The Smurfette Principle: Difference between revisions

This trope can also be [[Justified Trope]] by its unfortunate [[Truth in Television|accuracy]] in certain contexts. It is fairly realistic for [[Men Are the Expendable Gender|armies]], police forces, adventuring parties, and similar groups to be predominantly male, especially if set in a non-[[Politically-Correct History]].

 

 

Writers who recognize the problem after a season or two may expand the cast with [[Affirmative Action Girl|Affirmative Action Girls]]. This is usually more effective.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** You could very arguably make a case for ChiChi, Videl, and Android 18 as regulars, but the latter two don't appear until later in the series.

** The original Dragon Ball series, however, started with a cast of a girl and a boy, later adding males Yamcha and Oolong and (maybe) female Puar. The males started to outnumber the females later, where against all the fighters in the cast there were only Chi-chi and Lunch, and then the latter was [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome|forgotten]].

* ''[[Naruto]]'' enforces this trope religiously, regardless of the size of the group. There is one female in every Genin team (that matters), there is one female among the five Jonin senseis (all the ones we've seen that aren't teachers are male), there's one known female member of ANBU, there is one female among the three Chuunin Exam proctors, there is one female among the Sound Five, there is only one female among the Akatsuki, only one female in Snake/Hawk, and there's even a single female {{spoiler|Pain body and even that was a replacement for another one that died}}. We might as well call it "The Kunoichi Principle".

** There has recently be ''one'' recent group that is an exception: the Cloud village team taught by a man named Killer Bee ({{spoiler|the host of the eight-tailed beast}}) is the first to have two girls (Karui and Samui) and one guy (Omoi), although arguably, that squad is one person short since Samui is the squad's leader, a position equivalent to Kurenai/Kakashi/Gai's.

* Similarly, in ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', there has only been one female on the main team out of three or four. For a long time, this was Misty, who always took a backseat to Ash's adventures. The other two token females, May and Dawn, are somewhat like female versions of Ash, and have a plot similar to Ash's but heavily feminized. This might be intentional, as the latter two are supposed to represent the otherwise identical protagonists you can choose in the ''Pokemon'' games, with the show itself noting that May was copying Ash's battle-style too much. Black and White plays this straight considering only the main trio (the usual [[Two Guys and a Girl]]) but the trope is averted if the various [[Rival|Rivals]] are taken into account (three girls versus two boys).

** Before catching Snivy, Pidove was the only female on Ash's Unova team. Because of this, Pidove was the only one who could get close to Snivy without being affected by Attract. <ref> Attract causes foes of the opposite gender to fall in love with them.</ref>

* ''[[Science Ninja Team Gatchaman]]'' (and its various [[Macekre]] including ''[[Battle of the Planets]]'') has one heroine in a squad of five heroes.

* ''[[Voltron]]'' (''Golion'') also has one heroine in a squad of heroes. ''Dairugger XIV'' didn't have that much better a ratio either, with roughly three females in ''three'' squads. Notably, Princess Allura originally only joined the team as a replacement after one member of the all-male [[Five-Man Band]] was killed. Even then, it was over everyone else's objections, and only because they couldn't form the Giant Robot without a fifth member.

* ''[[Uchuu Senkan Yamato]]'' has -- you guessed it -- one heroine in a squad of heroes. Early episodes showed more women among the crew, but they all abruptly disappeared.

* ''[[Digimon]]'' tends to vary drastically in how well it handles the problem. The worst was ''[[Digimon Frontier]]'', which was 1 out of 5 on both the good ''and'' evil sides (at least they were [[Ms. Fanservice|cute to look at]]). ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'' did best, with 3 out of 8, the same ratio as ''[[Digimon Adventure]]''. For the record, ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'' was 2 out of 6 (though girls were fairly well-represented among the international Chosen), ''[[Digimon Savers]]'' was 1 out of 3 (later 1 out of 4) among the main cast, and ''[[Digimon Xros Wars]]'' spent most of its time at 1 out of 3 as well, with two different girls being the "1" at separate times. [[It Got Worse|Then]] came its followup, ''[[Digimon Xros Wars the Young Hunters Leaping Through Time]]'', which appears to be at 0 out of 3 among the heores and just 1 out of 6 among the central humans as a whole.

** ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam Ecole Du Ciel]]'' is so far the only ''Gundam'' work with a female as the main character.

** While not the main character, Chris Mckenzie of [[Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket|War In The Pocket]] was the only female pilot, but is also the best one in the series, being a test pilot for the Gundam Alex.

* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh (anime)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' the only female character to be around during the show's entire run is Anzu among a group of Yami Yugi, Yugi, Jounouchi, Honda, Kaiba, Mokuba, and to an extent Bakura and Otoji. Mai and Shizuka put in appearance now and then but are really secondary characters.

** The Toei anime added [[Ascended Extra|Miho]], the [[Tomboy and Girly Girl|Girly Girl to Anzu's Tomboy]].

* In ''[[Fight Club (film)|Fight Club]]'', Marla Singer is the only major female character -- Fight Club itself is entirely male. On the commentary track, [[Helena Bonham Carter]] talks about how she was glad when the support group scenes were being filmed because it was effectively the only time there were other women on set.

** The movie is about universal frustrations. By portraying these frustrations as male and implying that few females could relate to it, it invokes the trope even further.

* In ''The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'' (both [[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (film)|the film]] and [[The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen|the graphic novel]]), Mina Harker/Murray was the Smurfette in the otherwise all-male League. However, she is by no means [[The Chick]] -- she is the League's leader in the graphic novel. In the movie it's made clear early on that she's a vampire who can kick all the other League members' collective asses. [[Alan Moore]] said he titled it "Gentlemen" to reflect the sexist tendencies of Victorian times.

* In [[The Film of the Book]] as with [[The Lord of the Rings|the book]], ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' has very few female characters. The film tries to combat this trope by giving Arwen the roles of Glorfindel ''and'' her brothers Elladan and Elrohir, and writing up her part in other ways. However, by cutting out the whole Tom Bombadil section it also leaves out Goldberry, one of the few other female characters.

* [[Tamora Pierce]] has stated she writes stories with female leads precisely because of this. At the time she was starting the ''Circle of Magic'' series, she saw an article that mentioned that 75% of recently published fantasy books had male heroes, so she inverted the figure by having three girls and one boy as the main characters (a male character with stereotypically "girlie" [[Green Thumb|plant-based magic]] at that).

** The teachers were two men and two women, though, and Sandry also had Duke Vedris.

*** And sometimes they overshadow her girls, especially when she gets to the romance stage. Still, she does all right. In the Trickster books even the [[Love Interest]] didn't hold a candle to Ally for character-dominance. Of course, the relationship had a really odd progression. Starting with the fact that he's a ''crow.''

* [[Terry Pratchett]] examples:

** The ''[[Discworld]]'' novels includes a [[Violent Glaswegian]] version of the Smurfs, called the Nac Mac Feegle, or Pictsies. The Nac Mac Feegle, though humanoid, can be considered an extreme case of [[Insect Gender Bender]], in which the gender of the 'worker bees' is reversed. Their hundreds-to-one sex ratio is explained in that the females are rarely born, but are "Queen Bees" (Keldas) who rule over their sprawling, brawling sons and brothers and husband(s?). Keldas may, when fully grown, be larger than the males of the species (Big Aggie of the Long Lake Clan, for example).

*** Leave us not forget Corporal Cheeri Littlebottom, the unfortunately-named one-dwarf forensics department of the Watch. Of course, it's not obvious that she ''is'' a she until the end of the book in which she's introduced, but that's par for the course for Discworld dwarves. Littlebottom later starts a sort of feminist movement for female dwarves by making it obvious that she is female, which is apparently a serious taboo for dwarves.

** Subverted with a vengeance in Monstrous Regiment, of course.

* The only female disciple of Aldur in ''[[Belgariad]]'' is Polgara. Well, also Poledra, but she's a [[Missing Mom]] most of the time. And these women are Belgarath's wife and daughter, so apparently to be a female member of the group [[Never a Self-Made Woman|you have to have a connection to a male member of the group]].

* [[Isaac Asimov]], until he married his second wife had issues with women due to relations with [[My Beloved Smother|his beloved Smother]]. Susan Calvin was the shining exception in the 400+ books he wrote until he was old.

* A subtler version is at play in Zamyatin's ''[[We]]'': everyone in the society is issued with an alphanumeric designation instead of a name, with one letter followed by several numbers. Men get consonants; women get vowels. Note the ratio.

** Except in Russia, the ratio is about 2:1 - 10 vowels, 20 consonants, so it's not as extreme.

* [[Inverted Trope|Reversed]] in ''[[Designing Women]]'': Anthony was not only the token male, but also the [[Token Minority]], making him a [[Twofer Token Minority]].

