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alt title(s): Women Are Closer To Earth Susan: Lemont, have you ever noticed how in in comic strips and sitcoms, the men are usually clueless victims of life, while the women are wise and have their lives in order? Lemont: Another bad day at work Susan? Susan: Why can't my life be like a f*ckin' comic strip!!!
In many works of fiction, the female member(s) of a group, be it a married couple, siblings, or a nakama, are often portrayed as inherently morally superior to the male members. The trope name is a play on "more grounded."
Note that this trope is not about any specific instance of individual female characters being particularly moral, but about depictions in which female characters are automatically placed in a more positive light than their male counterparts. This specific kind of Positive Discrimination is most common in comedy, but occasionally turns up outside of it.
Can be a Double Standard, especially if we are expected to view the woman as being inherently morally superior to the man even when she behaves just as badly, if not worse, than the man does. These cases particularly overlap with The Unfair Sex.
Do keep in mind that Most Writers Are Male, and a fair deal of them are likely to be heterosexual and either married, in a relationship, or hoping to get into one of those situations, so unfavourable depictions of women could be troublesome to their personal lives, thus indirectly encouraging this.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Inverted in Berserk, where several of the female characters find that Guts is the one who has his life in order (or as close as the cursed and hounded main characters can ever get) and choose to follow him.
- Though initially, Guts' love interest Caska is described as being less reckless and more level-headed and considerate of her comrades than Guts, a fact over which they often argue.
- Nami, the navigator of the Strawhat pirates in One Piece, often has to express common sense since few of her crewmembers, especially her captain Luffy, possess it. On the other hand, Nami has her own blind spots (such as the promise of wealth) and has to be reeled in by the others in turn.
- Robin, in turn, possesses common sense in spades and lacks the quirks and Berserk Button tendencies that Nami has. She tends to stay cool and collected in almost any situation, even when her captain has them haring off on some utterly ridiculous course on a whim. The major difference between her and Nami is that, while Nami tends to try to show the rest of the group how ludicrous their actions are (sometimes coming off as the Only Sane Woman, Robin is perfectly content to sit back, smile, and read a book while Luffy makes plans to blast the ship and crew into the sky.
- True in for the women of Fairy Tail in the same sense that the moon is closer to the earth than Mars.
- Dare I say, Lacus Clyne?
- Eri Kisaki is considerably more mature and businesslike then her almost-but-not-quite ex-husband Kogoro.
Comic Books
- Played straight in The Spectacular Spider Man. Of the series Three Amigos, it is Gwen Stacy who is the most observant and concerned for Harry. Of course the characters are from a very old comic book series, so this can be excused.
- Though, in the comics, the characters portrayed weren't entirely like this (Gwen especially), mostly because they had their own problems that separated them from Earth. Up until One More Day the role was held by Mary Jane Watson Parker, who had her own share of problems as well.
- Averted in Y The Last Man - after the gendercide that wipes out all but two of the male population of Earth, there are plenty of women around who act in a venal, selfish and destructive fashion towards their fellow women; of the main characters, the female characters aren't always morally superior to the male character, either. The pervasive nature of this trope is lampshaded when the male character admits that he's surprised that a female-dominated society didn't abolish war and usher in an age of peace and "standing around in circles holding hands singing 'Kumbaya'." He may have been holding a conversational Idiot Ball at the time, but on the other hand, it was Yorick, and it was a Brian K. Vaughan comic...
- Laurie of Watchmen, also the only major female character in the main cast, is often the one with the most realistic and logical perspective. She is not bogged down with extreme views of justice like Rorschach is holds a negative view on irrational behaviour, such as Jon wanting to leave humanity to die, and Dan's desire to help Rorschach in spite of his horrid behaviour.
- A truly infuriating example of this trope occurred in the Italian Paperinik comics: at one point, the creators of Paperinik decided to give him a Distaff Counterpart and thus gave Daisy Duck her own superhero identity of Paperinika. Naturally, a great deal of stories involved them working together. Unfortunately, not only did they end up constantly bickering and hating each other in their secret identities, which was annoying enough on its own, but every time they were together, Paperinik suddenly lost all competence and reverted to Jerk Ass bungling Donald Duck in a costume. Seeing as the whole point of Paperinik's creation was responding to fans complaints that Donald was always a Butt Monkey loser, the fans were not pleased at this development, leading to Italy axing Paperinika all together (though she is still used in the Brazilian comics).
