The Smurfette Principle: Difference between revisions
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* The [[Five-Man Band]] in ''[[Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future]]'' included Captain Power, Hawk, Tank, and Scout, all male. Sometime before the start of the show, they rescued Jennifer "Pilot" Chase from the Dread Youth. She was an awkward mix of skills and talents: she was on par with Power and Scout in combat and infiltration, but the former could easily (and often did) replace her at the helm of the Jumpship, and most of the time she was there only to be [[The Chick]]. Worse, at the end of its [[Cut Short|only season]], she was [[Killed Off for Real]] in a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. Leaked scripts for a proposed Season 2 would have brought in a more [[Action Girl|Amazonian]] replacement.
* ''[[Kamen Rider]]'' has always been quite the wiener party, with female Riders being few and far in between. ''[[Kamen Rider Ryuki]]'' introduced the first official female Rider. Her title was "Kamen Rider Femme". Go figure. ("Femme" is French for "woman"...) She only appears in a movie, thus being non-canon. Oh, and she {{spoiler|dies after like 30 minutes}}, but not before {{spoiler|killing the most evil Kamen Rider apparently.}}
** ''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.
** Furthering the point on the rare female Kamen Riders, Shuki from ''[[Kamen Rider Hibiki]]'' was the first female Rider to be in a TV series rather than a movie-only character. The tragic [[Executive Meddling]] that ruined the show in an attempt to make it more like other ''Kamen Rider'' series {{spoiler|killed her off.}}
** On a few occasions, women have "borrowed" Rider powers (including [[Kamen Rider Faiz]], [[Kamen Rider Kiva|IXA]], and the ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'' incarnation of [[Kamen Rider Den-O|Den-O]]), but this is always temporary.
** Preceding all of them was Electro-Human Tackle (yes, that was her name) from ''[[Kamen Rider Stronger]]'', who had all the qualifications to be considered a Rider, but wasn't. The manga ''[[Kamen Rider Spirits]]'' addresses this by saying that {{spoiler|following her [[Heroic Sacrifice]], Shigeru/Stronger wanted her to rest in peace as a normal woman.}}
** ''[[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?
** Lampshaded in one episode during a game of ''Scenes From A Hat'' in which the scene was "Bad Times to Kiss Someone". Since all the players were male, when the game ended, Colin Mochrie asked if they could get some women on the show.
** This is a common issue on similarly structured comedy shows. The most [[Egregious]] offender is probably ''[[Mock the Week]]'', since all four recurring panelists (out of six) are male and the host is as well.
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== Music ==
* 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.
* In [[The Protomen]]'s ''[[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]]'' [[Rock Opera]] (also known as ''The Protomen''), Dr. Light's girlfriend Emily is the only female character to have lines.
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* PPVs also fall victim to this since there will often only be one women's match per PPV (apart from Night of Champions when they had two titles so they had two matches; they skated around this in 2010 by having the unification match at Night of Champions) and indeed, as is often the case on the regular TV shows, a mixed tag match will often be counted as the token women's match despite the women usually taking a backseat in those matches.
* In fairness though, while episodes will normally feature only one match, WWE and TNA do generally try to feature all their women on TV regularly. There have been cases where multiple storylines for the women have taken place at the same time with backstage segments and pairing the women with male Superstars. WWE have recently been quite good at making sure all their Divas are featured on TV regularly (without throwing them all in a multi diva tag match). NXT has been a big help with this.
== Radio ==
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* When Sandi Toksvig first appeared on ''[[I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue]]'' in the 1990s, she remarked how proud she was to be 'in the long line of women who have appeared on the show' (she was the third, and the show had been running for about twenty years at that point.) This provoked considerable laughter from the audience, and a sort of 'oooh' noise from Tim Brooke-Taylor.
** Barry Cryer proceeded to make the apologetic comment "Well, they were all [[wikipedia:Rosie the Riveter|in the factories]] [[Long Runners|when we started]]!"
== Tabletop Games ==
=== Board Games ===
* [[Chess]] has only one female character, the queen, which makes sense since the names are inspired by medieval warfare. However, [[God Save Us From the Queen|she is also the most powerful piece.]]
* The ''Guess Who?'' game (in the late
* While the ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' fluff contains a good number of female characters, there are very few of those that can be used in-game.
** Also, although a number of armies (in particular the Imperial Guard and the Eldar/Dark Eldar) are said to contain large numbers of women, up until recently unless a unit was [[Amazon Brigade|overwhelmingly female]] the models wouldn't reflect it. More recent miniatures have started to correct this pattern, with female torsos being available in the Eldar Guardian box sets for example.
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* [[Transformers]] series' toy lines. All of them. [[Fridge Logic|Though one could argue why alien robots conform to human genders in the first place]].
* Most action toy lines in general follow this trope, generally on the basis that boys won't buy action figures of female characters. This was the reason Katara from ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' never got an action figure despite being an [[Action Girl]] on the main cast, while a male character, Jet, who only appeared in a few episodes, managed to get one.
== Video Games ==
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* The ''[[Ace Combat]]'' series is a pretty bad offender (but then again, they are gaming equivalents of ''[[Top Gun]]''):
** ''[[Ace Combat 2]]'' had a single significant female character, namely the optional wingwoman Kei Nagase. The other potential wingman was a [[Scary Black Man]] and the [[Player Character]] [[Featureless Protagonist]] is referred to as male.
** The
** ''[[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 Zero: The Belkan War]]'' goes for a Token Enemy Female again and gives us [[Badass Spaniard|Marcela Vasquez]], the only female boss-level ace and the only woman to get her own interview. Also, out of 169 [[Nominal Importance|named aces]] in the game, only 9 are female. That's about 19 to 1 male-to-female ratio.
** ''[[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.
** ''[[Ace Combat: Assault Horizon]]'' follows the suit with only one female character of [[Nominal Importance]] and speaking role, Janice Rehl. A Nagase lookalike is present in some cutscenes but that's sadly just a non-speaking cameo.
*** On a more meta level, Janice is so far the ''only'' playable female character in a twenty years-old series. And only for half a mission.
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* Of the gang of playable characters in ''[[Borderlands]]'', three are male, with a fourth man driving the truck, and one is female - introduced as "The Siren," which is barely a gnat's whisker away from simply calling her "the token girl." The vast majority of enemies will be male, too. Or arguably, in the case of the skags, not sexually dimorphic.
* A pub in ''[[Dishonored]]''. ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s [http://www.cracked.com/article_20657_the-6-most-bizarre-ways-to-lose-popular-video-games.html The 6 Most Bizarre Ways to Lose Popular Video Games] describes it as containing "Havelock the leader, Piero the geeky inventor, and Callista the woman."
* [[Real Life Writes The Plot]]; the reason ''[[Super Mario Wonder]]'' averts this Trope by including Daisy as a playable character is because, as the developers claim, their own daughters (who beta tested the game) would argue over who would use Peach in multi-player mode. They later decided to add Toadette too to the roster, making the playable cast five guys and three gals.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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* [[The Nostalgia Chick]] talks about this in a video titled "[https://web.archive.org/web/20140830043656/http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thedudette/nostalgia-chick/16616-the-smurfette-principle The Smurfette Principle]". At that point, she was also an example of it, though two other women joined the site at the same time, and [[That Guy With The Glasses]], as a site, has gone on to build a larger female cast.
* Most videos on ''[[Cracked.com]]'' have a single female.
== Western Animation ==
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