 Quotes •  Headscratchers •  Playing With • Useful Notes •  Analysis •  Image Links •  Haiku • Laconic
|
|---|
- Basic Trope: Life goals expected from a fictional woman for her to be considered a "true" woman.
- Played Straight:
- Alice is a doctor, but is only shown treating children.
- Bernice wants to be a babysitter.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is a doctor and refuses to offer help to anyone over 12 years old.
- Bernice quit university and vowed never to have children in order to have more time for babysitting.
- Justified:
- Alice is a doctor, but is only shown treating children because she works in a children's hospital.
- Bernice wants to be a babysitter because she's underage and can't be legally employed in her country.
- Alice comes from a culture that considers gender roles to be Serious Business.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a pediatrician, but wants to become a merchant marine.
- Bernice is a babysitter, but wants to mow lawns.
- Subverted:
- Alice wants to be a pediatrician, but on her way to get her licensing for pediatrics, she witnesses a car accident and decides to be an EMT instead...
- Bernice becomes a babysitter, only to realize that the money is poor and the clientele is awful, so she decides to mow lawns instead...
- Double Subverted:
- ...but is only shown rescuing children.
- ...and only mows the grass in elementary school playgrounds, so kids have a safe place to play.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice wants to be a doctor, but is pressured into pediatrics because she's a woman and is therefore best suited to treating children, and Alice explores the reasoning behind it.
- Bernice wants to mow lawns, but is pressured by her parents to babysit because pushing a lawnmower is too much hard work for a girl, and Bernice must find a way to deal with it.
- Reconstructed: Alice decides that she should choose the way she wants her career to go, and not her parents. She returns to medical school, and trains to become a doctor.
- Zig Zagged: The story follows Alice in a number of careers in her lifetime. She goes to medical school to becomes an EMT, but later has kids, quits her job, and is a Housewife. She decides to go back to work, but during an economic downturn, so the best job she can get is a school nurse. She becomes frustrated in the job after a few years, goes back to school, and becomes a brain surgeon. She has a fulfilling career as a brain surgeon for 15 years, but after that, she finds it too stressful for her old age, so she retires and becomes a school nurse again.
- Lampshaded: "Alice, you don't need to hone your surgery skills. Being a successful homemaker is all that a woman should aim for in life."
- Averted:
- Alice is a doctor, and is shown treating people of all ages.
- Bernice wants to be a scheduling consultant for busy parents.
- Enforced:
- Alice wants to be a doctor, but is only shown treating children because the company that produces the show didn't allow the writers to show a sick or injured adult.
- Bernice wants to be a babysitter because her show is Merchandise-Driven and the children she babysits are an easy way to introduce new characters for future toy lines.
- Invoked:
- Alice is a doctor, but only treats children in order to appear more feminine for her friends.
- Bernice is forced into babysitting because she lives in a society that prevents women from attaining a better career.
- Defied: "I don't have to conform to your idea of femininity. Just because I want to be a surgeon doesn't make me any less of a woman!"
- Discussed: "And exactly why should I quit being a successful surgeon?" "Because you're a woman and your role in society is to make babies, Alice."
- Conversed:
- "It's scary how an individual woman is still looked at weird whenever she veers away from homemaking."
- Played For Laughs:
- Alice is a doctor and only treats children, but she's hilariously bad with kids.
- Bernice wants to be a babysitter because she wants to dig through strangers' stuff while they're not home.
- Played For Drama: Alice is a doctor who only treats children, but they are from poor families and she would gain money and recognition if she would treat wealthy adults.
Go back to Acceptable Feminine Goals. It's not right for a woman to be on this kind of page!