So you have an Action Girl. She rocks. There's only one problem: she's also the only female in the main cast, and you don't have a Non-Action Guy or other similar balancing factor to counterbalance this. Where are you going to get your Designated Victim for the team to save every episode? What's an executive to do? Completely replace her tough image and capabilities with something more fitting to the Damsel in Distress you need, someone who tends to Stay in the Kitchen or not do anything rather than go out and fight, whether by punching people alongside the others or analyzing the scenario and figuring out a solution so she can help others punch people.
Chickification differs from Faux Action Girl. The latter is just about a so-called Action Girl who never lives up to her reputation once the plot hits the fan. Chickification involves a genuine Action Girl who was badass at one point, but was derailed into a weak and helpless (or at least significantly less badass) character, without any in-universe justification for such a change. The lack of in-universe justification is key to this trope. If the Action Girl is changed as the result of physical and/or emotional trauma, that's something else: it can be Character Development, Break the Cutie, Break the Haughty, etc.
This trope is not really about any Action Girlwho shows those icky and bad 'female' emotions.
The term "chickification" itself was invented by, of all people, Rush Limbaugh and is used to describe the devaluation of both masculinity and femininity in an effort to create an androgynous society.
May involve the Standard Female Grab Area.
The inverse of this trope is Xenafication (where the girl becomes a super Action Girl... without any Character Development), and to more general extent Took a Level in Badass, although that's not limited to female characters. Also see Adrenaline Makeover, where The Chick gradually gets out of her shell and develops physically, emotionally and mentally. This trope can be a result of meeting a more interesting boyfriend
If this is done to a male character in a Slash Fic, it may be part of Wimpification.
Although it is distressingly easy to imagine combining it with this trope, turning a male character into a female is a separate trope: see Gender Bender and Mandy's Law of Anime Gender Bending.
Be warned, this page is a lightning rod for people to start complaining about fandoms you don't like, so make sure to give specific explanations when referring to certain fandom activities.
Not to be confused with that guy. You know, him. Also compare with Girliness Upgrade, in which the girl becomes more feminine but doesn't lose her backbone. If the girl used to be an active character but now is just there it has become Men Act, Women Are. For girls that are both badass and feminine, see Girly Bruiser.
Examples
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Multiple Media
Maid Marian from the Robin Hood legends is an odd case. She was an Action Girl in some of her original appearances (fighting Robin to a standstill while disguised as a boy in one ballad). Victorian writers turned her into The Chick. Modern writers tend to make her theAction Girl again, with The New Adventures Of Robin Hood turning her into a virtual Xena clone. The Outlaws Of Sherwood, the novel, has Marian and Robin actually sharing the public role of Robin Hood, with Marian being very much the better archer of the pair.
Anime and Manga
Ironically, the aforementioned Chi-Chi from Dragon Ball does not fit the trope. Her particular case is more of Overshadowed by Awesome, since more than half the cast took a backseat to the Saiyan characters by Dragon Ball Z. Including men like Krillin, Yamcha, Tenshinhan and Chaozu.
Axis Powers Hetalia: Hungary seemed like a case of this, but she turned out to have just gotten a massive Girliness Upgrade. Even after becoming Austria's maid, she's still a very competent fighter, and comparing her level of actual skill, she's actuallystronger as an adult Ninja Maid than as a pre-teen Cute Bruiser: as a kid, Hungary wins against Prussia but struggles with Turkey and later loses to him, whereas as an adult she curbstomps Prussia and his whole army and beats up France at least twice.
In the anime ofBlue Dragon, Kluke is changed from a self-confident, mature girl who's virtually raised herself since the deaths of her parents to your stereotypical damsel in distress with no explanation. She doesn't even get her powers until near the half-way point of the series.
Subverted: In the first season, Haruna Kisaragibecame a Corrector like her best friend Yui, but due to ending up Brainwashed and Crazy, she ultimately returned to the sidelines and act as Dr. Inukai's assistant during the season finale. Cue to second season and having Yui being turned into rock in the Net.com and rendered comatose in the real world: without any ounce of hesitation, Haruna returns to be a Corrector, and in her first real fight she uses the four Elemental suits perfectly and teams up with the morally ambiguous Corrector Ai to save Yui, Freeze and other victims. She's remained a Corrector ever since and was there for Yui, Ai and the other Correctors in the Grand Finale.
Mai Shiranui of Fatal Fury has always been sort-of The Ditz, but she's a pretty competent Action Girl otherwise and rather proud of her skills. In the OVA and The Movie, however, the poor girl's primary purpose is to get kidnapped so Andy can save her. (She does win one fight —with another girl.)
