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This is a very common case that I like to call Dumbass in Distress Disorder. This usually involves a strong, totally independent female that, for the first two acts of the movie, kicks everybody's ass and is a mighty force to reckon with. But then, near the end of the movie, "Oooh. As the third act is getting closer, I suddenly find myself becoming dumber and less confident. And now suddenly I'm in danger! Oh! If only there was a man around to save me: they never seem to succumb to this strategically contrived illness!"
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 Distressed Damsel you need, someone who tends to Stay In The Kitchen rather than go out and fight, whether by punching people or analyzing the scenario and figuring out a solution.
An Action Girl who never lives up to her Informed Ability and image once the plot hits the fan is a Faux Action Girl. Chickification is about taking a character who was a genuine Action Girl at one point, and derailing her into a Distressed Damsel without any back-up for such a change. This may lead to a Damsel Scrappy if the "Damsel" characterization is the only remaining part of her personality.
On the other hand, an Action Girl who goes through a genuinely hard time, her demeanor changed to something less Bad Ass by force of trauma, is not necessarily a victim of Chickification, but rather something like Women In Refrigerators, Break The Cutie or Break The Haughty. Chickification's cause is a more invisible shift in story role. Not to mention, the Chickification trope often goes from "any Action Girl who stops living to her reputation as such" to "any Action Girl who shows 'female' emotions". Remember, being The Chick does not necessarily equal to "being a bad character", since Tropes Are Not Bad.
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.
Also known as the 'Dumbass In Distress Disorder'.
The inverse of this trope is Xenafication, 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. This trope can be a result of meeting a more interesting boyfriend
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 Mandys 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.
Examples
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Pictured above: In the Fatal Fury and The King Of Fighters games, Mai Shiranui is a Ms Fanservice and Highly Visible Ninja who still gets her work done and isn't willing to go down without fighting. But in the Fatal Fury OVA? She was a Distressed Damsel who won only one fight (and predictably, her opponent was another female), and aside of her Cool Big Sis talk with Sulia, was there only to be kidnapped so Andy could save her.
- Berserk has poor, poor Casca. Initially an intelligent and capable Action Girl when we first see her, she has the bad luck to be close to both the Anti Hero and the soon-to-be Big Bad. Once her love for Guts is established, she never has use for a sword again... and that is the most polite way to put it. Poor, poor Casca.
- To be fair, even in her current baby-like state in the manga, she's still able to defend herself with a sword when attacked by rapists at one point. And her Chickification likely isn't going to last forever, seeing that it's the goal of Guts' current group to get her cured.
- Yeah, but this series is jammed to the right of The Scale, so perhaps it is.
- Lampshaded by Casca herself right before she and Guts have sex
- Cagalli of Gundam SEED was a good leader, a competent pilot, and was very mentally strong. In Gundam SEED Destiny, she went through a more or less understandable breakdown after LOTS of misfortune and bad choices, but Bad Writing took its toll soon and showed her as more weepy than someone like her would've been. She only began to re-assert herself after about 40 episodes, when she first gets into a mech to kick some ass, and later re-takes leadership of Orb back to show us she's won her Lady Of War attributes back.
- Also, this can be seen as less of Chickification and more like general Character Derailment. Everyone was derailed in Destiny, not only Cagalli. And considering that she did get her skills back in the end, she was lucky to a degree.
- Case in point: Lunamaria Hawke started the series as a Badass Normal elite pilot and one of the few characters to challenge a Gundam in a Zaku. Around the time Kira and the rest were reintroduced, however, poor Luna started a slow but unstoppable slide towards total uselessness; even inheriting the Impulse Gundam from Shinn wasn't enough to stop this, and she spent the rest of the series and the final battle as a Faux Action Girl.
- Kaoru from Rurouni Kenshin is a reigning national kendo champion. She wins a non-mook fight a grand total of once throughout the series, paired up with another girl against a mentally unstable male-to-female crossdresser, another type of Unfortunate Implications in and of itself. The official explanation is that she's weaker than most of the other characters because nearly all the heroes and villains have underworld combat-training while Kaoru's just a civilian. But her 10-year-old male student is encouraged to take on bad guys several times his size and experience after less than a year of training while she's asked to stay home and prepare hot baths.
