Real Women Don't Wear Dresses

Guess which of these women is the tough, competent one.

A woman is shown as weak, incompetent, and ineffectual in this trope unless she dresses and behaves like a man. A common variation on this is to present a woman as superior because she's "not like other women." Another variation is a Tomboy and Girly Girl scenario, where the tomboy is presented as superior.

We're just recording the trope, here. It happens. Between a woman in trousers and one in a dress, the odds are the trouser lady is going to be the Action Girl of the pair and the one in the dress is going to end up being a Damsel in Distress. Subversions exist, of course, especially in more recent works since third wave "Girl Power" feminism. Many of the straight examples are from older works when having proactive female characters at all was fairly edgy.

Contrast Kicking Ass in All Her Finery.

Examples of Real Women Don't Wear Dresses are listed on these subpages:

Real Women Don't Wear Dresses

Examples of Real Women Don't Wear Dresses include:

Live Action TV

Please move these examples to Real Women Don't Wear Dresses/Live-Action TV

Veronica Mars likes to avert this trope. Veronica's a Badass investigator who will destroy the lives of anyone who dares to cross her - but also bakes "spirit cookies" for her friend Wallace (snickerdoodles!), and hopes to receive a pony as a gift someday.
Totally averted by Delenn on Babylon 5 who wears gorgeous clothes, looks and acts unmistakably feminine, and is the most unambiguously good, kind, and even maternal character on the show, but is so Badass that the Shadows probably have dark, ancient legends about her.
Averted by Dana Scully of The X-Files. She is the Action Girl of her and Mulder's partnership and is capable of doing more than her fair share of the rescuing. She has a degree in the more male-dominated field of physics, is a pathologist, and insists that her male coworkers not treat her differently because she is a woman and tiny. However, she is undeniably feminine. She has a liking for nice clothes and bubblebaths, a well-kept apartment, is a health-nut and is very concerned about her weight.
Buffy's whole schtick is to subvert this. Unmistakably feminine, a former cheerleader, not above going nuts in a clothing store, and if a creature from the depths of hell tries to attack her in a dark alley, a quick death is about the most it could hope for.
Averted hard by Kara Thrace in Battlestar Galactica. Kara is an Ace Pilot whose wardrobe consists of mainly military uniform or fatigues, but she's not above pulling out all the stops to render her Love Interest speechless at the sight of her, going so far as to tell him that her in a dress is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
- That doesn't sound like a "hard" aversion...
Sometimes used in Super Sentai, which is fond of the Tomboy and Girly Girl trope: if there are Two Girls to a Team, typically the Pink (or White) Ranger will be girly and wear skirts/dresses, while the Yellow (or Blue) Ranger will be more tomboyish and wear shorts or pants. Early series would lean towards making the tomboy the stronger warrior, while the girly girl would be more of a pacifist and often have a less powerful weapon. Subverted in more recent years, where the two will more often be shown to be equally skilled, but with different fighting styles.
Completely inverted with 19 Kids and Counting, to the point of Unfortunate Implications; if a woman isn't an Extreme Doormat, she WILL go to Hell.
Played straight (albeit accidentally) on Robin Hood which saw Djaq, an intelligent, resourceful, competent Action Girl who always wore pants written out at the end of the second season and replaced with Kate, a girl who wore an impractically long dress out in the forest, and whose contributions to the outlaw gang included a string of kidnappings, endless bitching and moaning, and a Romantic Plot Tumour.