Hikaru Hazama of Beyblade Metal Fusion goes from Action Girl to Secretary in the second series. She made the mistake to pick a fight with Ryuga, who was packing L-Drago, a centuries-old primeval Beyblade that demolished every opponent it met thus far. She had no clue what kind of nightmare she was in for until he thrashed her to bits like all the others. Traumatized, she resigned herself to this role to help forget what happened and recover, then resumed her action girl status late in the series as the climax began.
Casca in Berserk is sometimes accused of this, though it's closer to a case of being Stuffed into the Fridge while still technically alive—from a psychological perspective, it's not exactly surprising that she's insane after everything that's been done to her. That, and she had managed to press on for several years already, only shutting down when she was tortured and raped into insanity during the Eclipse while watching all of her companions save her love interest Guts (who still gets horribly broken as well) die at the hands of the monster who once was their commander and savior and his minions.
Sakura, in Naruto, starts out as a Faux Action Girl but Takes A Level In Badass during the Time Skip. Unfortunately, she is quickly over-shadowed by Naruto and Sasuke and soon after falls back into the role of a background character who can only pin her hopes on Naruto.
Kaoru Kamiya form Rurouni Kenshin keeps being accused of falling into this, but technically speaking her case is also of Overshadowed by Awesome. The only case in this anime/manga where this trope can be seen as played straight is Misanagi from the Black Knights arc.
Comic Books
Most of the female X-Men were temporarily hit hard by this when Chris Claremont left for the first time.
Storm was relegated to background scenery and occasional artillery when the romantic/heartbreak subplot got dumped.
Psylocke was mostly just Worfed, but it's worth noting that the villain who eventually gutted her was someone she'd previously defeated even before she'd learned martial arts.
Rogue, despite being strong enough to bench-press tanks and capable of outflying almost any weapons she cannot laugh off, was repeatedly pummeled by far less formidable foes, and at least once screamed for help from a boyfriend that was barely a step above Badass Normal. Her psychological fortitude went down the tubes to boot.
Similarly, The Wasp's intelligence, combat effectiveness, levelheadedness, and leadership abilities seem to vary inversely with the degree to which the writer plays up her relationship with her ex-husband Henry Pym. After a few years as more or less The Load, they apparently gave up and stuffed her in the fridgeso Hank could have more guilt.
Parodied a couple of times, and Lampshaded at other times (but by no means averted) in the Prince Valiant stories where competent, resourceful girls deliberately make themselves out to be less so in order to be more appealing to the men.
After being depicted as a reckless, fiery Badass Damsel throughout the 1940s, Lois Lane was chickified into a useless Damsel Scrappy who constantly needed saving and couldn't handle anything on her own in the Silver Age. Even attempts at improving her character during the Bronze Age fell flat, with her Earth-2 counterpart Lois Kent far outstripping her in badassery. Fortunately, the Post Crisis reboot of the Superman mythos restored her Golden Age persona, with an added side order of army brat and combat training.
Princess Sally Acorn of Sonic the Hedgehog was hit with this hard after King Acorn took control of the kingdom again, and didn't really come out of it until Ian Flynn took over writing duties.
Fanfiction
There are many fics in which Hermione Granger, one of the smartest and most pro-active females in Harry Potter canon and possibly of English literature in general, is a poor battered and weepy victim wife to Ron the Death Eater who abuses, beats, rapes, etc. her so Harry will sweep her off her feet and they'll team up to bloodily murder him and Ginny, who is likely to be written as a fat and ugly bitch who doesn't deserve Harry's love since the fanworker makes her lose her good looks as soon as she married him - while Hermione, despite all the Domestic Abuse, is angelically beautiful and perfect and all. The Last War is among the best examples of such crap.
In This World And The Next goes out of its way to portray Ron the Death Eater as a "shit wizard" who couldn't even hex two Muggles properly, yet he's still able to overpower Hermione (twice!) implying that she's fallen victim to this trope in a bad way. Later, she's perfectly willing to defer to Harry on everything.
Cori Fallsloves doing this to poor Jessie in her fics. Sure, the girl's still allowed to kick some ass, but more often than not, she's crying or swooning in James's arms or needing to be rescued from perverts.
There's a disturbing Fanfic community dedicated to doing this to Lenneth so that Lezard can be the dominant one of the "relationship". Odlly, it leaves Hrist and Silmeria alone.
The infamous Hetalia fic All He Ever Wanted pulls this on Hungary, who as mentioned above is an aversion of the trope in canon. In the chapter "The Seventh Door", Prussia brutally tortures and rapes her to both force her into a Face Heel Turnand "teach a lesson" to her beloved ex-husband Austria, whom Prussia is holding hostage — and who is Forced To Watch the brutal torture/rape session.
