The Smurfette Principle/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: There's only one (important) female main character, and she (usually) exists solely to appeal to the female demographic.

  • Straight: Awesome Girl is the only female member of her Super Team.
  • Exaggerated: The team decides they need more members and expands to 108 superheroes... but Awesome Girl is still the only female.
  • Downplayed: Awesome Girl is the only female member of her Super Team, but there are lots of Badass Normal Recurring Characters who are female; they're just not official members of the team.
  • Justified: The story takes place in a time period where women were considered less capable of being Badass than men, so the team is actually being very progressive by including Awesome Girl at all.
  • Inverted: Awesome Man is the only male member of his Super Team.
  • Subverted: Everyone thinks Awesome Girl is the only female, until the Slaughterinator turns out to be a woman disguised as a man.
    • While Awesome Girl is not the only important main character, she and other girls are still outnumbered by the boys.
  • Doubly Subverted: The Slaughterinator is actually a man who was transformed into a woman via Applied Phlebotinum.
    • After the Slaughterinator is revealed to be a woman, Awesome Girl is revealed to be a man.
  • Parodied: Every time it seems like another woman is going to join the team, they get literally Stuffed Into the Fridge by the end of the episode.
  • Deconstructed: Everyone else on the team treats Awesome Girl differently because she's the only female. Eventually, she gets sick of it and switches sides.
  • Reconstructed: The team only lets in the badassest of the badass, and so far, they haven't found any women as badass as Awesome Girl.
  • Zig Zagged: Awesome Girl is the only female member of her Super Team until she gets turned into Awesome Man. Then it's revealed that the Slaughterinator is a woman disguised as a man. Then Doctor Killblood zaps the team with the Phlebotinumitizer 3000, turning all of them into women, except for Awesome Man who is now the only man... at least until Doctor Killblood's son switches sides and joins the team.
  • Averted: The Super Team has an even gender ratio.
  • Enforced: The team refuses to let Madam Mysterious join them, because they already have Awesome Girl.
  • Lampshaded: "Awesome Girl? Yeah, she's our token chick."
  • Invoked: The team consists entirely of men, until they let Awesome Girl join them to avoid being criticized by Straw Feminists.
  • Defied: The team gets Madam Mysterious and Professor Pink to join them because Awesome Girl doesn't want to be The Chick.
  • Discussed:

Awesome Girl: Being surrounded by men all the time SUCKS!
Professor Pink: Look on the bright side, if this were a comic book there'd only be one of us.

  • Conversed: "Have you ever noticed how in comics there's never more than one woman per Super Team?"
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