- Played straight and memorably subverted in the second season of the Corrector Yui anime.
- Played straight: Freeze, the only female of the Corruptor team, was an extremely efficient Dark Action Girl with ice-based powers. When she switched sides for the second season, she walked the thin wire between Action Girl and Faux Action Girl, with more emphasis given to her clumsiness outside of the battlefield and inability to keep a stable work in the Com.Net, which ultimately makes her liable to be manipulated by her more stable boss... who was working for the Big Bad.
- Subverted: In the first season, Haruna Kisaragi became a Corrector like her best friend Yui, but due to ending up Brainwashed And Crazy, she ultimately returned to the sidelines and act as much as Dr. Inukai's assistant furing 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: Haruna immediately returns to be a Corrector, and in her first real fight she uses the four Elemental suits almost 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 even was there for Yui, Ai and the other Correctors in the Grand Finale.
- Rosette Christopher in the anime version of Chrono Crusade. In the manga, she remains a Hot Blooded Determinator all throughout the series, going as far as coming back from the dead through sheer force of will. In the anime, she ends up as the brainwashed slave of Aion who needs to be saved by Chrono and serves no active role in the endgame. Not a lot of people agreed with that.
- In the Blue Dragon series, 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 end of the series.
Comic Books
- Most of the female X-Men were hit hard by this when Chris Claremont left for the first time. Your Mileage May Vary, but occasional Ho Yay and hints of domme tendencies were a considerable improvement over:
- The accomplished leader Storm, one who upon losing her weather-warping abilities simply operated as a Badass Normal, relegated to background scenery and occasional artillery when the romantic/hearbreak subplot got dumped.
- Psylocke not only becoming all but useless at range (her telepathy aside from a fist-range brain-fry being routinely overwhelmed when she remembers to use it at all) but getting gutted by an opponent she held off before she gained her supposedly nightmarish kung-fu skills. The pointless love triangle she was shoehorned into as the vamp/homewrecker did not help either.
- Rogue, despite being strong enough to bench-press tanks and capable of outflying almost any weapons she cannot laugh off, being 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, despite Character Development leading to her being the Avenger giving order to Captain America more often than not by the 80s; 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.
- Interesting—she began as The Chick. During the 80s, Janet had matured into a heroine capable enough that she was actually Avengers Chairman during periods when Captain America was on the active roster. Sometime around the mid-90s, they just decided to forget that part entirely, leading to her recent period as The Load before being Stuffed Into The Fridge.
- Inverted in the French Space Opera comic series Valerian and Laureline, where Laureline starts out as mostly tagging along with Valerian but becomes a more active, heroic character as the story arc goes on.
- Black Canary is still capable, but not in her own book. While Birds Of Prey (since cancelled) and Justice League Of America (which she is the leader of) both feature her kicking ass, Green Arrow/Black Canary has her being attacked, held hostage, injured, and inflicted with a level of ineptitude that should bar her from operating a car, much less being a superhero. All so that her husband, Green Arrow, can look cool.
- Averted hard in Y The Last Man.
- This may surprise you, but Gwen Stacy. When first introduced into the Spider-Man mythos, Gwen was proud and feisty, and sort of the textbook definition of a Tsundere. This was mostly due to Steve Ditko's artwork, which, combined with the "Marvel Method", made her look angry in almost all her scenes, and even downright villainous in some. When Ditko left the series and was replaced by John Romita, Sr., Gwen quickly mellowed down, eventually degrading into an air-headed Distressed Damsel who would cry and run to daddy at the slightest hint of stress. And then she died. This has actually done well for her reputation, as she went from being a rather boring character to being one of the most idealized characters in the history of comics.
- Gracie Hart, played by Sandra Bullock, in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed And Fabulous. The hook of the entire first Miss Congeniality film was FBI agent Gracie's inability to project an image of traditional pageant-worthy femininity. In the sequel, it seems that the fame Gracie attained from the climax of the previous film makes covert operations difficult and so she is made into the 'face' of the FBI. Ten months after this decision, Gracie goes from being an arse-kicking, snort-laughing agent to a designer-naming, highly-fashion-conscious diva who complains constantly during the action scenes about various label clothing being forced to do action scenes they normally would not do, and the role of badass female agent is given to Regina's Sam Fuller.