That's barely the only one. In many, many Prussia/Hungary works, the sweet and gentle meido who managed to avert this trope in canon is portrayed as a weepy mess who secretly pines for Prussia after being forced to marry Austria via the Austro-Hungarian Compromise and/or is abused in many ways by Austria so Prussia must hop in to rescue her and show her what true love is. Yes, Hungary has been shown to be physically more powerful than both Prussia and Austria, but in these fanfics she wails and wangsts endlessly before even trying to do something to defend herself. For worse, considering the main couple in these fics, it's mixed with Die for Our Ship since Austria is portrayed as a Domestic Abuser and Jerk Ass to make Prussia look better.
The other girls also go through this often in some shipping fanfics, leading to the untrue and unfair assumption from the most rabidYaoi Fangirlsand "feminist fans" about all the Hetalia girls being Satellite Love Interestsin canon. The more frequent victims of this are Belarus (who goes from an hilariously creepy Yandere and Knife Nut who chases after Russia and breaks Liet's fingers, to either Russia or America's blushy and passive, or as much passive-agressive, bride) and Taiwan (who isn't action-geared and is comfy with her uber girliness, but is still a GenkiPlucky Girl... and yet she ends up as a Yamato Nadeshiko caricature who only wants to be Japan's child bride).
In Digimon fanfiction, you'll be hard-pressed to find a fic that has Rika/Ruki acting anything like herself, preferring instead to make her a weak, weeping wallflower who can't handle any aspect of life without being rescued by Takato/Jenrya/Ryo. Even people who don't like Yuri or Interspecies Romance wind up preferring stories pairing her with Renamon because they're the fics in which she's more likely to be capable of being in a romance and acting something like herself at the same time.
While it's safe to say that the entire casts of both Mass Effect games experience varying degrees of chickification in fanfiction at some point or another; Garrus Vakarian (in a rare male example of this trope seen near exclusively in het fic where he's paired with Female Shepard), Commander Shepard (usually Female Shepard, though Male Shepard is not immune either), Tali'Zorah and Liara T'Soni experience the heaviest levels of this trope more often than the others.
The infamous Avatar: The Last Airbender fan-comic How I Became Yours does this to both Azula and Toph. Azula? The Magnificent Bitch with a Jerk Ass Woobie streak becomes a sort of Yue copycat who does almost nothing but whine and cry after getting amnesia and has a super Sue-fied love story with Sokka. Toph? She goes from a devil-may-care Badass Adorable who still didn't mind a makeover once, to a soft-spoken and nervous flower of a girl who willingly bottoms to a guy she calls "twinkle-toes" and is a borderline maidservant to Katara.
Pulled on Katara too. She goes from an Action GirlTeam Mom with mood swings and Hidden Depths into a whiny, weepy, selfish bitch whom everyone mollycoddles, who cares more about being Zuko's pasted-on love interest and babymama than anything, and only shows her Action Girl skills when she bloodily and horribly kills Mai in revenge.
All characters in Touhou are prone to this due to their Moe qualities, but Remilia Scarlet and her sister Flandre are particularly common targets due to fanartists' tendency to exaggerate their childishness.
Was very, very common in the Card Captor Sakura fandom. Sakura, one of the most powerful magic users in that canon and possibly in the CLAMP universe, would inevitably be a big victim of Domestic Abuse at the hands of her canon (and male) Love Interest Syaoran, to make excuses as to why she should break away from him and search for comfort in the arms of her Unlucky Childhood Friend Tomoyo.
In the Home Stuck fandom, common in most of the female cast, most likely because they're all Action Girls. Especially JadeHarley.
TheWitchsCat tends to do this to Elphaba in her fanfics. While otherwise well-written, Elphaba is constantly being pushed around and beat up, and she CRIES in about every single chapter! It Makes Sense in Context.
In a Yuri example, generally either Yoruichi or Soi Fon will suffer from this in femslash fiction featuring the pairing. This is a case that can go either way, since canon indicates that Soi Fon is the "submissive" one in their relationship as it exists, and anime omakes have done such things as portraying her fantasizing about being a princess who is rescued by Prince!Yoruichi, but at the same time Soi Fon is regarded as the more "butch" of the two, mostly based on her appearance and upbringing, so those who run by personality tend to chickify Soi Fon, while those going by appearance tend to chickify Yoruichi.
In a non-yuri example, Rukia Kuchiki is sometimes subjected to this by rabid Ichigo/Rukia shippers who then reduce her brother Byakuya and/or her best male friend Renji to Domestic Abusers that Ichigo must rescue her from. This completely ignores how both Byakuya and Renji are actually insanely protective of her.
This is disturbingly common in Fire Emblem fanfiction, particularly with characters like Lyndis (especially in a lot of fics pairing her with Kent) and Eirika (who as a result ends up suffering from the fandom in a similar manner to the Hetalia girls).
