Tropes vs. Women: #3 The Smurfette Principle

The Smurfette Principle was named two decades ago by Katha Pollitt, when she noticed that there were a disproportionate amount of male characters in programming aimed at young people. Even in adult programming, when women do appear in the primary cast of a television show or movie, they are usually alone in a group of men. Sadly, this trope has made its way into the 21st century.

What do Inception, the Transformers,

and the Muppets all have in common?

They all suffer from a trope called

the Smurfette Principle.

As defined by TVTropes:

In 1991 Katha Pollitt, a feminist essayist

wrote an article for the NY Times

because she was disturbed by the lack of

substantive female characters

for her young daughter to watch.

She found that most of the programming

aimed at young people

had a majority of male characters,

with just one female included in the group,

she called this The Smurfette Principle.

You’ve probably guessed by now

that this trope was named after

the only female smurf in all of Smurfville.

Once upon a time,

the Smurfs were an hormonious

all-dude miniature civilization comprised entirely

of kind good natured little blue dudes

living out their cooperative-dude existence

somewhere deep in their dude forest utopia.

We’ve got Lazy, Grouchy, Jokey,

Brainy, Baby, and Papa Smurf

and all their Smurf buddies

living out their smurfy existence

free from any of those meddling, divisive,

controlling, manipulative, mean women folk.

But one day the evil wizard Gargamel

decided on a devilish plan to sabotage smurfdom.

And how will he do that?

yes that’s right, by creating a female smurf!

“That’s it, I’ll get them through their hearts,”

“I will send them a Smurfette!”

So Gargamel sent in Smurfette

to cause divisions between

the lovable blue creatures so he can capture

and eat their tender blue flesh

in a nice honey lemon sauce.

Long story short,

love and understanding won out

when Papa Smurf worked some smurf magic and

transformed Gargamel’s impostor

into a real live smurf girl,

“sexy” blond hair, high heels and all!

Down in the 100 acre woods,

we follow the adventures of

Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl

and Tigger – all dudes of course…

in fact there’s only one female character,

Kanga, who shows up occasionally

as the mother of little roo.

Even Jim Hensen didn’t seem too keen on the women,

along side Kermit, Gonzo, and Fozzie the Bear,

Miss Piggy was the only female muppet.

We can even see the Smurfette Principle

outside of programming aimed at young people.

So for example you have George Lucas’

original Star Wars trilogy where

Princess Leia is the only principle female character

in the entire galactic empire.

If you’re like me then you are probably thinking

there’s got to be something wrong, I mean,

Star Trek has had a female captain,

Buffy has saved the world from a demon apocalypse

at least half dozen times,

this trope has gotta be a thing of the past right?

Ellen Page gets Smurfette’d in Inception as her character

is the only female dream team member.

Big Bang Theory has a primary main cast of brainy

men plus the smurfette that lives across the hall.

While there’ve been a small handful

of female autobots in the Transformers universe,

Arcee is the only regularly reoccurring

female cast member and she only appeared in

8 episodes out of the original series.

She was set to appear in the 1st Transformers

live action film but she was dropped and

replaced with Ironhide.

She did however appear in the second film

Revenge of the Fallen

which also happens to be one of the most sexist

and racist films I’ve ever seen.

This version of Arcee is either a hivemind

with 3 different motorcycle components

or the other two bikes are her sisters,

it’s not exactly clear.

But it doesn’t really matter anyway

because they all get blown up at the end.

Plus they only appear on screen

for a grand total of exactly…

“Follow us to the pillars — AHHH!”

39 seconds.

Even in most seasons of Jon Stewart’s

the Daily Show there has been

only one female correspondent at a time.

The Smurfette principle is especially

important to remember now because

Hollywood is currently trying to remake everything

and anything that we even vaguely remember

from the 80′s and 90′s in an attempt

to cash in on our collective nostalgia,

you know, instead of maybe taking a risk

on things that are new and exciting.

We even have a live action Smurfs movie coming out.

We’ve had 2 big blockbuster movies based on

the Transformers, and sadly

there’s another one on its way.

The 2009 Star Trek reboot by JJ Abrams

had Uhura as the only female character

in the main bridge crew.

And just like Star Trek we can be sure

that hollywood is not going to try to bring

gender equality into these reboots

but rather just stick with their Smurfettes.

The problem with narratives infused with

the Smurfette Principle is not only the lack of women

but as Katha Pollitt points out in her NY Times article:

Basically this means that men are the default

and women get to be sidekicks or sexy decorations.

Even when there’s only one female primary cast member,

as videoblogger Nostalgia Chick points out in her

Smurfette Principle video, they are usually just

“sexy” female duplicates of their male counterparts.

“Disney was the one that kinda really started”

“this interest in the whole default and”

“deviation from default complex,”

“basically this idea that men seem to want”

“a bagina’d version of themselves.”

That’s an excellent point,

thank you Nostalgia Chick.

The Smurfette Principle is an alternative name for

Tokenism or the Token Minority which is

the inclusion of one cast member

from a marginalized group in an otherwise,

white, straight male ensemble.

We see this most often when writers include

one person of colour and that character

is usually painfully stereotyped.

This is a little trick used by movie studios to pretend

to appear “multicultural” and “diverse” when really

they’re just upholding the status quo

and not changing anything substantially.

So here’s a tip for all you Hollywood writers

out there, it is in fact possible to have

more than one woman in your script.

Really, I swear it is.

You could even have 2 or 3 women or even

the majority of your cast be women.

Here’s a simple test you can ask yourself

when you’re writing your scripts:

“Does my movie have more than one woman on the primary cast?”

That’s it, that’s the whole test.

If you answered “NO” then you need to

go back to the drawing board.

If you answered “YES” then we can proceed to

the Bechdel Test.

Once you’ve got two female characters

who are talking to each other about things other then men,

then we can talk about fully developed female characters.

[Song] “la, la, la, la, sing a happy song,”

[Song] “la, la, la, la, smurf the whole day long”