- But she does switch back to her former personality.
- Maid Marian, in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, is shown defending herself pretty capably — she gives Robin a decent fight, and later drives her fingers into the eyes of a would-be-rapist. Then the Sheriff gets a hold of her and she turns into a complete Distressed Damsel, passing up every opportunity to knee his crotch, elbow his windpipe, etc., instead struggling ineffectually, whimpering, and shrieking, "Robin!" Sigh.
- Princess Katey in A Kid In King Arthur's Court, who is originally shown to be skilled in fighting, but becomes inexplicably unable to apply these skills when captured by the bad guys. The Nostalgia Critic noted this in his review of the film, labelling it the "Dumbass in Distress Disorder".
- Subverted in the same film by her sister, Princess Sarah, who spends the entire movie appearing to be your standard beautiful maiden — and is revealed in the end to be the secret identity of the Black Knight, the Bad Ass who has been defending the kingdom and wins the tournament.
- Terminator Salvation has Moon Bloodgood's character made out to be this massive Action Girl, more than capable of holding her own, yet as soon as she gets assistance with a fight from Marcus due to being somewhat overwhelmed (by a hair pull of all things)and he beats them all senseless, suddenly her persona changes and she's all over him, literally. It also has somewhat disturbing tones of Me Love You Long Time to an extent.
- Greg Rucka complained about Carrie Stetko of Whiteout being made weak in the film adaptation, although "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?"
- Padmé Amidala in Episode 3. I know pregnancy does weird things to a woman's hormone balance, but come on George.
- As a Cracked.com article put it (paraphrasing) "The same woman badass enough to both debate the finer points of Robert's Rules of Order and personally lead the raiding party to bring down the brutal occupation of her homeland in Episode 1 spends almost all of Episode 3 crying and wondering when her husband is going to come home."
- Inverted in the Encyclopedia Brown books. When Sally Kimball is first introduced, not only is she described as the toughest kid on the block, but also has a brain comparable to Encyclopedia's, nearly defeating him in a brain-teaser competition. After that, however, though she becomes his bodyguard and retains all of her fighting skills, she becomes considerably less astute, and only plays a role in solving cases when it has something to do with etiquette (the one area she retains intelligence in.)
- Lyra in His Dark Materials. It's galling how all the active stuff is taken over by Will. She spends much of the third book asleep, for heaven's sake.
- Petra Arkanian of Enders Game. She rocks for some time, then falls asleep during the grand final battle, letting the boys take over. This with a mostly male cast. Then, she becomes Bean's love interest, and gets passed along to Peter. She also gives birth, thus justifying her existence in Orson Scott Card's mind. This is apparently the only way Orson Scott Card could figure out to make Petra a more interesting character. Virlomi, the only other female in Battle School, becomes insane, probably because she didn't purify herself by becoming a mother. Valentine and Peter both participate in saving the world, and yet it is Peter who gets all the glory. Every other female character is attached to a male one, either as a wife or a mother.
- To be fair, falling asleep from exhaustion is something that could happen to any extremely stressed out child at a military academy. The intent was to illustrate the intense pressure placed on the entire team and the dangers of over-relying on a single team member, not to make a female character weaker and more conventional. Also, learning to psychologically cope with a great failure can be considered character development, not derailment.
- That could also be considered The Worf Effect: Petra was the only member of Ender's Jeesh who was already established as well and truly Bad Ass, so having her fall asleep was the best way to show the stress they were under, it's mentioned that Ender strained her more than anyone, and it's mentioned later that Vlad, a male, broke too. As for the complaint about giving birth justifying her existence, saying that's Chickification is a Double Standard because in Card's world parenthood is necessary for the guys too.
- The Puppetmasters by Robert A Heinlein. Mary, a fellow agent in the unnamed intelligence service the protagonist works for, carries an excessive amount of firepower and is certainly willing to use it. After marrying the protagonist halfway through the book, she becomes an instant "Yes dear" housewife, though it's unclear whether this is Values Dissonance on Heinlein's part (The Puppetmasters was written in the 1950's) or if he's just playing the situation for its humorous aspects.
- This is actually fairly common in Heinlein's writings, particularly his earlier stories. Female characters are badass and super-competent, until they meet their love-interests; at which point they completely abandon their own lives (and even personalities). Mostly a product of 1950s Values Dissonance, as this becomes less pronounced, and eventually even reversed, in his later work.