In canon, Princess Celestia is a competent and wise ruler. In My Little Unicorn, she has clung to the Distress Ball with a firm grip and runs with it.
Film - Animated
Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo shows Starfire being rescued by Robin much, much more than in the series, and doing less to contribute to the group's success. At the same time, Robin himself contributes the least success, rather, the most damage- his hunt for Brushogun leads to disaster, getting himself thrown in prison for all the wrong reasons. After his escape, he has to parade around as an average Joe to avoid drawing attention, which brings him down from a costumed hero to an unnerved, edgy Badass Normal. Played for Drama- it's to help make her look and feel more vulnerable, draw closer to Robin, make him draw closer to her, and at last, bring them together for The Big Damn Kiss.
Film - Live-Action
Mina Harker in the many film adaptations of Dracula, but most drastically in the Bela Lugosi version, which she spends most of weeping hysterically.
Jane in Johnny Mnemonic isn't exactly weak, but she's not nearly as hard-assed as her counterpart Molly in the original story.
Katara spends most of the film adaptation of The Last Airbender looking like she's about to cry. It's instructive to compare the different versions of her fight with Zuko—in the original, she almost wins, whereas in the movie, he defeats her easily. Naturally, given that Katara develops into a superb Action Girl in the original series, it's just one of many reasons that mentioning this rotten movie adaptation in front of the hardcore fandom causes them to keep gagging themselves with rectal thermometers.
Greg Rucka, the author of Whiteout, complained about Carrie Stetko being made weaker in the film adaptation so as to prop up the male characters. "At least they got rid of the scene in the script where she - a U.S. Marshall - hears someone following her and runs away. What's she gonna do, call the cops?"
Jean Grey in the X-Men film series suffers from a special case of this. The Phoenix storyline is major Never Live It Down material for her, so she got some major movements of power-spiking leading up to her Phoenix debut... but the rest of the time, she suffers as mentioned down in Western Animation. So she spends movie one as love interest and gets beaten by the Toad. The. Freaking. Toad (at least he was played by Ray Parks...). Movie two, she uses her powers in ways that would be perfectly unremarkable in the comics when nothing remotely Phoenix-y is going on, and everyone's amazed and a bit scared. *
Okay, maybe holding back the full fury of Scott's Eye Beams with her TK was impressive even by her comic self's standards...
Movie three, she ascends into full Phoenix mode... and does nothing but be the MacGuffin of the story, sought after by the male leads (Wolverine to save her, and Magneto to make her his Dragon — a role in which she just stands around.) Even the final rampage adds little to the actual plot and only exists so Wolverine can angst about having to Shoot the Dog. (To be fair, the third movie had another problem to contend with.)
An odd variant happens with Mystique in X-Men: First Class. Fans familiar with the character in the original trilogy (which First Class establishes loose continuity with) will probably find it jarring that she goes from being The Dragon to Magneto and a Dark Action Girl to being an awkward if Adorkable girl. Given that the movie is a prequel and that there are certain scenes (for example, Mystique bench pressing an impressive amount of weight), it's likely it's being set up for future badassery.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra featured Courtney "Cover Girl" Krieger, who in comic-continuity is a former high-fashion model who enlisted and became a missile-tank driver. Who is fond of doing all the upkeep and repair work on her own tank. In the movie, she's Hawk's Girl Friday. This is a Justified Trope though, as it's explained in the prequel novel that sometime prior to then, she was critically injured during a mission and is no longer physically capable of serving combat duty.
Adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera tend to turn Christine from a stubborn, outspoken girl who's arguably a bit of a jerk into a passive ingenue. The musical version in particular makes her more like the original novel's Decoy Protagonist than like her original self.
At the start of Universums öde by George Johansson, Amalthea is introduced as Len's equal. However, in the third book, she and Len have barely landed on New Earth when she is attacked by a predator bird and develops a phobia of violence that means that she has to Stay In The Hut while Len does the hunting.
The Host: Wanderer is a strong, intelligent Soul who has been on more worlds than most and is held in high regard among the Souls. She once defeated a Claw Beast on the planet of the Bears, transplanted a friend into it on the spot, and rode it into the city. At the end of the book, she's implanted in the body of a petite young blonde girl and can't even carry her own sleeping mat without the help of her man.
