Amazonian Beauty

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"She's a brick... house!
She's mighty mighty, just lettin' it all hang out
She's a brick... house!
The lady's stacked and that's a fact,
ain't holding nothing back."

The Commodores

A lot of the time, they say No Guy Wants an Amazon. No guy wants a woman physically stronger than he is. Unless she is one of these women.

Basically, the Amazonian Beauty is what happens when Ms. Fanservice hulks out.

The Amazonian Beauty frequently crosses over unsurprisingly with Hot Amazon. The difference is while a Hot Amazon is fawned over at least partially because of her Action Girl status and this is done in-story, the Amazonian Beauty is beautiful because of her muscles. Additionally, this trope is not necessarily just in-universe.

Often times, such as in fighting video games like Street Fighter, a lot of beautiful women are jacked but no one comments on it, since to the characters it is the norm for them to see characters like that, despite the fact that they are still Ms. Fanservices who go above and beyond the call of duty in some cases.

A quick litmus test for this trope is:

  • Is the female character in question muscular?
  • Is her muscularity emphasized (pointed out in-universe or by flexing) or noticeably large?
  • Is her muscle the integral and dominant physical trait of her bare skin (due to their large mass or detailed definition)? (Example: Most of the skin is sculpted or bulky, rather than smooth—Fairchild at right is an excellent example of both "sculpted" skin and muscle mass.) Of course, this can be Depending on the Artist.
  • Finally, is she accompanied by Fan Service tropes? (Examples: Stripperific, Male Gaze, etc.)

If the answer to all four above is "yes", the character qualifies for this trope.

This character can take her muscularity to Heroic Build levels. Sometimes starts out as a Super Strong Child, and usually (if not almost always) is an Action Girl. Almost always has large breasts. And as mentioned above, is pretty much always a Hot Amazon. Her smaller (and equally dangerous) cousin is the Cute Bruiser. Given that these girls are often tall to further enhance their presentation of strength, romances with them are likely to result in Tiny Guy, Huge Girl and Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy.

Closely related to the Hot Amazon, and many Amazonian Beauties are indeed Hot Amazons as well. Contrast Brawn Hilda, Big Beautiful Woman. Some of these characters also double as Statuesque Stunners. Usually also a Passionate Sports Girl, with a particular emphasis on gym workouts and weightlifting but other sports (most often ball sports) may come into play. When the female in question worries about the slippery slope between this trope and Brawn Hilda, it usually results in Muscle Angst.


Examples of Amazonian Beauty include:


Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Fan Works

Film

  • In Aces Iron Eagle III, this trope accurately describes the female co-lead, Anna Morales: the beautiful, muscular woman who showed herself as also a Determinator and a Badass in her first scene by, while chained, pulling herself up by grabbing those chains, cutting through her wrists, then pulling herself between the ceiling and the rafter, to break them before climbing up to choke a prison guard with it on the way down. She was played by another Real Life Amazonian Beauty Rachel McLish, who now also doubles as Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!.
  • In the movie Skin Deep, John Ritter, a guy who basically hasn't met a woman he hasn't wanted (or in many cases tried) to bang, picks up a hot looking babe and goes home with her. When they get naked, he discovers she's a really dedicated bodybuilder, muscles and all. When she asks him what he thinks of her, he says, "I feel like Mrs. Arnold Schwarzenegger." Said woman was played by Real Life female bodybuilder Raye Hollitt, better known to fans of American Gladiators as Zap.
  • In the film, My Lucky Stars featuring Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, the Japanese model who turned out to be a muscular martial artist when she took off her robe, during her Designated Girl Fight. Said woman was played by Real Life Amazonian Beauty/Hot Mom Michiko Nishiwaki, who's also a stuntwoman.
  • Rosario Dawson gets a dose of this for one scene in The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
  • Spice Williams, an actress and stunt woman, often played roles like this when she was younger. Nowadays she's almost 60 and while still an arguable case of Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!, is more often a stunt choreographer. She actually was responsible for choreographing the infamous Miller Lite "Tastes Great/Less Filling" catfight commercial.
  • There's a whole genre of films based on this trope. Most of them feature some girl or other flexing, beating up men, and sometimes wrestling with another girl. They generally run from about PG-13 to softcore porn (there are a few who do hardcore porn, however), depending on the girls participating and what their limits were. Some notable examples are Yvette Bova, Renita Harris, Denise Masino, and Autumn Raby.

Literature

  • Beth Halpern from the Michael Crichton novel The Sphere, was a very attractive weightlifter. One of the other characters described her as "Mother Nature with muscles".

Live-Action TV

Music

  • Spoofed mercilessly by Soda Stereo's song "Mi novia tiene biceps" ("My girlfriend's got biceps"), in which the narrator is rather cynical in regards to his girlfriend's obsession with becoming one of these.
  • The video for "Manchmal haben Frauen" ("Sometimes women have") by German punk band Die Arzte hilariously features this trope, mixed with a lot of Fan Disservice. See for yourself, although it might not be safe for work.

Professional Wrestling

  • Beth Phoenix embodies this trope. She's nicknamed "The Glamazon".
  • Although Chyna started out as a masculine Brawn Hilda, she gradually drifted into this trope after several plastic surgeries (most notably, a set of breast implants and having her jawbone shaved) and as D Generation X turned Face. At the height of her popularity she posed for Playboy; that issue set records, both for sales and in use of airbrush..
  • Trish Stratus and Torrie Wilson were both rather famous fitness models before getting involved in pro wrestling.

Tabletop Games

  • The majority of the Amazoness series of cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! are a clan of attractive women who are at least athletically built/toned. Their revealing attire doesn't exactly hurt in this regard either.

Video Games

Black Widow: "My web has snared them all, none can hope to escape it, or me!"

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation