What Do You Mean It's Not for Little Girls?

Youtube user: Is this a children's show? If so, why is there a picture of girl mounting another girl lying on the floor?

Uploader: it's NOT a children show.

—Comments on the opening to Hidamari Sketch

So you find a new show and it has an all female cast, lots of pastel colors, and Tastes Like Diabetes levels of cuteness. And you think "this would be a perfect show for my eight-year-old sister."

And then you discover that the show airs at three AM and has a fandom that's mostly 16 to 40 year-old males who consider the girls to be lesbians. After the initial shock is over you start to wonder why any man would even consider watching a show like this. Well, it's because men like cute girls.

Though it's not to say that this show would be inappropriate for your little sister, it's just that it's not specifically intended for little girls to watch. In fact these kinds of shows often have a sizeable female fanbase.

Of course, it must be noted that entertainment often targeted to young girls, especially in the field of music, has become increasingly sexualized. The classic examples are idol singers and girl groups such as Britney Spears, the Spice Girls, and Destiny's Child. The effect has blurred the line in a way many are uncomfortable with: just take a look at any Toddlers and Tiaras type show.

A subtrope of What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?. Not to be confused with a Subverted Kids Show which is meant for Nightmare Fuel or a show that is for little girls but also has an older male fanbase.

See also Moe, Girl Show Ghetto, Testosterone Brigade and Values Dissonance. Can be a problem if a Moral Guardian shows this to a child and it's a Yuri show. Compare with Multiple Demographic Appeal.

Examples of What Do You Mean It's Not for Little Girls? include:

Anime and Manga

Lucky Star: A show with lots of pretty colors, cute songs, and a mostly female cast. Except that it's a show about a girl who plays Eroge and sees her life as if she was playing one.
Azumanga Daioh is about the lives of a bunch of high school girls. The manga is serialized in Dengeki Daioh, a Shonen magazine.
- Also serialized in Dengeki Daioh is Yotsuba&! and Ichigo Mashimaro. Both are about cute little girls; both are also Shonen series.
K-On! is clearly for a male audience, but appears to have garnered an extensive female fanbase in its wake as well. Point in case: it's airing on the Japanese Disney Channel, but edited of course.
- While the manga has its fair share if Les Yay/Ship Teasing, Kyoto Animation toned it down for the anime and added more character focus (Except for Ritsu), presumably in trying to expand the audience. And based on its huge success, it seems to have worked, although it's not that girls dislike Yuri per se—especially not in Japan.
Hidamari Sketch
Hanamaru Kindergarten - It aired at Otaku O'Clock.
The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise. Its promotional materials and manga adaptations are printed in Seinen magazines and it began its life as a Spin-Off of the Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever H-game. The first season even has some fanservice; the next ones less so.
- In some countries they removed the fanservice and marketed it as a kids show.
- They still left all the cases of child abuse by the villains though.
Similar to Nanoha, Happy Seven and Rakugo Tennyo Oyui are both Sailor Moon-style Magical Girl Warrior shows that cater to the Moe aesthetic and air at Otaku O'Clock.
Saint October, although the three Magical Girls being named Loli Black, Loli White, and Loli Red was a pretty big hint.
If you just saw the ending theme for Clannad then you would think that it's for very young little girls.
Pretty Face
- In one of his omake, Kano talks about how a little girl came up to him at Jump Festa with her mother and told him she loved Pretty Face and got his autograph.
Koi Cupid
Subverted for Strike Witches; it's a show about cute girls who fly around and do acrobatic areal combat while wearing extremely short skirts. There's a Panty Shot about every 5 seconds.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni could follow this trope. If you missed the R-Rated Opening and only saw the cute parts.
- There's also the Kai OVA, which parodies the Magical Girl genre.
Inverted for Lil Pri, while it is for girls, it is also for a more open market then just young girls due to Telecom's Past Productions.
Chi's Sweet Home is about a cute little kitty cat and it's in a... Seinen manga magazine.
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes, while slapsticky, was aiming for the otaku audience from the start. Some of the things Twenty does are a big enough giveaway.
Amuri in Star Ocean
Bamboo Blade It's about a group of high school girls who are in their school's kendo club. And the manga is serialized in a... Seinen manga magazine.
A Channel
Moetan is about a Magical Girl who teaches her crush English. Blatant Lolicon Fan Service and Panty Shots ensue.
Yuru-Yuri might be about cute middle-school girls, but it has plenty of Yuri and it's clearly for a male audience.
Minami-ke
Chobits
Oreimo-Oh look, a cute anime about a brother and sister! Too bad that the sister plays Eroge!
Ro-Kyu-Bu! is about a group of girls that play basketball... and take baths together.
Sasami: Magical Girls Club is a Cute Witch anime that superficially looks a lot like Ojamajo Doremi. It aired at 1:30 am.
When you first hear that Kiss Players is about Transformers powering up by getting a kiss from a human girl, you might think that the series is aimed at young girls. But then when you see the blatant, unrelenting sexual imagery, you think different.
You might think Puella Magi Madoka Magica is another kid-friendly Magical Girl series. Wrong! It's actually Seinen, and extremely disturbing.
A Little Snow Fairy Sugar is an extremely cutesy show about a young girl who hangs out with cute little fairies who create the weather. It aired at Otaku O'Clock and the manga adaptation was Shonen.

Comic Books

Barbara Slate's Angel Love comic book series of the 1980s, having rather cute cartoonish artwork, yet dealing with serious topics such as drug abuse, abortion, critical illnesses, and incest.

Live-Action TV

TLC's Toddlers and Tiaras, about toddlers in beauty pageants. Mostly a Point and Laugh Show, though.

Music

There's a video of a five-year-old girl singing the "voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" line from Labelle's "Lady Marmalade." Presumably the train of thought was "It's about dancing, right? Girls love dancing!" Too bad it's not about dancing, it's about a prostitute, and the line translates to "do you want to sleep with me tonight?"
The Spice Girls. It's hard to tell exactly how much of their "Girl Power" theme was serious, and how much was self-parody, but it their lyrics make it clear that it was at least about sexual liberation... to the dismay of the parents of the 8 year olds who would parrot the lyrics.
- Kids Rock changed the line in Wannabe from "If you wannabe my lover" to "If you wannabe my brother"; it is unknown how much the rest of the lyrics are modified, but if it's not at all, it adds whole new dimensions of creepy to the song. (it's unknown because the chorus was all that was heard on the advertisement)

Video Games

Touhou. A cast of characters that's almost entirely female, lots of fun songs (like this one), and lots of pretty colors. The games also have violence that's on the same level as Super Mario Brothers, and a cast consisting of various Youkai with some rather frightening powers, as well as claims of eating humans. And since the majority of the game's popularity comes from fan works on the Internet, unsuspecting girls are that much more likely to run into Rule 34. (They could just play the games, but then again, there's a reason they're called Bullet Hell...)
Rosenkreuzstilette features a mainly Fundamentally Female Cast, lots of cheerful colors, and mild cartoon violence that's on the same level as that of Mega Man, with player characters and many enemies and bosses exploding in Mega Man-style upon defeat. Now, if you can just look past the blood in Sepperin Stage 2 as well as Grolla's Freudenstachel stage as well as the blood stains on Freudia's dress and Grolla's bandaged wrist and the blood on the sprite of a dead priest in the beginning of Rosenkreuzstilette Grollschwert, the wars that take place within said franchise, images on the internet that fall into Rule 34, and Iris' complete monsterhood, and only look to other parts than all of the already mentioned, then you might be able to find it okay for little girls.

Web Comics

Last Res0rt. Bright, Cartoony, Cyberpunk... wait, what?
- Word of God claims it's meant to be more Feminist vs. meant for little girls... But, Furry Fandom being what it is, it's no shock that the majority of the audience is still teen-to-college-age guys.
Minus is a brightly-colored cute-looking web comic about an omnipotent little girl, albeit with a ton of Fridge Horror, but if TV Tropes is anything to go by, most of the people who read the comic are men.

Western Animation

The Powerpuff Girls was not originally intended for little girls. Craig McCracken created it as a parody of the Magical Girl genre, as he was getting sick of Sailor Moon playing on Cartoon Network every day. As a Take That, he set the girls' ages very low, had them do very inelegant things, and made the villains cheesier than Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinners. The intended audience for it was the same as Dexter's Laboratory—animation fans in their teens, 20s, and 30s—but it had to be child-appropriate (This was in the days before Adult Swim). A show like this naturally attracted little girls anyway.
- McCracken's college assignment that spawned the series, Whoopass Stew (the title alone should make it clear which demographic he wasn't shooting for), went as follows. Girls beat the crap out of the Ganggreen Gang. Amoeba Boys rob a bank. Girls try to stop them but get stuck in their bodies. Girls prevail by flying to the sun, which kills the Amoeba Boys in seconds. Yeah. Not exactly tote bag-friendly icons, huh?
The Bratz dolls are more kid friendly, the TV show is definitely intended for their original target audience, teens and preteens. Among other things, the show actually has an episode where the girls investigate to see if Burdine murdered her last intern.
Lauren Faust has stated that My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic was intended for little girls and their parents, so they wouldn't get bored if forced to watch it. However, as of season two, the show seems to be pandering more and more to the show's surprisingly large adult-male fanbase.
- This is because they only became aware of the bronies around mid-first season; once they noticed (right around the production of episode 15) they started throwing in little shout-outs. It seems more pander-y in the second season because they can plan the references as part of the whole episode ahead of time, instead of throwing in little off-the-cuff nods in mostly-finished episodes like in the first season.