Melanie gets it as well. She starts out as a strong survivor who opted to jump down an elevator shaft to save herself from being assimilated. Any time her boyfriend appears onscreen though, or comes to her mind, she makes some pretty stupid decisions, including letting Wanderer know where her colony of "wild" humans are hiding (keep in mind that Wanderer's job is to find and assimilate them as well). Her decision is justified. Melanie sends Wanderer her memories and emotions and shows the "wild" human colony's location only when she is sure that Wanderer cares deeply about her boyfriend and brother. Wanderer wouldn't be able to betray them, which Melanie knew, having constant connection with her mind. That said, Melanie is still heavily dependent on Jared, to the extent that she only bothers trying to "talk" when he is around. He even has to pull off a heavily subverted Distressed Damsel rescue when she's not responding in Wanderer's head.
Live Action TV
In the first season of Dexter Debra Morgan has significantly different defining traits then she does in later seasons. She's ambitious, tough, foul mouthed, good at hiding her emotions, a clever detective and she has a penchant for sleeping around and describing the results in graphic detail. Apparently the writers decided she was a little too masculine so they changed things up. Her promiscuity turned into a steady stream of romantic plot tumors, her ability to hide her emotions disappeared entirely and she instead broke down crying nearly every episode. She remained ambitious and a good detective but those characteristics only shone through on rare occasions. Her cursing was the only character trait to survive the chickification unscathed.
American Gothic. This happened to Gail Emory. At the start of the show, while not exactly an Action Girl, she was certainly a female Determinator who, as an Intrepid Reporter, was determined to find out the truth of her parents' deaths and bring their murderer to justice. But as soon as she learned her parents were not the paragons of virtue she thought them to be, her Belated Backstory was dropped and she seemed to flounder about with nothing to do. By the end of the series, she's morphed almost completely into a Distressed Damsel, having to rely on Buck himself for protection, and in her last scene is left in a hospital bed, crying piteously over the baby she's lost—even though she didn't want it in the first place, seeing as it was the son of Satan (as depicted graphically via ultrasound—or maybe not). At least some of this may be due to Executive Meddling in order to pair up the major male and female leads, or a result of the show being Screwed by the Network so that Shaun Cassidy had to wrap everything up far too quickly and nonsensically. But some surely isn't.
Days of Our Lives Stephanie Johnson is one of the most blatant cases. When the character first returned to the show as an adult she was played by redhead Shayna Rose and appeared as a tough girl race car driver. After Rose was fired, the character was recast with brunette former beauty queen Shelley Hennig as a rather uninteresting fashion plate character with little or no real character.
Lily, of Hannah Montana fame, started off as a cool skater-chick who was good at sports and very much a tomboy, despite the pilot showing her going gaga over Miley's (very girly) clothes. One episode lampshades her lack of girly tendencies after a boy asks her to the school dance. Just sure that the boy will like Lily even more if she dolls up, Miley makes Lily over into a sexy (for a kid's show) glamorous fashion model. This makes the boy dump her, because he liked her as she was. By the final season, the only real difference between Miley and Lily was that Miley was more Deadpan Snarker and Lily more Cloud Cuckoo Lander. Lily's hobbies and fashion sense began to mimic Miley's almost exactly.
HawaiiFive0 Kono seems to be going this route. In season 1, she kicked ass in almost every episode. Now, she spends much of her time back in Mission Control or off doing grunt work while the new action girl gets screen time.
Merlin's Guinevere in the BBC version. She kicks some serious ass for the first season, teaching Merlin how to put Arthur's armour on properly, going into battle to defend Ealdor, facing her own execution bravely; but the moment Arthur notices in season two that he might just fancy her, she gets kidnapped and can do nothing but trip over her own feet and foul up two attempts to rescue her.
Power Rangers Both of Tommy's girlfriends. Kimberly single-handedly defeated monsters such as the Terror Toad and the Snizard, and Kat(herine) was instrumental in nearly bringing down the Rangers themselves while under Rita's spell. When they started dating Tommy, it seemed that not one episode could go by without one of them screaming "TOMMY!" at the top of their lungs. (On the other hand, given how often Tommy wound upin need of rescue...).
Robin Hood Happened to both Marian and Djaq to some extent. Marian is shown to be a capable fighter throughout most of the show, but towards the end of season two she is hit in the face with the Distress Ball and ends up as the Distressed Damsel on numerous occasions. In her final appearance, just before Gisborne stabs her to death the writers ensure that our intrepid heroine is denied the opportunity to wield a sword in her defense of the king, and she's reduced to simply flailing her arms around. Djaq kicks ass right to the end, but many were put off by her abrupt declarations of love for Will Scarlett, and the fact that she spent the rest of the finale behaving like a gooey-eyed teenager before opting to stay in the Holy Land to raise pigeons with him.
Sanctuary has an unusual male version of this, not surprising, since the show likes to genderfliptropes. Will starts out as a Badass Bookworm and ends up the Designated Victim. Strangely, only slightly less annoying than the usual way around.
