Bifauxnen: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:lady-oscar-resize-text 8631.png|link=Rose of Versailles|frame|Bifauxnen -- bringing romance and excitement to your life since the French revolution.]]

{{quote|''"Oh, my stars and comets! He's a she!"''|'''[[Cool Old Guy|Galuf]]''', ''[[Final Fantasy V]]''}}

A subtrope of [[Lady Looks Like a Dude]]. The male equivalent is [[Dude Looks Like a Lady]]. Not to be confused with [[Sweet Polly Oliver]], who only dresses like a man to achieve a goal that requires her to seem male. Compare to [[Samus Is a Girl]], where the gender simply isn't discernible until [[The Reveal]]. Can also be a case of [[Bifauxnen and Ladette]] if there's more than one in a particular work or [[Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite]] if she just happens to have a few male bits in the end. Also see [[The Ladette]] and [[Attractive Bent Gender]]. May involve a [[Gender Reveal]].

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* Kurau from ''[[Kurau Phantom Memory]]''. She's very mannish and wears masculine clothing most of the time, the only thing usually giving her away is her voice. Of course, when she pretends to be a man to bodyguard a guy at his wedding, she disguises her voice perfectly.

** Ukyou, but only around the time of her introduction. From the moment she puts aside her grudge with Ranma and Genma, she gets girlier as the series progresses.

** Likewise, Ryuunosuke from ''[[Urusei Yatsura]]'', Ukyou and [[Gender Bender|Ranma]]'s [[Expy|authorical ancestor]].

* ''[[Simoun]]'': Paraietta, especially impressive given the [[Gender Bender|premise of the show]]. Though the outfit and her physique don't fit the trope. It's more the attitude and facial features.

* In the ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'' [[The Movie|movie]], one of the major characters doesn't realize Utena is female until he's halfway into a fight scene with her due to her boys' school uniform and short hair (covered further by a hat). Nobody made that mistake in the original, where she had long hair and wore Daisy Dukes. Utena's status is made a bit more complex by her dislike of actually being identified as masculine. Rather, she assumes the qualities of a prince as a heroic, energetic, and proactive figure, and the rest is window dressing.

* ''[[Galaxy Angel (anime)|Galaxy Angel]]'': Due to the [[Fundamentally Female Cast|lack of men]] in the show, the [[The Ladette|tall, husky voiced gun-nut]] Forte ends up playing one whenever the team requires. Especially ironic given her generic costume shows off her assets very prominently.

* Likewise, Maria Tachibana and Kanna Kirishima from ''[[Sakura Taisen]]'' are tall and have husky voices, so they usually play male roles in their musical productions.

* There's a oneshot manga called ''Kuroneko Guardian'' where a young singer is given a bodyguard. She's dressed as a boy because "it'd be easier to work if people didn't know she was a girl".

* Haruka Hiroko in the second story of ''Himitsu Kichi''.

== Art ==

== Film ==

* In ''[[Victor Victoria]]'', the title character is played by Julie Andrews. Female both in real life and in the movie, she plays the eponymous Victor, an ostensibly male drag queen. Part of the plot is fueled by various women being very attracted to "Victor" (as a subplot, a few of the male characters have a [[Stupid Sexy Flanders]] reaction to "him.")

* The actress [[Tilda Swinton]], who started her career by ''living'' this trope. She is attractive to both genders, while being androgynous enough to apply for [[Even the Girls Want Her]] ''and'' [[Even the Guys Want Him]], depending on the character.

** She played the technically sexless Angel Gabriel for the movie ''[[Constantine]]''.

** Orlando from the film ''[[Orlando]]'', who begins as an androgynous man in the 16th century, becomes ageless, and later changes sex into an androgynous woman.

** Also a feature in many of Tilda's glamour shots. There are several which try to make half of her look like a woman and half of her look like a man. It's strangely attractive.

** Conan O'Brien has said that Tilda should play him in a movie. She said she'd do it.

* [[Tomboyish Name|Johnny]] (Jane Birkin) from ''Je T'aime Moi Non Plus''. She ends up giving the gay protagonist Krassky (Joe Dallesandro) a major case of [[Stupid Sexy Flanders]] after subjecting him to an [[Unsettling Gender Reveal]].

