Historically, gender has been understood as a means of distinguishing the biological and socialized aspects of femininity and masculinity (Marecek, Crawford, & Popp, 2004). It is considered an active product of social interactions where situated conduct is managed “in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate to one's sexual category” (West and Zimmerman, 1987). These social and behavioral expectations exist in the form of gender roles and are so deeply ingrained in our cultural systems that they seem inherent. Femininity and masculinity are generally constructed as being the opposite of each other; femininity is associated with nonviolence, passivity, and emotions while masculinity is described as strength, aggression, and restrained emotions (Levant & Kopecky, 1995). Failure to adhere to these gender ideals, particularly in matters relating to sex and violence, is frowned upon because it challenges the very basis on which gender is constructed. However, the 21st century has seen a shift in gender roles due to factors such as changing family structures and women's rights movements, allowing the demarcation between the sexes to be less clear-cut. While it is argued that discourses of female deviance remain "curiously rooted in the Victorian era" (Jewkes, 2004), it would be useful to examine whether such gender expectations are still upheld today, especially in Western media. Through an analysis of the representation of the criminal Amanda Knox in the British media, this article argues that contemporary media still conform to the stereotypical construction of the female criminal, as highlighted in established literature on feminist criminology, such as " double deviance" (Heidensohn, 1989) and the more recent "crazy/bad d...... middle of paper ......& Honkatukia, 2002) and can deny the "action of the offenders in their act" to the extent that their crime was the result of women's "biological functions." » (Naylor, 1995). In fact, PMS has been used successfully to absolve women of responsibility for their actions (Dalton, 1990). Sexual deviance is systematically linked in contemporary literature to female criminality, where "the woman who has had extramarital sex, or perverse sex, or perhaps just being 'sexy' is capable of any deviance” (Naylor, 1995). Surprisingly, this dichotomy has received little criticism in the literature. Frigon (1995) makes one of the rare criticisms and notes that "limiting explanations to the crazy/bad dichotomy circumvents the possibility of seeing the powerlessness of women and... locates the problem at an individual level... [so] it prevents us to consider a broader vision. social and economic processes”.