Happens to Rei at the end of Tomica Hero Rescue Fire, when her brash and Lad-ette personality is greatly toned down and she falls for a much older man, with the implication that she will eventually quit to marry him and take care of his son.
TheWalkingDead arguably has Andrea. She initially was a GirlNextDoor trying desperately to be an ActionGirl in season 1. In season 2, she sort of made it by the end, yet was still making bad decisions. However, in season 3, she ends up basically becoming the Governor's personal slut. She slowly lets him take away her gun and her freedom. Lets him. She has plenty of outs, including leaving with Michonne, the girl who SAVED HER FREAKING LIFE on multiple occasions. What's worse, she defends the Governor despite all of the horrible crap he does. She becomes so irritating that some fans call her the New Lori. For those who don't know, Lori was the original fan-labeled annoying female.
Professional Wrestling
Chyna, although hers was more enforced from above. She came in as a bodyguard (not valet, Bodyguard) to Triple H. She then went on to feuding with the male wrestlers, had absolutely no interest in the Women's Championship, and was the first woman to hold a man's wrestling title (not counting the Hardcore Title, but that's another story.) Toward the end, after she ended up the hypotenuse in the Chyna / Triple H / Stephanie McMahon triangle, she was pushed back into the Women's Division.
She lost a lot of her muscle mass, got a bunch of plastic surgeries and is now doing hardcore porn.
Natalya suffered from this. She debuted as a powerful heel and was put into contention for the new Divas' Championship but was quickly dropped from that and eventually became a manager for the Hart Dynasty where the most she usually did was slap her guys' opponents a little. This got reversed when they brought in The Usos to feud with them who had a woman as their valet. When they split, Natalya became a prominent part of the women's division and won the title.
Inverted with Jacqueline Moore. She was introduced as Marc Mero's valet and, although winning the reinstated Women's Championship, was booked rather weakly and lumped together with the non-wrestler divas such as Terri and Sable. Fast forward about a year and she gets to show off the full extent of her wrestling ability, even competing in intergender matches. She defeated Chavo Guerrero Jr. for the WWE Cruiserweight Title in 2004 before losing it back and being pushed out the door and forgotten in order to make room for the Diva Search Idiots.
It could be said that this is consistently happening to WWE's entire women's divison ever since Trish Stratus and Lita retired. Upon leaving WWE for the second time, Gail Kim has claimed, among other things, that WWE wants the division to be more "girly" and have barred the Divas from things like punching and kicking.
Barring them from kicking and punching? Then what else are they gonna do!?
These "rules" would change week to week, actually. But the chickification of this once great women's division is painfully obvious.
Painfully obvious in the segment that had the entire locker room confront COO Triple H for an unsafe working environment. Beth Phoenix spoke for the Divas and what did she say? "We're girls". So forget that she's gone toe-to-toe with the men and any attempt by most of the roster to do anything to her would land them in a full body cast, at the end of the day she's just a girl apparently.
Thanks to the PG rating whenever the Divas are involved in intergender storylines with the men, the most they can do is cower in fear like a Distressed Damsel. Eve Torres is actually a blue belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu but is a quivering pile of nerves when Kane's music hits. Similarly Aksana was a Badass in FCW but was a tearful mess at the thought of Kane.
Although that's probably a bad example because this is Kane we're talking about, who even main eventers like John Cena or Randy Orton acknowledge as a legitimate threat whether he's a heel or a face. And that's without the fact that Kane's character is a slasher movie serial killer (replacing murder with assault) and has a tendency to pop out of anywhere.
That doesn't change the fact that both their badass-ness and their intelligence both go out the door. Both Eve and Aksana (and the rest of the roster, for that matter) are shown as strong and clever fighters. If they're so clearly outmatched when it comes to Kane, it makes no sense to stand in the center of the ring, "frozen with fear" according to Michael Cole, instead of taking Kane's long, slow march to the ring as a chance to, say, run!
In a way, the women's title belt itself has become chickified. Originally, the title belts were somewhat interchangeable in a lot of ways, since they were mostly round-ish gold plates on a black leather belt. In recent years, the titles have all been updated to be larger, more detailed, and more distinct and to possibly read better on camera since the conversion to High Definition. For example, the Tag Team titles now have two Spartan helmets in profile, the United States Championship has a much larger American Flag decal. The Divas Title, on the other hand, is now a very girly silver and pink butterfly.
Total chickification. The Divas championship has superseded the Women's title, with the latter becoming deactivated. So the girlier championship is now the only one for women to compete for.
Nickla Roberts, who was best known as Baby Doll, a valet in WCW's predecessor JCP, started out as a female wrestler in WCCW with a metalhead gimmick who beat both female and male wrestlers in the ring. Once JCP hired her as a valet, though, that was the end of her actually wrestling.