- Catti-brie after her injury at the end of the The Hunter's Blades trilogy. She becomes a wizard. Awesome! The Companions of the Hall don't have a mage, and at times they could really have used the firepower. She's even getting lessons from one of the most powerful wizards on Faerun! Except that this means she spends all her time away from Drizzt, i.e. where the action is. In her final novel appearance in The Ghost King, she looks pretty for her husband, has sex with her husband, and says three intelligible lines. The rest of her time is spent in a catatonic state, i.e. as a mobile plot device. And then she dies.
- Madelaine in Hotel Transylvania starts out as, while not particularly an Action Girl, having both the smarts and the nerves to foil a couple of kidnapping attempts by the villains. However, when she is eventually captured, she doesn't even make an attempt to get free, and has to be saved from A Fate Worse Than Death by her Friendly Neighborhood Vampire boyfriend Saint-Germain.
Live Action TV
- Sadly, this happened to Gail Emory from American Gothic. 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.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Your Mileage May Vary on if this was averted or played straight with the main character; on the one hand as the seasons progressed and the opposition grew steadily more powerful (and Buffy's combat skills correspondingly less effective against them), and as Willow started to overtake her as the team's heavy hitter, one might have expected Buffy to succumb to this trope. Instead, she began taking over Giles's leadership role. On the other hand, not a few fans felt Spike had totally eclipsed her by the final season.
- Chickification happened full stop to Willow, as she couldn't use magic for the better part of the season lest she become evil. While she got better in the season finale, she did so by empowering other people, one of the key characteristics of The Chick.
- At times, the characterization of Babylon Five's Delenn fell into this area very badly. She responded passively to an implicit threat of rape, and was taken hostage/captured three times whenever the series needed a Damsel in Distress.
- She did lull the would-be rapist into a false sense of security, but then she broke his fingers, all without breaking cover, and without needing help from Marcus, who turned up after she dealt with him.
- Kate Austen started out as a Action Girl and one of the driving forces of the show. However, after season 1 she stopped getting the level of development accorded to the other members of the love triangle and became just a plot device for Jack and Sawyer to fight over-one that also caused her to get captured by the Others an alarming amount. But the process was reversed when she left the Island and gained interests besides Jack and Sawyer for the first time since the start of the show.
- A rare example of Chickification being Played For Drama is in Richard Wagner's Die Walküre. Wotan punishes Brünnhilde for her disobedience: not only will she no longer be one of the Valkyries, but she will fall asleep until a man to whom she will belong finds her and awakens her.
Video Games
- Likely as a reference to the above example and general Valkyrie lore, the Valkyries of Odin Sphere 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 even 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.
- The dating sim X-Change Alternative gave an interesting variation on this trope when Badass delinquent Kaoru gets himself changed into a girl and suddenly becomes completely useless in a fight… even against other girls. In his defense, the rather large breasts and substantial difference in weight would leave anyone a bit uncoordinated. By the end of the game, she appears to have gotten used to it however and was able to take down an entire gang (to which she earlier couldn't even hurt one member) in an Unstoppable Rage].
- Tetra in The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker starts off as the leader of a group of pirates, who's actually a decent fighter (or at least a good acrobat) in her own right, yet once her true identity as Zelda is revealed, and she puts on a dress, (and loses her awesome tan,) she is forced to stay hidden underneath a castle until Ganondorf kidnaps her.
- Luckily, this gets reversed by the final boss fight, where she is fighting Ganon alongside Link. And can actually damage him, unlike Link, who is there mainly as a distraction.
- To be fair, no one knew she was Princess Zelda before that. Once her identity was revealed, she kind of had to stay hidden or else Ganondorf would kidnap her (which he inevitably does).
- Her appearances in Phantom Hourglass consisted entirely of getting kidnapped, turned to stone, and then kidnapped again. She didn't even get to help you in the PH final boss fight!
- This seems to affect Zelda's alter egos in general. The Zelda of Ocarina of Time becomes a highly competent ninja during the seven year Time Skip, yet she is still incapable of saving herself from Ganondorf when he kidnaps her a minute after revealing her identity to Link, and is relegated to her now-iconic support role. Mitigated in that she specifically explains that she had to hide her identity because she was not strong enough to fight Ganon himself, so his effortless capture of her makes sense. Even Link wasn't strong enough to take him on - Zelda has to literally pin him in place herself so Link can actually strike him down.
