One of comedy's great icons - and certainly the female comic icon for a generation - is trampling on her own history, and it's ugly.

The female icon is a powerful symbol, combining opposites in integrated wholes.

At the end of the aisle are two doors marked with male and female icons.

The way that Elizabeth I was treated "as some sort of female icon is ludicrous," he protested.

A man may choose to ignore certain male icons; a woman has no such luxury where the great majority of female icons are concerned.

Instead of the female icon, he used a world class female body builder.

Who would be a female icon in these fickle days?

She stood two spaces in front of him: blue skirt, orange tie, slightly convex white blouse, like every other female icon.

She was "one of Punk's first female icons".