Different for Girls/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A person impersonating the opposite gender has difficulty due to differing gender roles in society.

  • Straight:
    • Due to a Zany Scheme, Bob must disguise himself as Alice to interact with some people who've never met her. He has difficulty walking in high heels, sitting in a short skirt, and accidentally walks into the wrong restroom, arousing suspicion.
    • Alice disguises herself as Bob and has trouble acting Rated "M" for Manly.
  • Exaggerated: Even though Bob has been physically transformed into Alice, the above problems remain in force--he can't even figure out how to button his blouse straight, because the buttons are on the wrong side. If Bob is speaking a gendered language like Japanese, he keeps using masculine speech instead of feminine.
  • Justified: Bob has never tried to impersonate a woman before, and has never studied their behavior with an eye to imitation.
  • Inverted:
    • Bob is an Instant Expert at impersonating a woman, looking and behaving so naturally feminine that when the real Alice actually shows up, she's accused of being a man in disguise.
    • Bob has always been considered effeminate, and fits in better as Alice.
  • Subverted: It looks like this trope is in play for the first couple of minutes, until Bob hits his stride and encounters no further difficulties.
  • Double Subverted: Until the end of the meeting, when he does something so unmistakably masculine that there's no question what's going on.
  • Parodied: Bob hasn't even remembered to shave this morning; somehow the Casanova he's trying to fool fails to notice.
  • Deconstructed: The impersonation fails right out of the gate due to Bob's failure to prepare properly, putting an end to the Zany Scheme five minutes into the program.
  • Reconstructed: There's enough variance within modern gender roles that minor gaffes might well be overlooked; most people would feel bad if they falsely accused someone of being "the wrong gender" and will thus give the benefit of the doubt for a while.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob got some coaching from Alice beforehand, so he avoids some pitfalls, but wasn't entirely paying attention, and some areas didn't get covered, so Bob makes goofs too.
  • Averted:
    • Bob has crossdressed before, and thus learned the ropes well enough to pass.
    • Alternatively, he's just that good at applying his observation of women in the past to his current situation.
  • Enforced: Bob's in a Situation Comedy, and the director believes that men in dresses are inherently funny, so insists that Bob be as obviously male as possible in that outfit.
  • Lampshaded: "How do women walk in these things?" "Practice."
  • Invoked: Alice set up the whole Zany Scheme for the purpose of getting video footage of Bob's clumsy performance as a woman.
  • Defied: Bob spends several days training and studying, possibly with a sympathetic coach, before attempting to pass as a woman in public.
  • Discussed: "Okay, guys, we need someone to pass as Alice to the Lithuanian ambassador. Does anyone here know how to walk in heels?"
  • Conversed: "This is the third time they've had Bob disguise himself as a woman on Generic Sitcom; you'd think he'd be better at passing by now."

Back to Different for Girls--no, not like that, they'll figure out you're a guy for sure!

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