- This even happens in the 80s cartoon series. In most episodes, Zelda is a pure Action Girl and actually appears to be more competent than Link. In the one episode where Link needs to be rescued by her, however, she turns completely incompetent and can't use any of the fighting skills she displays in every other episode in the series.
- It wasn't so much that she lost her skills - she didn't know how to use the power of Link's sword, which she'd never used before. The same thing happened in an issue of the comic book series, where she eventually switched to her standard bow and arrow - why she didn't in the show is anyone's guess.
- The Nintendo Power comic adaptation of A Link To The Past actually relegates Link to being useless against Ganon - Zelda herself has to shoot him with an Enchanted Arrow, the only thing that can kill him, and apparently a weapon that only she was capable of summoning. In the game, she is a prisoner for the entire second half of the game and Link does all the work, including shooting Ganon with Silver Arrows.
- Twilight Princess twists this trope but good - a possessed Zelda is a boss fight.
- That and, in this case, she wasn't kidnapped so much as she left an empty shell of a body for Ganondorf to capture. Her soul has been hitching a ride in Midna's body since her supposed Heroic Sacrifice.
- This is played with in Spirit Tracks. At first, it looks like Zelda is out of commission, what with her body being kidnapped and only her spirit left (and with only Link and a few others able to see or hear her). She goes into a panic and desperately begs Link to retrieve her body while she waits for him ("I understand it's traditional!") Then it's subverted when she is told by Anju that if Zelda wants her body back, she'll have to help Link out. And while Zelda's more or less useless outside of the Tower (except to offer advice), her ability to possess Phantoms is quite awesome and handy. That and like in Wind Waker, she plays a huge part in helping Link defeat the Big Bad.
- Unfortunately, this seems to hit Lamia Loveless of Super Robot Wars. She debuts as a protagonist from SRW Advance, is a highly competent Action Robot Lady Of War, gets into the OG series in the second installment while retaining her fighting abilities and greatly contributes to the story through battles to battles. Then OG Gaiden comes in, then the plot requires her to get captured, 'killed off', Brainwashed And Crazy and needs to be saved. Thankfully, right after the rescue, she can get back in action and kick ass again, but that depends if the player wants to put her in or not. And combined with the fact that after her rescue, she practically has no more mandatory appearances (no longer required for any specific maps), it is possible that without Gameplay And Story Segregation, she may be relegated into the sidelines, no longer doing significant things (unimportant it may be) to reverse her Chickification. However, there's still OG 3 on the looms, so we'll see if Lamia can reverse her Chickification there.
- Rebecca Chambers from the Resident Evil series is an interesting case. When the player first meets her, in Resident Evil, she is a panicked rookie who needs Chris' help to survive at every turn. Resident Evil Zero, which was made later but takes place earlier chronologically, stars Rebecca as a total badass (However, it could easily be interpreted that in Zero she's a panicked rookie who needed Billy's help to survive at every turn).
- This could be taken as having been fighting to survive for three days straight. If we were to take Umbrella Chronicles as canon then we go from Rebecca hunting down cannibal killers to crashing in a helicopter, to being tasked with hunting down a psychotic mass murdering Marine, teaming up with said Marine after fighting off a few dozen zombies and a leech monster, seeing one of her team mates die and then being forced to kill him when he turns into a zombie, surviving a train crash, having to survive numerous monsters, holding on for dear life from a long drop, learning psychotic Marine is innocent, fighting more monsters, escaping from secret lair as it blows up, letting Marine go and covering up his escape, finding another team mate and fighting more zombies, monsters, giant spiders (including two dreaded Black Tigers), team mate is hurt fighting giant snake, another team mate arrives on the scene after one or two days, team mate is killed, Rebecca saves other teammate, nearly killed by monster, shot by team captain turned traitor, goes to blow up evil lab, fights big monster (about the third or fourth one) and escapes evil lab before it blows. Even Jill and Alice would be screaming they wanted out after all that.