** Depending on who you speak to, some consider him almost a [[Threefer Token Minority]], since it seems like there's significant evidence in the series to suggest he might also be gay.

** With that said, in five instances where the original ''[[Super Sentai]]'' countpart only had one female ranger, the yellow ranger was [[Gender Flip|gender flipped]] for the ''Power Rangers'' adaptation in order to provide the team with [[Two Girls to a Team|two female rangers]] instead of just one.

** Neither show ever had a female character in Red until ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'''s Charlie, but she was fighting for the villains. The first heroic female Red Ranger appeared in ''[[Samurai Sentai Shinkenger]]'' (and even then, she got minimal screentime/development/relevancy/etc).

** Further improved in ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]]'', with Captain Janeway (who later became admiral), Main Engineer [[Twofer Token Minority]] Torres (who was Klingon, female and half Hispanic), and little girl-who-evolves-into-god Kes, who was later replaced by science "Überbabe" Seven of Nine. The main villain for the first two series turned out to be Seska, a manipulative Cardassian spy, and the surprisingly non-annoying child character was Naomi (her mom, originally a [[Recurrer]] before falling [[Out of Focus]] despite her daughter remaining prominent, was a scientist).

** ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Star Trek Enterprise]]'' had a female first officer/science officer (T'Pol), and a female comm officer/linguist (Hoshi).

* ''[[Chouseishin Gransazer]]'' has twelve Gransazers (transforming superheroes), divided into four "tribes", each consisting of two guys and a girl. The two guys of each tribe can be quite clearly categorized as an "alpha male" and a "beta male". The girl is invariably [[The Chick]]. Ai of the Water Tribe is the chickiest of the four, though. (Her name means "love". It doesn't get any more cheesy and girly than that.)

* 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.

* ''[[The X-Files|The X Files]]'': for five seasons, Scully is the only female FBI agent ever seen. After that, female FBI agents are seen only sparingly (Daina Fowley, Leyla Harrison) until Monica Reyes replaces Scully on the X-Files. Scully makes reference to the hardships of working in a male-dominated profession at various points throughout the series.

* Out of the four leads on ''[[Seinfeld]]'', only one (Elaine) is a woman, and she was [[Sixth Ranger|a late addition to the cast.]] All four do get roughly equal screen time, though.

* Constantly played straight and averted in ''[[Doctor Who]]'', thanks to the ever changing nature of the show. Because the Doctor is male (although, he could [[The Nth Doctor|regenerate]] into a girl, theoretically) writers tend to balance him out by having a female companion. Extra companions will occasionally be brought on, but their gender in completely random. Examples of multi-companion crews have been:

** Second Doctor had for a while 2 boys (the Doctor and Jamie) plus one girl, Zoe. Another girl, Victoria, occasionally joined them.

** The third Doctor was a bit of an odd case. Set on Earth, in a male dominated military organisation, there were mostly guys around. Main cast members, however, were the Doctor, [[The Brigadier]], Harry Sullivan, and Sergent Benton, with Sarah-Jane Smith, Dr. Liz Shaw and Jo filling in the female roles.

** The Seventh's Doctor only permanent companion was Ace.

** For the majoirity of Nine's run Rose Tyler was the only companion, although the very popular Captain Jack Harkness came on near the end. By the end of the Russel T. Davies era all the companions from the period came back, including Martha Jones, Donna Noble, Sarah Jane Smith and Jackie Tyler for the girls, with the guys including Jack and Mickey.

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

** In [[TNA]] they have a singles and a set of tag team titles for their women but in contrast to WWE, not enough women on the roster to have full fledged divisions for both. Indeed for the majority of 2010, the same woman (Madison Rayne) held the singles title and was one of the tag champions. While she was built up as a strong singles champion, the tag titles were mostly forgotten about and three months went by without the belts being defended at all. When new champions were crowned, one of them actually did not appear on TV at all after winning them and left the company a few weeks later while the other appeared once before also leaving.

* It's a problem in both WWE and TNA that each episode of their show typically features one women's match. Often, Impact and Raw will feature two women's matches (usually the three hour Raws where there is more time) but mismatched rosters means that Smackdown has about five women while Raw has about eleven and in 2010 most of the time the women were only featured in backstage segments on Smackdown since they had to avoid being too repetitive with matches. Then of course there's the odd time where there won't be any women's matches at all.

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' was never character-heavy in its early games, but no female character was even ''seen'' until Amy Rose, who looked like a little pink Sonic in a dress. More characters have been introduced as the cast has expanded, but the majority have been male.

