strong and independent were sexualized with their clothing in this TV show. On the other hand, some women were not, for example, most of the other queens and princesses from other kingdoms. Those princesses follow normative ideas of being in the castle, having a prince, or a king. Another good example to illustrate this is Gabrielle, Xena’s best friend that goes with her in every episode. At the beginning of the show, we learned how she was about to get married through an arranged marriage. She decided to escape this situation and join Xena in her adventures. Also mentioned before, she wanted to be a strong woman like Xena because she is considered physically “weak” during the first season, and Xena needs to fight and protect her during every episode. While she was considered “weak” her clothing and outfits were similar to the princesses, long dresses to their ankles, and long sleeves shirts. But while the Tv show kept evolving, she started to develop some fighting skills and she started to learn how to fight. Her clothing and outfits evolved at the same time as her fighting skills evolved. The better her fighting skills were, the shorter her clothes got. This makes us reflect on why the producers or writers, thought that society couldn’t be interested in this character evolving without taking inches of clothing from her outfit.

This is not the only controversial aspect of Gabrielle and Xena in this Tv show. If we check the charts of every episode of every season, we can find that the most seen episode is the first one, followed by episode 8, where “Xena and Gabrielle indulging in their first romantic kiss” (Hanmer, 610). After this episode, the Tv show had a boom. Fandoms loved this idea and a lot of different sequels were created after this, where they both fell in love and had a relationship. Hanmer also explains how “The spaces created online around Xena fan fiction writing are proof that the show, which deliberately flirted with a lesbian subtext, helped some women to identify as lesbians” (610). People needed a queer heroine and even though it was not explicit that they had a relationship, young and old fans loved the idea. The studio loved this too and kept giving more nonexplicit clues about them having a relationship. In one of the following episodes we could hear how Xena says to Gabrielle “If I just had 30 seconds left in life, I want to live them like this, looking at your eyes” (“A Friend in Need. Part 1”). After this, the studio and the producers decided to stop it, they already had everybody hooked on this show, but they didn’t want to distract the audience from the principal plot with their queer relationship. So the producers used their relationship to hook the audience and once they were already hooked, they stopped using their love relationship because it was a distraction. This gives us a good example of how our culture used to work/still works. Two independent and strong women that travel without a man have to be queer but at the same time, not too queer. The producers didn’t want to explicitly create a relationship between them scared that this show would turn into a queer show. If we compare this, again, to the spin-off from where they come from, Hercules, we also have two principal characters, Hercules and Iolalus, two characters that have the same sex, but why didn’t they need to create a sexual tension during the Tv show Hercules but they needed to do it with Xena? The scholar Marnina Gonick explains this and how “queerness, must, according to Britzman, be rearticulated in ways that are pleasurable, interesting and erotic” (123).  This also relates to the clothing, and the reason behind this is that they are sexualized women. Yes, they do represent a different type of woman, a strong and independent one, but at the same time, it gave us the wrong idea in the 90’s that if you were a strong and independent woman like Xena, you were probably queer.

To conclude, Xena the Princess Warrior and her friend Gabrielle contributed to the third wave of feminism, providing new roles and new ideas for the fictional character of a princess, whereas society was used to Disney princesses. They showed a whole generation that a woman, a warrior or a princess, did not have to choose between being girly or not, that they could stay in the middle and that was completely fine and acceptable. On the other hand, they also fell into some stereotypes typical of this decade, where we needed to provide a feminine character that was wearing evocative clothes, even if they were not comfortable for fighting, and how the body type that they presented to society was not normative. Finally, they also fell into the stereotype of making two strong and independent women into queers. This, even though that it wasn’t intentional, was beneficial for a big part of society that finally could see and watch two queer characters for the first time. Overall, Xena, the Princess Warrior was the first feminist model that some of the 90’s generation had, and her contribution marked a whole group of girls that saw in her a role model to follow and someone that made them feel more normal or accepted in society.

Works Cited

“A Friend in Need. Part 1.” Xena the Warrior Princess, created by R.J. Stewart & Rob Tapert , season 6, episode 21, 2001.

Cook, Daniel Thomas. “The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies.” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies, vol. 4, SAGE Publications, 2020, doi.org/10.4135/9781529714388.

Gonick, Marnina. “Sugar and Spice and Something More than Nice? Queer Girls and Transformations of Social Exclusion.” In Girlhood: Redefining the Limits, edited by Yasmin Jiwani, Claudia Mitchell, and Candis Steenbergen, 122-137. Black Rose Books, 2006.

Hanmer, Rosalind. “‘Xenasubtexttalk’: The Impact on the Lesbian Fan Community through Its Online Reading and Writing of Lesbian Fan Fiction in Relation to the Television Series Xena: Warrior Princess.” Feminist Media Studies, vol. 14, no. 4, Routledge, 2014, pp. 608–22, doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2012.754778.

Projansky, Sarah. Spectacular Girls : Media Fascination and Celebrity Culture. New York University Press,, 2014, doi.org/10.18574/9780814764794.

“Sins of the Past” Xena the Warrior Princess, created by R.J. Stewart & Rob Tapert , season 1, episode 1, 1995.

Tigges, Wim. “A Bard’s Eye View: Narrative Mediation in Xena: Warrior Princess.” Cogent Arts & Humanities, vol. 2, no. 1, Cogent, 2015, doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2015.1099197.

Tigges, Wim. “A Woman Like You? Emma Peel, Xena: Warrior Princess, and the Empowerment of Female Heroes of the Silver Screen.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 50, no. 1, Wiley Subscription Services, Inc, 2017, pp. 127–46, doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12527.

Zaslow, Emilie. Playing with America’s Doll A Cultural Analysis of the American Girl Collection. 1st ed. 2017., Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017, doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56649-2.