Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A girly guy and a boyish girl appear together.

  • Straight: Ian is slim with a pretty face and likes cooking; Jane has a boyish face with a burly physique and likes boxing.
  • Exaggerated: Ian dresses in pink frilly clothes and looks and sounds like a Yamato Nadeshiko; Jane looks, sounds and dresses like a pro wrestler.
  • Downplayed: Ian likes cooking while Jane likes boxing. Ian is the tough-looking guy while Jane is a healthy and sexy girl.
  • Justified: Ian and Jane are raised in a society where the gender stereotypes are reversed.
    • Ian and Jane are Cultural Rebels who refuse to let society dictate how they should act or what they should like -- and, as such, they have that in common.
    • The show runs on a joking stereotype that Ian is Camp Gay and Jane is a Butch Lesbian.
  • Inverted: Ian and Jane look, act and dress normally for their gender.
  • Subverted: We're introduced to Ian and Jane dressed in girly pink frills and blue guy-clothes at first, but it turns out they're on their way to a costume party.
  • Double Subverted: ...they're going as a horse. That really is how they normally dress.
  • Parodied: Ian only employs character tropes that are Always Female, while Jane only employs Always Male tropes. In fact, many people confuse Ian and Jane for the opposite gender.
  • Deconstructed: Ian and Jane are ostracized by their peers and fail to find love due to failure to fit in with heteronormative standards.
  • Reconstructed: However they meet, develop a close friendship, and fall deeply in love with each other, gaining support against outside pressure.
  • Zig Zagged: Ian and Jane act normally for thier gender arround other people. When they're together Ian acts like an Always Female type of Love Interest to Jane, and Jane acts like an Always Male type of Love Interest to Ian.
  • Averted: See Inverted
    • Jane and Ian's genders are completely irrelevant--they act neither stereotypically male nor female.
    • Viewer Gender Confusion
  • Enforced: The writer is a fierce feminist and/or relates to the humble and feminine man in the relationship.
  • Lampshaded: "Why exactly do you act like a girl, Ian?" "Because my girlfriend acts like a man?"
  • Invoked: Jane and Ian are supportive of inverting stereotypical gender conventions, and go out of their way to act the opposite of how each is expected.
    • Alternatively, Jane is a manly woman, and Ian, who is in love with her, plays up his feminine traits to try to win her heart (or vice versa).
  • Defied: Ian would much rather wear pink frills, and Jane would love to lounge around in sweats, but they both are worried about how society would view them if they did.
  • Discussed: "Yeah, Ian's kind of a girly-man, and Jane's a total Tomboy. It's just the way they are."
  • Conversed: "This show is odd -- the guy's all girly, and the chick is so manish."

Back to Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Masculine_Girl,_Feminine_Boy/Playing_With?oldid=862645"