** At one point, Sega tried to produce a series with "Sonic's Sister", but the effort proved unsuccessful. Perhaps because they tried to [[Dolled-Up Installment|edit her into]] ''[[Popful Mail]]'' for localization of that game.

* On a related note, many other [[Fighting Game|fighting games]] fall victim to the same problem, but not because they're drawing from other canons. It is rare to find more than a few female characters available to play out of an otherwise large collection. Generally, the female characters are also [[Fragile Speedster|notably weaker]] than the male characters. This is parodied brutally in ''[[VG Cats]]'' -- [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=130 here].

** A pretty notable exception in ''[[Melty Blood]]'', which has 14 unique characters (and a bunch of other [[Ryu and Ken|alternate forms for those characters]]). Of this large cast, there are ''four'' unique males, three of them are antagonists. This may be because ''Melty Blood'' is based off of a [[Visual Novel]].

* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' applies the trope quite strongly -- to ''entire species'', not individuals. You never see a female turian or batarian, although female turians are shown in the ''Mass Effect: Evolution'' comic. It's difficult to determine the gender of elcor, volus, and hanar, but all the ones we've met have masculine voices and none have been suggested to be female. [[BioWare]] has said this was so they wouldn't have to design separate character models for each race.

* ''[[Age of Empires]]'' later added in female villagers to the series (villagers may be either gender) in response to a lack of females in the first game. [[Justified Trope]] otherwise since virtually all other units were combatants, and everyone knows that very few past cultures allowed women to fight.

** Looking at the races themselves, only the Night Elves have a significant amount of female units. The humans have the sorceress, orcs have nothing at all and the undeads have the banshees. And there are no female neutrals either, unless you count the High Elven archers. Oh, and in the game, the Priestess's icon is a portrait of her ''tiger'', not the Priestess herself, unlike all the other male heroes who have portraits of their faces.

** The earlier games in the series had ''no'' female characters in the game. At all. Until ''Beyond The Dark Portal'', and then you got only one: Alleria Windrunner, a unique unit and Sylvanas's elder sister.

*** ''Warcraft 1'' had a half-orc, half-human (who was later retconned into half-Dranei) girl. Garona Halforcen was present in one mission of ''Warcraft 1''. The Smurfette Principle in full force.

** The Orc gender balance was also acknowledged in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' in that the orcs actually ''were'' sexist. Despite being every bit as aggressive and strong as the men, women were denied combat roles. Thrall changed that between ''WC3'' and ''WoW''.

** And that is before getting into their [http://www.wowpedia.org/images/thumb/7/7e/Sylvanasstatuee.jpg/180px-Sylvanasstatuee.jpg outfits.]

** The [[Vaporware|unreleased]] ''Star Fox 2'', however, would have added two female characters to the roster - [[Genki Girl]] Fay and [[Action Girl]] Miyu.

** And in ''Command'', there are a solid 4 females: Krystal, Kat, and newcomers Lucy (Peppy's daughter) and [[The Scrappy|Amanda]], Slippy's ''female'' love interest. There is even an all-girl mission.

* Erin is pretty much the only female character in the ''[[Magic: The Gathering|Magic the Gathering]]'' webcomic ''[[UG Madness]]''. Then again, it IS a webcomic about a game with a predominantly male player base. Erin herself is very much aware of this, and thus has a very strong drive to prove herself.

* Inverted in ''[http://amazoness.co.uk/ Amazoness!]'', which is set in the mythical Amazon city of Themiskyra in which men are not allowed to step foot. The only men who have shown up so far are nameless mooks who exist only to be killed by the Amazons in battle. There is the matter of {{spoiler|Eutropia who is biologically male but psychologically female.}}

** {{spoiler|However, in the end she kills the [[Big Bad]] without the help of the men, who were too incompetent to do it themselves. This does not change the fact that every other important character is male, save one villain.}}

* Inverted in ''[[Questionable Content]]'', where Marten was for a long time the only male character in the main cast, with five female characters all making frequent appearances. The cartoonist tends to [[Lampshade Hanging]] this in the [[Shout Box]] whenever a new female character shows up: "Because all I need is another female character".

** The Cheat Commandos, as a parody of '80s cartoons, do this explicitly with "Foxface", whose action figure boasts "Lady Type!" and "Not One of The Guys!!" The latter is a direct reference to the token females of ''[[G.I. Joe]]''. Even then, Foxface has never had a speaking part (though Crack Stuntman's girlfriend got a brief speaking part as a character in one episode.)

