Affirmative Action Girl/Playing With

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Basic Trope: A female character added to increase diversity, after the Token Girl.

  • Straight: The 80% male Five-Man Band gets a Sixth Ranger, Akela, to complement The Chick, Marian.
  • Exaggerated: An entire Amazon Brigade joins the main group, over numbering the males.
  • Justified: The chauvinist Five-Man Band is convinced that Real Women Never Wear Dresses, and reject several potentially useful female companions for this reason until Akela comes along.
  • Inverted: Another guy joins an Amazon Brigade which already has a token male.
  • Subverted:
  • Double Subverted:
    • However, it turns out that the villains were controlling her actions, and Akela returns to the group permanently.
    • After staying with the group for several episodes, Alecks is revealed to in fact be Akela - she's experienced sexism before and had to masquerade in this fashion to gain their trust.
    • Alecks is male-to-female transgender. After some thought, the group accepts her as Akela and for the rest of the show she is treated in-story and out as no different from Marian.
  • Parodied: As soon as the Five-Man Band has been formed, the group realizes they only have one girl and quickly seeks out another to balance things out.
  • Deconstructed:
    • When the group first meets Akela, they're a little skeptical about taking her on - she's just not as powerful as the rest of them. But they feel guilty about keeping out a girl, so they let her in. Things get worse for them after that, because she just can't fight like the boys can.
    • Akela is a competent fighter, but is never truly accepted by the group because they simply wanted her for PR reasons.
  • Reconstructed: Akela is introduced as slightly weak, and the boys worry that she can't handle fighting. But her other talents are soon proved to be at least as useful and they're very glad they accepted her.
  • Zig Zagged: Once Akela joins the team, Marian is killed off. Then Betsy joins in, but Akela is kidnapped by the bad guys. In the process of rescuing her, Betsy is turned into a boy by a curse. Then Marian comes back from the dead...
  • Averted: The group remains constant throughout the show, or they only ever gain male characters.
  • Enforced: "Okay, we have to increase the viewership among the female Demographics. Let's try adding a new girl character!"
  • Lampshaded: "I'm so glad you joined the group, Akela! I was sick of being the only girl!"
  • Invoked: When the group notices they should get more people, Marian suggests they try to find a girl.
  • Defied: The Five-Man Band decides one girl is enough, and don't recruit any more girls.
  • Discussed: "There are times I wonder if Akela's just on the team so we can have another girl."
  • Conversed: "Teams with only one girl always get another chick somehow, don't they?"

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