Film
- Played straight with Bob and Helen Parr's reaction to forced retirement from Superhero Life in The Incredibles. To be fair Helen does not seem wholly content herself while Bob's job aggravates the situation.
- But subverted in the opening documentary footage. Bob wants to settle down, and Helen wants to keep at it.
- Though the tones of voice of the characters in that footage would suggest otherwise. Bob is upbeat while wanting things to stay saved, while Helen's tone betrays serious doubts about carrying on.
- Morris and Joanne Campbell of Mirror Mask. To quote the book version, "Dad's got his head in the clouds. Mum's got her feet on the ground."
- Also Helena and Valentine; Helena is intelligent, friendly, and mostly fair to everyone she meets. Valentine, while very likable, is rather scheming and often self-centered.
- This is shown again by the floating giant couple, whose balance keeps them in equilibrium; when they become uncoupled the female sinks into the ground while her mate helplessly floats away.
- Almost every Bollywood film has this. For example, see Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge or any Shah Rukh Khan movie.
Literature
- Michael Crichton's Disclosure is entirely built around inverting this trope, with a piggish and sexually abusive female boss as the primary antagonist.
- Played annoyingly straight in Bernard Werber's short story Un jour, il n'y aura que des femmes sur terre (One day, there will only be women on Earth), in which the protagonists sees glimpses of the future in which all men died after a nuclear explosion, and genetically engineered women who reproduce asexually go on the form a perfect society free of wars, famine, envy, living closer to Mother Nature. Never mind the fact that, in the story's present, women are just as prone, if not more so, to jealousy, bursts of rage and violence than men.
- Robert A Heinlein tends to mention that women are the superior sex, but that doesn't stop him from having evil (or stupid or otherwise not good) women.
- Animorphs: Played straight with Cassie, Averted with Rachel, and Subverted with Aldrea and Estrid.
- GK Chesterton's heroines have a tendency to be more sensible than his heroes. While they can rise to the occasion in times of crisis, they have much higher standards than his heroes for what qualifies as a crisis.
- Frankenstein, oh God, Frankenstein. The women of the novel are all beautiful, religious, intelligent, gentle, and far happier than any of the men, to the point where they border on Purity Sue.
- Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series constantly portrays women as wiser, more practical and making all the decisions, while the men are bumbling, proud and think that they make all the decisions. At least in the early books. (This troper has only read three of them so far, so please correct via edit if necessary!)
Live Action TV
- Archie and Edith Bunker in All In The Family.
- Only kinda-sorta. Edith was certainly more moral and friendly then Archie, but she was also rather airheaded. Archie was smarter, but it came down to the same with Edith ultimately being the one who put Archie in his place when he went too far.
- Tim and Jill Taylor, Home Improvement. Taken to Narm levels.
- Debra and Ray Romano, Everybody Loves Raymond. Also taken to Narm levels...and then some.
- Both played straight and completely subverted, averted, and parodied in The George Lopez Show, which has Angie often be the Closer To Earth counter to George's impulsiveness, but she is in no way always right have the best way of doing things; she may be the more sensible, but she is also overly optimistic and somewhat naive, while George lacks foresight but, while overly cynical, is more of a realist.
- Played straight both ways in The King Of Queens, where Doug is foolish and impulsive, but Carrie is somewhat immoral (or at least self serving) and brash, and, in episodes that showcase each's flaws, the other will be the Closer To Earth.
- Deputies Kimball and Johnson (Reno 911) are arguably the most competent officers on the force, having almost made actual arrests, while Williams tends toward oblivious and Weigel is a headcase. The men are also fairly incompetent, including Lieutentant Chew Toy.
- That's not saying much. Everyone is almost always ridiculously, over the top incompetent they only seem better when compared to the people they deal with. However, everyone, except maybe Weigel, gets several moments of actual intelligence.
- Subverted by Alan and Chrissie in The Sarah Jane Adventures where Alan is the morally superior one. Of course Sarah Jane Smith is more of a dependable mother figure than Chrissie and is a good mother to her own adopted son, so it's not like the show is devoid of a moral mother.
- On the Honeymooners, Ralph and Alice.
- Turk and Carla of Scrubs. Nine times out of ten, any problems that arise in their relationship are caused by Turk. On the rare occasion that Carla is the cause of the problem, she'll get her way anyway. For example, an episode where Carla learned that she had to compromise with Turk instead of making all the decisions herself ended with her getting the car she wanted anyway; that's right: in the end, Turk was the one who made the compromise.