Video Games
Chloe Valens from Tales of Legendia has to be rescued by Senel from drowning (since she can't swim), and struggle with her growing feelings for him throughout the game. At the same time, she defeats Senel in single combat, is a Knight in Shining Armor who subverts Honor Before Reason when it matters most, and doesn't take revenge when she had every reason to do so. Though she may so "female" emotions, Chloe is an example of this trope done well, as she is no less of a Badass at the end of the game than she was at the beginning.
Odin Sphere Likely as a reference to the above example and general Valkyrie lore, the Valkyries fear this trope. Disobedient Valkyries are punished by being placed into slumber and given away to a man who will be their husband upon awakening, whereas Valkyries who are no longer able to fight are forcefully stripped of their status and married to men, where they must be obedient wives for the rest of their lives. An early Valkyrie NPC in Gwendolyn's story is facing this fate and terrified, whereas Gwendolyn herself suffers the slumbering sort as a punishment early in her story. The rest of her story has her struggling against her growing feelings for Oswald and her new role as a non-warrior. The game later reveals that Odin only used magic to make Gwendolyn sleep and not to manipulate her emotions. No one actually tells Gwendolyn this, probably because they looked at how hostile she was to Oswald and figured she must already know she wasn't enthralled. She never seems to realize that her feelings for Oswald were always genuinely her own. Ultimately, she decides it doesn't matter if they're fake or not, because Oswald is the first person in her life to treat her like a human being as opposed to her selfish, cold-hearted father. As for fighting, she seems to have little trouble with that and rescues her husband herself from a dragon, a fire elemental king, and the queen of the dead. Clearly this trope just can't stick to her.
World of Warcraft has done this to Jaina Proudmoore. In Warcraft III and its expansion, she was one of few people who listened to the Prophet's Cassandra Truth and led people across the sea to escape the Burning Legion. She even helped kill her own father when she decided there was no other way to secure a peace between the Alliance and the Horde. In World of Warcraft, her role until Patch 3.3 was limited to cheering up orphans, and in Patch 3.3 she decided to see if her ex-boyfriend the Evil Overlord was redeemable. Good luck with that.
She suffers from this very badly in the Arthas novel, too, where aside from setting a couple of granaries on fire, she mostly wibbles about said ex-boyfriend, when she's not making out with him.
Tyrande Whisperwind has suffered from this as well, not just in World of Warcraft but in most of the Warcraft novels since. Even in Cataclysm, where most faction leaders have gotten at least one badass moment, if not multiple ones, so far all she has done amounts to staying in Darnassus and telling players about how Malfurion, her love, has returned and will fix everything.
While Sylvanas has generally been more at risk of jumping off the slippery slope, there was an especially ridiculous example in the Sunwell Trilogy manga, when she became a Distressed Damsel at the hands of a heretofore unheard-of male Villain Sue in the Ghostlands. The Ghostlands are the southern half of what's left of Eversong Forest, which Sylvanas would have been intimately familiar with as bloody Ranger-General of Quel'thalas.
In Summon Night: Swordcraft Story, a large part of Sanary's character is centered around her desire to avoid this fate due to one of her role models falling deathly ill and requiring her lover to look after her. She does wind up falling into this, needing to be rescued twice 3 times if you count "possessed by a berserk spirit" and is forced into a maid outfit during the first. Her anger over this is what allows her to be possessed in the first place. An odd contrast is found in PrattyXRazzy's path, where Pratty notes to Razzy that a girl doesn't need to look or act feminine to be beautiful.
Ariel in the first Kingdom Hearts was an Action Girl able to cast powerful spells and take down The Heartless with a whip of her tail. Come the sequel, however, and she has suddenly lost all of the ability, leaving her almost (unfortunately they excluded her feisty attitude) exactly as she was in her original film, leaving many players to wonder what the point of revisiting Atlantica was to begin with.
Played straight: Chizuru gets his with this after 2003, since she gets Brainwashed and Crazy, had her Yata mirror stolen and the deal badly shakes her self-esteem. (True, her life has had manyBreak the Cutie episodes, but until then she had managed to mostly deal). The ending of XIII implies that she got her Mirror back and that said episode was Ret conned when Ash (the one who stole the Mirror from her) got himsef Ret Gone'd.
Subverted: Leona seemed to have been hit by this in XI, after being broken in 2003 (when her Orochi blood took over her again and she almost beat Ralf and Clark to death), prompting her adoptive father and commander Heidern to repace her with her friend and fellow Action Girl Whip. However, this turned out to be a 10-Minute Retirement only; in XIII Leona was fully back, having decided to live with her condition and not break down again.