- Shion in Xenosaga is hit with the chickification ray in Episode 2. While a sweet Meganekko in the first episode, she was a competent martial artist (even lauded as such in the U.M.N. entry). In Episode 2, her glasses are casually destroyed in the first few minutes through an Ass Pull, her outfit changes to all naval, she only has magic and long range weapon attacks and is one of only two characters (the other being MOMO) to have the escape command to flee from a fight. Episode 3 increases her Stripperiffic level but at least restores her fighting abilities.
- Samus Aran from Metroid deserves a mention. She hasn't gone through the traditional Chickification most examples have, and in fact is still an Action Girl and Bad Ass in all the games she appears in. However, if you ever search for any fanart, don't expect her iconic suit. Expect her to be lounging about, posing in her skin tight zero suit seen in Super Smash Bros Brawl or maybe even a bikini. The general idea behind the fanart appears to be "How large can I make her breasts and ass?"
- A meta-example: In Greek Mythology, Athena is the goddess of wisdom and war. In Altered Beast, she is Chickified into a standard Damsel In Distress.
Web Original
- The Nostalgia Critic gives us the above quote while commenting on an incident of Chickification in A Kid in King Arthur's Court
Western Animation
- Tula from Pirates Of Dark Water is a very sudden example: a sword-wielding warrior in the Five Episode Pilot, only to have the sixth episode dedicated to her sudden transmogrification into a mage Because Destiny Says So — over her protests, no less. After that, her previous combat ability is never seen or referred to again.
- You can blame ABC for Tula's change. When the network purchased the rights to the miniseries from Hanna-Barbera and began working on more episodes, one of the first things to go was Tula's Action Girl persona. They even gave her a different, more girly outfit!
- And to be absolutely fair, she did rally a bit in the last episode. First, after faking a Face Heel Turn, she outmaneuvers and acquits herself rather well against the nasty Delpha warrior Captain Norga. Later, when forced into a staff duel with Ren, she gives him quite a thrashing (although he was admittedly holding back); and when Ioz tries to intervene, she flips both of them off the edge of a cliff. Of course, that's because she had a plan all along and didn't want the boys messing it up... and she'd arranged beforehand for Niddler to be there to rescue them.
- Averted in the Character Bible, which is abundently clear that she's supposed to still have her Action Girl abilities.
- Retrospective Example: Starfire of Teen Titans spends most of the series being The Ditz. But the final season episode Go, which goes back to her introduction to the team, shows her as a virtually unstoppable Tamaranean warrior princess who was kicking Titan ass despite being shackled.
- To be fair, her tendancy to drink mustard at home never stopped her from kicking ass in the middle of a battle.
- Janine Melnitz from The Real Ghostbusters underwent Chickification in the third season and onward to appease the Moral Guardians: a new voice 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.
- In an interesting inversion, in the final episode of American Dragon Jake Long (made at the exact same time by the exact same people), it is the hero Jake who gets KOed by the Big Bad in the Grand Finale, and his Dark Action Girl girlfriend Rose who ends up saving the world.
- One of the reasons the "Goliath Chronicles" season of Gargoyles is so lambasted by the fandom (in addition to its Word Of God Canon Discontinuity) is that several of its female characters underwent the Badass Decay that had been scrupulously avoided in the first two seasons. A particularly egregious example noted by series Greg Weisman on his blog, concerns Dark Action Girl Fox in the episode "Ransom", who becomes quite the weepy Neutral Female after her baby son is kidnapped, as opposed to a previous kidnap attempt (by Oberon, a friggin' God of Magic, no less) where her reaction could best be described as "Where's my flying battle armor?.
- Duck Tales: 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 The Movie, she's nothing more than a weeping fainting woman. Interestingly, the only female characters on the show with depth and strength were the two indigenous to the comics: Magica de Spell and Goldie O'Gilt.
- In 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 basically to fall off of something, scream, and be caught by Captain America while Petey looks on with jealousy. Maybe it was a Skrull impostor...
- Chyna entered WWE as a cleft-chinned, ball-busting bodyguard, and stayed that way even after getting breast implants. Then, after a period of Action Girl (with some Les Yay thrown in), she became an unlikely Playboy centerfold. She stopped wrestling, and dedicated the remainder of her WWE career to being Eddy Guererro's "Mamacita".