- It's not that Turk actually causes the relationship problems, more that Scrubs runs on The Unfair Sex. The moral laws of the show seem to contain one stating that relationships are about making the female happy, without real or balanced regard for male happiness. Dr. Kelso definitely gets more from his marriage than his wife, yes, but primarily by keeping several mistresses at once and patronizing Southeast Asian whores. Dr. Cox actually leaves a happy (but new) relationship to get back together with his ex-wife when she announces that she got pregnant off of a Greek pool-boy (though it did eventually turn out the baby was in fact Dr. Cox's), though in a minor subversion Dr. Cox is portrayed as genuinely happy with this state of affairs in the later seasons.
- Never mind the many JD/Elliot Wall Bangers. In one episode, Elliot's boyfriend goes away and she decides to get with JD; her boyfriend returns and she tosses JD aside. JD is advised to "be a good friend". In another episode, JD convinces Elliot to leave this boyfriend, only for JD to realise that he doesn't love Elliot. So she physically assaults him. LOL!!
- Averted in Firefly, where Wash wins the argument against Zoe (granted, we only really saw one).
- If you're talking about "Our Mrs. Reynolds," Wash may have won the argument, but the episode ultimately proved that Zoe was correct.
- Still, a man winning an argument against a woman at all is rare enough in the contemporary TV landscape, thanks to this trope.
- Both averted and played straight in "War Stories", where each one is correct at a different point in the episode. Wash is obviously in the right when he calls Zoe on lying to him about bringing up his idea to cut out the middleman in the beginning, while he is later shown to be wrong regarding the nature of Zoe's relationship with Mal.
- Subverted on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Dee desperately believes she's closer to earth than the rest of the gang, but just like the rest of the gang, she operates somewhere between "moron" and "psychopath".
- Averted on Black Books: Fran likes to think that she's more sophisticated and superior to Bernard and Manny, but she's ultimately just as bad as Bernard (and in many ways worse); Manny's actually the nicest and most decent person of the three. This, of course, just means that the other two ruthlessly exploit him.
- Averted in Extras, where Maggie's pretty dim compared to Andy (but probably brighter than Darren). She is, however, shown to be a bit nicer, especially after Andy's let fame go to his head a bit.
- Dr. Cameron is often the voice of moral in House's medical team. However her morals are often a bit questionable.
- A better example might be Wilson, who's Closer To Earth then the often-horribly amoral House. Of course, they're not in an intimate relationship. Probably.
- Mostly subverted on Will And Grace, where Leo (and Will) are shown to be more down to earth than Grace, but near the end, when Leo has an affair during his Doctors Without Borders mission, she ends up saying no to the possibility that they may be able to work through it. While it was a pretty stupid thing he did, he was at least willing to try and fix things.
- Grace's paranoia about Leo having an affair with his pretty coworker turned out to be true, however, this doesn't make her any more of a Closer To Earth woman. In fact, it just makes her neurotic.
- Almost every relationship on That 70's Show is like this to a degree. Eric and Donna are the most obvious, while Kelso and Jackie are more a case of '"Do what I say and I'll sleep with you", as are Fez and Nina. Red and Kitty are a slight subversion, as she is shown to be far too idealistic and more easily misguided than the more cynical Red; not to mention a borderline Lady Drunk. Bob and Midge are something of an aversion, as they're both shown to be equally nuts.
- It's fairly debatably how much of an a true example any of those really are. Also, That Seventies Show features a complete inversion in the case of Jackie and Hyde, where he is the one who acts mature for both of them (and not by a long shot, either).
- It was occasionally suggested that Mrs. Foreman was sometimes faking it to fulfill her social role. "You're making it really hard to pretend I don't know what you're talking about."
- Inverted in Sugar Rush. The father is well-meaning but weak-willed and somewhat in denial about the family's dysfunction, while the mother is a self-indulgent, irresponsible adulteress.
- Averted in Pushing Daisies where both of the Official Couple are extremely nice albeit flawed people - Chuck (the woman, in case you didn't know) is a lot friendlier and eager to help people, but she can be a little self-centered, reckless and even vengeful in a way that Ned is not.
- The undead tend to not be very rational-minded.
- Inverted on Little House On The Prairie with the Olesons. Nels is an level-headed man who always does the right thing, but Harriet is petty and greedy.
