In 1924, a 19-year-old girl in a seal fur coat strolled into a Brooklyn grocery, asked the clerk for a dozen eggs, and pulled out a gun. The newspapers went wild for the Bobbed Haired Bandit, and they mourned when Celia Cooney’s string of brazen thefts put her in jail. How dull. Cooney was the first famous female crook of the Hollywood age, a symbol of a major cultural shift where women left the home to earn an independent living just like a man. (Even illegally.)
Consider Cooney the wicked godmother of the all-female thieves in Ocean’s 8, a sequel to the hit heist franchise that stars Sandra Bullock as George Clooney’s ex-felon sister, Debbie Ocean. Together with Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina and Rihanna, she schemes to slip a $150m diamond necklace off actor Anne Hathaway’s neck at the Met Gala. Gary Ross’s slick comedy is designed for fabulous gowns, not factual accuracy. According to the FBI, while male thieves scheme in packs, criminal women tend to work either with a boyfriend or alone.
Still, Hollywood has drooled over girl gangs ever since, well, 1954’s Girl Gang, an exploitation flick about a Fagin-esque mobster who hooks beauties on heroin to manipulate them into doing his evil will. Fierce, yes – feminist, no. Soon after, schlock legends Ed Wood and Roger Corman got into the act with the B-movie nasties The Violent Year and Teenage Doll, which at least let brutal women call the shots. Like Rebel Without a Cause, these drive-in movies tried to tap into larger themes about nihilism and bad parenting. Unlike James Dean, the actors were cast for their ability to fill a push-up bra, and their films mainly marketed to men with taglines like: “See what happens behind the locked doors of a pajama party!”
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