- Fun fact: she actually developed quite an ego and believed that she should be wrestling for the World Heavyweight Title even though her actual wrestling skills were nowhere near the level required to headline the company. Also, you forget her brief run as Women's Champion at the end of her career, which basically consisted of a bored Chyna squashing every other female wrestler in the company, sometimes at once.
- Lita went through something like this herself. When she was with the Hardys in Team Xtreme, she as often as not found herself the third man on the team against the Radicals, Kaientai, and other all-male sets, and held her own just fine. Once she turned heel, she became a cowering damsel who couldn't do much more than slap and kick guys in the balls.
- To be fair by this point she had suffered a severe neck injury
Fanfiction
- If you thought only male writers used this trope, guess again:sadly, female fanfic writers very often don't do much better. It's disturbingly common in fanfiction for canonically tough, strong action girls to almost never be shown fighting (or, when allowed to fight, almost never effectively), be written as way more emotionally frail, immature, or weak-minded for no good reason, and/or be raped/almost raped. It's even worse when female characters in their 20's or 30's are inexplicably dumbed down emotionally and intellectually in fanfiction.
- This is really galling when the fanfiction features a primarily female cast, who are still relegated to background characters for the one or two men.
- It makes you wonder if deep down, most shippers believe female characters' only role is to play love interest while the men have a greater chance of actually doing something.
- Here's a question: do they write female characters this way because of believing women are less capable, or because they personally can't relate to strong female characters who aren't obsessed with love?
- In the Digimon fandom, Rika - Bad Ass Hot Blooded Action Girl who doesn't lose a single Bad Ass point after learning not to be a jerk - tended to become a weepy baby needing Takato (Or Henry/Jianliang, or Ryo) to swing in and rescue her from the misery of her horrible, horrible life. Her role in the story is basically to cry until whoever she's being paired with solves her problems. There is often no external threat, like a bully who'd likely have his own ass handed to him - life itself is too much for her to deal with. Bonus points if it's Takato she's paired with (he would cry about once every other episode until he got into the swing of the whole "hero" thing.) Again, it's disturbing that this many female writers can't see a female character as having a role other than "poor sad helpless victim."
- The Ranma 1/2
 fandom is similar. Akane often becomes a helpless emotional wreck (which means that she becomes incredibally violent), or is asscued of being kidnapped a lot (it happens mabye twice, and one of them isn't canon). Ranma also gets this treatment, generally when writers want to hook up his female side with one of the men of the series as a het pairing. Which generally involves Mode Lock (or Suddenly Sexuality for the times permanetly becoming a girl isn't used) and sometimes rape.
- In Slash Fic involving a male/male relationship, this frequently happens to whichever member of the pair is perceived as more submissive. It happens so frequently that the derisive term "chicks with dicks" has been coined.
- Used in the terrible Hogwarts Exposed series, in which Hermione (who was, by the fanfiction's own admission, one of three to defeat Voldemort) goes to be some saintly nunish person who adopts a Mary Sue student, scolds Ginny for wearing an outfit she thought was too revealing, quickly hooks up with Harry and marries him by the second fanfiction while being extremely lovey-dovey, and at one point shaves her nether regions just because he tells her he finds that more appealing. Possibly one of the worst scenes in the first fanfiction is when Neville begins to stroke her thigh while they're attending a concert and does not realize that she is bothered by this (don't ask). As he moves his hand closer to her crotch, she frets over what to do, afraid that hitting him or leaving early will garner unwanted attention from the press who are in the audience. Apparently Hermione, who solved so many traps and riddles in the series, was unable to think to just push Neville's hand away, or whisper "Stop it". Ginny gets it too. Besides the aforementioned revealing dress scene, it was mentioned that she slept with countless Muggles and wizards, including Snape. And like Hermione, she shows no signs of her magical skills, loyalty, or toughness from the series.
Real Life
- Gina Carano. Before being "discovered", she was an undefeated thai kickboxer with a 6-0 record. She went on American Gladiators, posed in Maxim, partied in Hollywood, didn't fight for over a year, and went into her match against the extremely less attractive Cris Cyborg Santos obviously rusty and shot with nerves, and got beaten in one round. She's still got plenty of time to turn it around if she wants to, though. And this is Chickification relatively speaking - she'd still probably deck the average troper in seconds.
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