Additionally, the Fan Dumb loves to falsely accuse King of this. Technically speaking, she went through a negative Vocal Evolution (her voice got more high-pitched) and a slight Girliness Upgrade (she's still a Bifauxnen and Action Girl, with her sprites becoming slightly more feminine and the XI ending showing her in a cute dress — during a date). Her fighting skills and basic personality remain untouched.
Terra in Dissidia: Final Fantasy. The prequel address this by rewriting her dialog in the text scenes to her less of a Shrinking Violet who needs to be protected, and more of a Reluctant Warrior who's willing and able to fight but doesn't want to if she can help it, which is closer to original characterization.
Web Animation
The Garnet And Gure short, Super Effective, parodies the chickification of badass video game heroines by featuring Garnet showing up for a zombie battle dressed grudgingly and inexplicably in a tutu.
Webcomics
Megagi la Skunk from Sonichu was original a spike-wearing mohawked skunk who really stood out from the other female characters, all of whom were shallow female stereotypes with no personality (this is likely due to the author not creating her, but stealing her from a friend). She was rapidly chickified over her next couple of appearances until she became a literal cheerleader and indistinguishable from the other females in the cast. This is considered to be evidence that the author isn't just unable to write characters with distinct personalities; he's actively against it.
Western Animation
Aeon Flux had this happen once, recoiling in terror from a man threatening to beat her with his wooden leg.
Played with in the episode "A Last Time for Everything". Aeon lets Trevor create a copy of her for his own amusement and then switches places with her so she can experience a comfortable domestic life with him while the new Aeon takes over her old life. She then allows the copy to kill her, both to make Trevor miserable and because she was driven to despair by no longer being true to herself. Taken together with the above example (who was her boyfriend at the time) it's possible that being more vulnerable and "feminine" around men she cares about is just another aspect of her character, and one that she's not particularly proud of at that.
DuckTales: The reason Mrs. Beakley was hired as the triplets' nanny was because she was the only one "tough enough" to handle the little terrors, and for the first few episodes, she lives up to the job: breaking characters out of prison, escaping giant penguin-eating walruses, chariot-racing Vikings... and by Duck Tales The Movie Treasure Of The Lost Lamp, she's nothing more than a weeping fainting woman.
Kim Possible: Brought up from time to time regarding Kim and Shego, not all agree.
Pepper Ann parodied this trope in an episode where a cartoon starring fictitious Comic Book heroine Tundra Woman turns her into a shopping-obsessed bimbo and her archenemy into her Satellite Love Interest boyfriend. Unfortunately, Pepper Ann's sister's protest campaign causes them to veer too far in the other direction.
The Powerpuff Girls also parodied this. While the girls starts remember stuff in a clip show, they remember that they once aged up to becoming teenagers. In this flashback they stop fighting and instead became shallow, boy-obsessed morons. This was a Take That from Craig McCracken to Executive Meddling which attempted to chickify the girls for feminine merchandise.
It was also a Take That towards members of the fandom who would send him fanart (and fanfics) of the girls dating the Rowdyruff Boys (nevermind the fact that they're mortal enemies) forgetting that the show is an action cartoon first and has little (if any) romance in it whatsoever.
In The Real Ghostbusters, Janine Melnitz underwent Chickification in the third season and onward to appease the Moral Guardians: a newvoice actress who toned down her old Bronx accent, a softer appearance, and a less harsh personality. This was actually justified in the 5th season episode "Janine, You've Changed"; she had made a deal with a ghost to be made over to win Egon's affections, and the ghost had hidden the changes from the cast. Ironically, the series had also found excuses to send her into the field more and more often, even as this was going on.
Spider Man The Animated Series Black Cat was awesomely awesome during the arc "Partners in Danger," which introduced her. She leaves near the end, but puts in one more guest appearance in which she's as cool as ever. Unfortunately, when she returns again for "Secret Wars," her role in the story is to fall off of things, scream, and be caught by Captain America while Petey looks on with jealousy. Maybe it was a Skrull impostor...
X-Men The 90's animated series had a bad habit of doing this to Jean Grey. In the comics, she was one of the original X-Men, who even in The Sixties, could hold her own against formidable opponents. In the cartoon, however, she was the go-to girl if they needed a Distressed Damsel, playing the role of The Empath more than a contributing member.
Parodied with Steve Trevor, love interest of Wonder Woman in his appearance at Batman The Brave And The Bold: In all other incarnations (comics, animation, live action TV) he is a fairly proactive guy, in the Cold Opening of “Scorn of Star Shappire” he is a secret agent so confindent that Wonder Woman will come to his rescue that he doesn’t move a muscle to get out of a Death Trap, left her do all the work, and gushes in her presence. And this immortal line:
Steve Trevor: Have to say, being a secret agent is a cinch when you have a super-powered girlfriend.