* In ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'', Tex is very much aware that she's the only girl, until another is introduced in the fifth season. She also gets notably huffy when Donut is mistaken for a girl because of his [[The European Carry All|new pink armor]], and her teammates imply that she's not a "real" girl. She's also, undoubtedly, the biggest [[Badass]] of the show.

* Most videos on ''[[Cracked.com]]'' have a single female.

 

** That's not to say that there were no female characters originally. Tweety's owner is always referred to as Granny. In fact, she had a classic WB cartoon named for her, "Tugboat Granny". So, she is a named character and is an important part of the Warners mythos. Most notably, in modern adaptations, she's the caretaker of the [[Baby Looney Tunes]].

** Poor Penelope Pussycat. No one ever remembers her name...

*** The only time she was named Penelope during [[The Golden Age of Animation]] ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' was in 1954's "The Cat's Bah" (which is where they got the name of Penelope for her when she was brought back in "Carrotblanca.")

** Don't forget Witch Hazel!

** More success was found with its successor shows, ''[[Tiny Toon Adventures]]'', ''[[Animaniacs]]'', and ''[[Histeria!]]'': The first has Babs Bunny, who was Buster's equal in every way, as well as Shirley The Loon, Fifi LaFume, Merrie Melody, and so on. The second had Dot Warner (who was, of course, the only female Warner sibling, but she went to some effort to make sure she was not forgotten by adding "...and the Warner sister, Dot!" whenever an opportunity came up), and Slappy Squirrel. (Interestingly enough, the Warner Brothers were originally supposed to be a trio of ''brothers'' (Smakky, Wakky, and Yakky), with a mischievous little brother character instead of Dot, who was only supposed to be a minor recurring character of "the Warner Cousin". A woman on the production team finally asked that the characters be two male and one female and Wakky and Smakky were merged into Wakko.) And the third had Miss Information, Charity Bazaar, Aka Pella, Pepper Mills, Cho-Cho, Susanna Susquahanna, Lydia Karaoke, and the World's Oldest Woman in their regular cast.

*** A first season episode of ''Tiny Toons'', "Fields of Honey", actually revolved around Babs trying to find a female Looney Toon who could serve as her mentor. It turned out to be a black-and-white era character, Honey, whose comic schtick was not unlike hers; she had simply been forgotten. But note that in [[Real Life]], Honey existed -- and she was merely [[Shallow Love Interest|Bosko's girlfriend]] and was ''nothing'' like the one portrayed here.

*** Her predecessor, Honey Bunny (no relation to Bosko's girlfriend Honey), was a staple of the old Gold Key and Whitman Looney Toons comic books for years and years. Sadly, Honey seems to have been largely forgotten since Lola was introduced.

* Most of the older [[Disney]] cartoon canon are male, and the females are often just [[Distaff Counterpart|stereotypical female versions]] of existing male characters, such as [[Minnie Mouse]] and Daisy Duck. Minnie's [[The Chick]] alright, but Daisy is pretty cool for her time, kinda [[Tsundere]]-like.

** "We can't have [a dance team of] all guys; [[Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?|people will think we're fags]]"

* The two recent Disney films, ''[[The Princess and the Frog]]'' and ''[[Tangled]]'' are ostensibly aimed at girls, and have female lead characters, but otherwise they both have 1:3 female-to-male ratio -- female lead, male [[Love Interest]] and co-lead, two male (animal) supporting characters. Then one woman in a supporting role (a mentor in ''Princess,'' a villain in ''Tangled''). ''Princess'' does slightly better, featuring Tiana's mother and her supportive friend, Charlotte.

** Averted as of "Usual Suspects." The team is now a [[Gender Equal Ensemble]] with four boys and four girls.

* ''[[Men in Black (animation)|Men in Black]]: The Series'' had Agent L. Few other female agents were seen, fewer still had any dialogue.

* For the entire first season of ''[[Regular Show]]'', there was only one female in the cast: Margaret the cardinal. She only appeared in three episodes, one of which was only via dream sequence. However, Season 2 has introduced another female character, and both of them are getting considerably more screen time.

* ''[[Blue Harvest|Family Guy Presentslaugh It Up Fuzzball]]'' spoofed how few major original trilogy ''[[Star Wars]]'' characters were women.

{{quote|'''Chris/Luke''': A sister! Who is it?