* [[Cate Blanchett]] playing... er... "not Bob Dylan" ([[It Makes Sense in Context]]) in ''[[I'm Not There]]''. [[Fetish Fuel]] ensued. Suffice it to say that Cate makes a rather hot guy. The fact that her voice is very much on the huskier end of the scale helped.

* Imogen Stubbs, as Viola/Cesario in the 1996 adaptation of ''[[Twelfth Night]]''. Olivia's infatuation is ''completely'' understandable...

* A short-haired Keira Knightley is mistaken for a boy (and to be making out with the female protagonist) in one scene in ''[[Bend It Like Beckham]]''. ([[Even the Girls Want Her|*happy sigh*]]) Although the character is traditionally feminine in some ways, her sportiness, preference for trousers at all times, and lack of interest in enhancing her cleavage create a boyish aura around her (contributing to her mother's suspicions that she's gay).

* A meta-example: An androgynous character in an episode of ''[[Bones]]'' is revealed to be male near the end of the episode. However, the character was played by a woman, so any audience members fooled by the episode's reveal would have this reaction when discovering the identity of the actress.

** Also in the commentary it is mentioned that they filmed the ending (boy vs girl) both ways - so not even the actors themselves knew if she was supposed to be a male or female until it was edited together.

* [[Older Than Steam]]: Viola in ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' and Rosalind from ''[[As You Like It]]'', both by [[Shakespeare]]. Interestingly, this means the trope is [[Zig Zagged]] since, in Shakespeare's time, males played ''all'' the roles...[[Dude Looks Like a Lady|including the female ones]]. Thus, when these plays were first performed, you had [[Recursive Crossdressing|guys playing girls that were pretending to be guys]].

* Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap." Miss Casewell's masculine appearance and voice is one of many misdirections Christie uses to keep her audience guessing.

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Bloodline Champions]]'' has the Nomad bloodline's Officer outfit. There's has cleavage on her, but otherwise looks very androgynous. There's a piercing under their lip which one could mistake for a soul patch.

* King from ''[[The King of Fighters]]''. She dressed as a man in the original ''[[Art of Fighting]]'', due to an incident regarding her gender and childhood training in Muay Thai. In that game, she is presented as asexual (besides baring her bra if beaten with a super move), but future games acknowledge her true gender. She continues to dress is masculine clothing in all her later appearances, though; the closest concession to her actual gender, clothing-wise, is wearing a dress in her ending in ''The King of Fighters XI''.

* Julie d'Aubigny, "La Maupin" was a 17th century duellist and opera singer. She was raised by her father, who taught her to fence. At age 15, she seduced his employer, the Comte d'Armagnac. At 18, she escaped Paris with a young man and ended up in Marseille, where she earned money by fencing (in male clothes) and started to study singing at a music academy. She then tired of her beau and seduced a nun. This resulted in a trial (in absentia) where ''sieur'' d'Aubigny (mentioning her true gender was a bit too scandalous) was condemned for kidnapping a novice, body snatching, setting fire to the convent, and failing to appear before the tribunal. She was lated pardoned by the king and left Paris again, at the age of twenty, where she was hired by the Paris Opera as one of the first mezzosopranos. She then stayed in Paris except for a short trip to Brussels to escape the law (she had broken the duel edict when fighting for a pretty girl she met at a royal ball). In Brussels she had a affair with Maximilian Emanuel, the Elector of Bavaria (one of the German princes of the Holy Roman Empire). She came back when the king pardoned her (yes, again). She died in 1702.

* Female [[Cross Player|crossplayers]] are a particular real-life version of this trope, as groups will often pick their most masculine-looking female friends to cosplay Bishounen characters. This will often lead to bizarre situations occurring at Anime conventions, though people have generally learned not to question the gender of those entering bathrooms.

** [http://pikminlink.deviantart.com/ Pikmin Link], among the very best [[The Legend of Zelda|Link]] cosplayers in existence. Very nearly everyone is surprised to find that she is female.

** Russian cosplayer Selfoblivion makes an [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDruPPPMK3I uncanny Jared Leto].

* [[Grace Jones]].

* "Otokoyaku" (boy role) actresses in [[Takarazuka]]. Often leading to copious amounts of [[Even the Girls Want Her]].