The Smurfette Principle: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}{{outdated}}<!-- Doctor Who and The Order of the Stick both need updating, and maybe other entries as well -->

Contrast [[Two Girls to a Team]], [[Useful Notes/The Bechdel Test|The Bechdel Test]], [[Girl Show Ghetto]]. This is also [[Distaff Counterpart]] to [[The One Guy]]. See also [[Smurfette Breakout]] when the character becomes popular on her own, and [[Territorial Smurfette]] when another female is added to the show and the character reacts negatively.

* Alison Bechdel's ''[[Dykes to Watch Out For]]'' initially inverted this, with scarcely any male characters, partly as a response to the Smurfette principle (as discussed in ''The Indelible Alison Bechdel'') and partly to force male readers to identify with the female characters, as women often have to identify with male characters. Over the last several years, more male characters have appeared; one of the main characters, Sparrow, had a long-term relationship and a child with a man named Stuart. This may have also been her accommodating what has become to be known as [[Useful Notes/The Bechdel Test|The Bechdel Test]] in her own work.

** ''Ryuki''{{'}}s Western Adaptation ''[[Kamen Rider Dragon Knight]]'' expanded the role of Femme's counterpart Kamen Rider Siren with original footage; making her a [[Sixth Ranger]] and forming a [[Power Trio]] with the two male leads. She's still the only girl out of thirteen Riders, but points for doing what they could.

** ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'' tries to redress some of the issue by having Natsumi temporarily become [[Kamen Rider Den-O|Den-O]] and later {{spoiler|becoming Kamen Rider Kivala in the [[Grand Finale]] movie (Keyword: "Finale". Go figure.)...and '''not''' dying, unlike the previous female Riders}} as well as giving ''[[Kamen Rider Hibiki|Hibiki]]''{{'}}s Akira full-fledged powers as Kamen Rider Amaki (in ''Hibiki'', she only ever assumed a middle-stage transformation).

* Both the U.K and U.S versions of ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?|Whose Line Is It Anyway]]'' feature four players, all of whom are almost always male. Only one episode in 18 series featured one male and three female performers. This is not helped by both Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles appearing in every episode of the last 11 series, meaning the best the women could achieve was parity with the male performers.

* Unlike other genres, it is still rare for a hip-hop label to have more than one female rapper at the same time, especially for solo acts. These women generally wind up falling into two roles: hyper-sexualized [[Ms. Fanservice]]'s ([[Trope Codifier]] [[Lil' Kim]], [[Nicki Minaj]], Trina, Shawnna, and Olivia for Bad Boy Entertainment, YMCMB, Slip-n-Slide, Disturbing tha Peace, and G-Unit, respectively) or projecting a less sexual [[One of the Boys]] image ([[Trope Codifier]] MC Lyte, Lady of Rage, Yo-Yo and Da Brat for First Priority, Death Row, Lench Mob and So So Def, respectively). Post-Lil Kim, the former category has become more prominent, though, since the late '90s, more female emcees have found a happy medium between emphasizing their vocal prowess ''and'' sexual expression (former Flipmode artist Rah Digga and Eve, from Ruff Ryders). The one-girl-to-a-team rule has notably been averted by Murder Inc. (who featured Charli Baltimore, Lil' Mo and Vita), and Def Jam which, for a short period during the 2000s hosted Foxy Brown, Lady Sovereign, Unladylike, Shareefa, and Shawnna, simultaneously.

* The ''Guess Who?'' game (in the late 80’s’80s) had exactly 5 girls and like 35 guys. This was a game of yes/no questions about appearance. If you drew a card with a girl on it you were almost sure to lose that round. Women were truly an “unusual subtype”. They were rarer than bald people, people with glasses, and gingers.

** Both ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' games have one female in a group of three males. In the sequel, the two groups meet so it's two girls with six guys. All the [[Non-Player Character|NPCs]] in the game are male, including the zombies until the female version of the Boomer was introduced in the sequel.

