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Target girl is a term sometimes used in circus and vaudeville to denote a female assistant in "impalement" acts such as knife throwing, archery or sharpshooting. The assistant stands in front of a target board or is strapped to a moving board and the impalement artist throws knives or shoots projectiles so as to hit the board but miss the assistant. The image or character of the target girl has also permeated beyond the impalement arts and become an icon in fiction and visual media. Although some assistants are male there is no common equivalent term for a male assistant. This reflects the fact that, historically at least, female assistants have predominated in the acts in question. The presence of an assistant as a human target provides a powerful element of risk. Without assistants placing themselves in danger these acts would be simple demonstrations of accuracy, but with the potential for injury or death the show is much more dramatic. Target girls often wear revealing costumes, thus adding an element of overt sexuality to an act. In this respect there is some similarity to magicians' assistants, although there is a distinct difference in that any apparent danger to an assistant in a magic act is mostly an illusion, whereas impalement acts are demonstrations of accuracy, nerve and calculated risk and the danger is real. While some observers have perceived target girls as masochistic or passive and some feminists criticise the concept as misogynist, several target girls have given accounts of themselves as assertive women and portrayed their experiences as empowering. small group of target girls are notable for the fact that they are well known celebrities who performed the role for charitable purposes or other reasons apart from their main career. These are examples of the target girl, rather than the thrower, being the main individual in the act. The annual Circus of the Stars television special, made by CBS between 1977 and 1994, provided a number of examples. They include: Lynda Carter, the actress best known as television's Wonder Woman, appeared as a target girl on the very first Circus of the Stars in January 1977, with actor David Janssen throwing knives at her and Linda Blair, the actress who rose to fame as a child star in The Exorcist, appeared as a target girl for knife thrower Paul Lacross on Circus of the Stars in 1983. [READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE]
