One of the strangest examples of the trend comes in one of the worst movies. In "Miss Congeniality," Sandra Bullock plays a geeky FBI agent working undercover as a beauty pageant contestant whose "talent" consists of inviting a male colleague (played by Benjamin Bratt) onstage with her and then, to the great amusement of the pageant officials, beating him senseless.

That Bullock, her beribboned black hair twisted into Danish buns over each ear, is dressed in a micro-miniskirt version of a dirndl complete with huge frilly petticoats and knee-high stockings only adds to the fun. And each time she nails Bratt -- in the solar plexus, intestines, nose and groin -- the audience, both in the movie and in the movie theater, is on its feet cheering.

It is the exact same reaction that comes at the point in "Charlie's Angels" when the Angels pound on an evil henchman to the tune of the Prodigy song "Smack My Bitch Up." Likewise during "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," when the flowerlike Jen (Zhang Ziyi) wrecks the putative bridgework of an entire barful of Chinese thugs.

These are familiar scenes in recent movies, as well as in TV shows like "WWF Smackdown!" "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Xena: Warrior Princess." Modern video games, like stereotype maker and breaker "Tomb Raider," featuring sexy ballbuster Lara Croft (who will be portrayed by Angelina Jolie in "Tomb Raider," the movie), are full of them. This brand of gender-bent havoc is new to a zeitgeist that has been consumed for most of the last century with an entirely different paradigm of feminine mystique.

At least it is new to unsuspecting Americans. In Asia, female cartoon heroines like Lara and martial arts movies featuring nonanimated women action heroes are quite common. "Crouching Tiger" star Michelle Yeoh is, of course, the premier figure in these, but there are many other female Jean-Claude Van Damme types working in Asia, including American karate champion Cynthia Rothrock, who has been a wildly popular action hero in Hong Kong since 1992.

But the woman as action hero is practically a brand-new concept on this side of the Pacific -- at least, woman as popular action hero. Until now, the majority of films that cast women in starring action roles have died a sad death at the box office. (We draw a veil over Pamela Anderson's 1996 bomb, "Barb Wire," in which the big-bosomed one played a "Crouching Tiger"-like freedom fighter. Or perhaps we should lift the veil just long enough to point out that this film's extreme unpopularity -- and the absurdity of Ms. Anderson in the role -- proves how radical a change in cultural perception has occurred since then.)

Barring the occasional Linda Hamilton à la "Terminator" gal to come down the pike, the world of film has usually consigned women in fight scenes to clonking bad guys on the head with vases -- and even that has been considered rather feisty behavior compared with the more common image of victim, rescuee or occasional scary man-dyke whose ability to clock the hero is a sure sign of her moral degradation.

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