* The ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' series, as a whole, does this constantly. While there exact number of significant characters in the series depends on which of the many spinoffs are counted, even the most basic count totals over 100. Of these, the only females among them are Roll, who took until ''10'' to get a single plot-significant action to her name (getting sick so her brothers can save her) and was only playable a bonus character in a remake (as a semi-[[Joke Character]]), a post-completion bonus in an otherwise bad and now no-longer obtainable mobile port (not a joke character this time), and a board game where Mega Man himself isn't playable, ''[[Mega Man 4]]'s'' Kalinka, who existed entirely to be kidnapped and seems to never show up anymore because [[Comic Book Time|she would raise questions about the passage of time]], ''BatleBattle and Chase'''s Plum, who exists purely to facilitate pre-credits dialog and is almost entirely removed in translated versions because the translators were lazy, and ''9''{{'}}s Splash Woman.

** The [[Capcom vs. Whatever]] games have their own different [[Unfortunate Implications]] concerning Roll. In ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 2]]'', she was such an awful [[Joke Character]] that she got her own [[Character Tiers|tier]]. In ''[[Tatsunoko vs. Capcom]]'', thanks to the release of ''[[Mega Man Powered Up]]'', her moversetmoveset has a [[Stay in the Kitchen]] theme.

* ''[[Fallout]]'' allowed you to choose your character's gender, but of the four recruitable NPCs only one was female. In ''[[Fallout 2]]'' it got worse, with eight recruitable males, four dogs, a robot... and one female human, who was literally worse than useless (useless in a fight, can't gain levels, takes up a party slot and ''won't leave unless you kill her or sell her to slavers''. The being said, [[Femme Fatale|some quests in the game were more easily completed if you were a woman]]. It is debatable whether this helps, but it certainly won't pass [[Useful Notes/The Bechdel Test|The Bechdel Test]].

** The unpre-[[macekre]]d Japanese version of ''[[Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere]]'' is, thus far, the biggest aversion of this trope in the series. In addition to the [[Ill Girl|Ill]] [[MacGuffin Girl]] Rena Hirose, it gave us the [[The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry|Fitzgerald sisters, Cynthia and Fiona,]] who pretty much determine the late-game missions in the Neucom path. With Erich Jager, Keith Bryan, and [[Evil Mentor|Abyssal Dision]] on the male side, ''Electrosphere'' comes as close to gender parity, as an ''AC'' game can.

** ''[[Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies]]'' gave us Yellow 4, the [[Cartwright Curse|Doomed Love Interest]] of the hero's rival, and the only female in her squadron.

** ''[[Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War]]'' featured the ''other'' Kei Nagase, the only female in the entire game until the brief late-mission appearance of Bartlett's old flame.

** ''[[Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation]]'' tried to address this issue by showing a part of the story through the eyes of Melissa and Ludmila, two female refugees wandering the war-torn Emmeria, looking for their daughter and fiance, respectively. Also, it had a Token Enemy Female, Irena Dvornik, as well as allied pilot Lanner.

* For all their [[Emotional Torque|perfection]], one major complaint about [[Pixar]] is the lack of films that have passed the [[Useful Notes/The Bechdel Test|test]]:

** ''[[Toy Story (franchise)|Toy Story]]''{{'}}s main cast includes a young boy's toy collection, with predictably male-oriented rather than girls' toys. Bo Peep was the only female in the cast, a domestic woman and [[Shallow Love Interest]] with no part in the main action. The second and third films even out the gender inequality, though not by much.

** ''[[A Bug's Life|A Bugs Life]]'', despite having a few female royalties, is guilty of the [[Insect Gender Bender]]; biology dictates its protagonist should have been female. The Seven Samurai-esque troupe has a 3:1 (6:2) male-to-female ratio.

** Its spinoff series ''[[She-Ra: Princess of Power|She Ra Princess of Power]]'' was basically the same show [[Distaff Counterpart|with the gender ratio reversed]] to appeal to female viewers. Oddly enough, the one male (Bow) was dramatically less muscular than the weakest character in ''He-Man.'' Apparently an all-female planet had no need for steroids.

* Reversed in Federal Civil Service in the USA, with some agencies like the Forest Service being 70% or more female due to Affirmative Action. Ironically due to executive meddling of another kind in 1993, qualifications were waived for the typical middle and high level manager in most agencies, resulting in more than half of Federal Civil Service not meeting the educational requirements and/or time in grade required in 2011. The typical situation under the [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]] Administration was to give National Forests, BLM Districts, Field Offices and similar high level positions to secretaries and aides, raising them as many as 11 paygrades overnight. It's not uncommon for entire offices to be women and to have them composed of "scientists", "engineers" and so on that do not have a degree in the field they represent.