- The first episode of Law And Order featuring Jack McCoy raises this trope; McCoy and Claire Kincaid are going after a female doctor who has been selling an All Natural Snake Oil Spice Rack Panacea as a breast cancer cure, with the result that a woman has died. Claire expresses reluctance to pursue the matter criminally, arguing that the doctor is still engaging in research to cure breast cancer. McCoy argues that the doctor's still conning her patients by trying to sell them what she doesn't have and putting their lives in risk, and then bluntly accuses Claire of subscribing to this trope, suggesting that if the doctor had been a man Claire would be the first and most eager person calling for the criminal case.
- Lizzie Mcguire plays it totally straight. "Calm down, Matt, we're just trying to fool dad. It's not like we're trying to fool mom!" Jo is often dorky, but is nearly always right, especially in comparison to Sam.
- However between herself and Gordo, Gordo is usually the sensible one.
- Given an interesting twist in Castle in that it's Richard's ''daughter'' Alexis that's the more grounded one while compared to his ex-wife he's a bedrock of common sense.
- Played straight and to extremes in the "Lithia" episode of 1990s remake of The Outer Limits. A male soldier awakens in the near future from cryogenic hibernation to find that men have been completely wiped out by war and that only women remain, creating an Amazonian society. The women live in relative peace and harmony with each other, but the male soldier proceeds to make trouble, including getting several women killed while trying to steal items from other villages. It turns out that every male that has be rethawed has caused similar problems for the villagers, and that the women no longer trust the male sex, meaning Mercer will be returned to cryostasis.
- The episode ends with an equally hamfisted moral from the narrator: "The differences between men and women have been debated among philosophers since recorded history began. If indeed males are, by their nature the aggressor, it is this quality that may one day be their undoing."
- In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, we only saw Buffy's father a handful of times in the early seasons, but what little we did see of him indicated he was a genuinely caring, loving father to Buffy whose marriage to Joyce simply broke down, apparently not entirely the fault of either party. In later seasons, this appeared to be retconned to make her father a heartless bastard who ran off with his secretary to Spain, who didn't care about his daughters or even about the fact that his ex-wife was dying, apparently solely because of this trope.
Theater
Webcomics
- Averted in Circumstance of the Revenant Braves
 , where Fio is generally less stable/rational than Kei. Morally, they're two different flavors at the same end of the spectrum, with Fio being more impetuous about doing good deeds while Kei is more concerned about being practical in his ethical behavior.
- Sluggy Freelance sort of fits this trope. Generally, Zoe and Gwynn are shown being nowhere near as stupid or crazy as Riff and Torg. However, Gwynn did, before getting possessed, tend to be about as reckless with her magic as Riff is with super-science, and both her and Zoe have had their Not So Above It All moments. It's more like Sluggy will have women's default state be Closer To Earth, but will have them descend into lunacy as well if it makes for a good joke.
- Eventually it turns into Zoe being the Only Sane Man among the cast, with Gwynn becoming almost as much a childish freeloader as Torg and Riff, except, in her case, she's also vain, vindictive, and, at times, manipulative, particularly in relationships, to the point that Hilarity Ensues (she gets better...).
- Alice fulfills this role in Loserz. Not only Closer To Earth than the boys, but also more so than the other girls.
Western Animation
- Marge and Homer Simpson of The Simpsons.
- The relationship between Kirk and Luane Van Houten during their divorce is an especially bad case. It's shown as all of Kirk's fault, and he ends up losing his job and in low-income housing in a couple days while she has no problem finding men to date and making a living for both her and Milhouse in a middle-class home despite previous episodes indicating she was a house wife and her stating she had to borrow money from her sister even before the divorce.
- The stress of raising eight children has worn Manjula's affection for her husband down to nothing, leading Apu to cheat on her with a fetching Squishee delivery girl. After the affair, Manjula forces her husband to perform a list of increasingly-impossible tasks to win her back (near the end of the list is "get a cartoon published in the New Yorker"). The reward is the same barren marriage that drove Apu to cheat in the first place- while Apu is punished for his philandering several times over, his wife never acknowledges for a second that her husband's emotional needs aren't being met, nor does Apu or anyone else call her on this. Later episodes in the series show this condition doesn't change: "She's this close to letting me touch her again!" Can you honestly imagine Manjula getting the same treatment if SHE cheated? See The Unfair Sex.
- Also remember, it was an arranged marriage and they first met as adults immediately beforehand. It seems odd to expect fidelity when they were never all that close anyway.
- Bart and Lisa Simpson do this too.
- This troper has noticed that on The Simpsons, whenever something is Marge's fault, it is somehow reworked to make it Homer's fault. For example, in the episode "Brake My Wife, Please," about halfway through the episode Homer realizes that Marge is trying to injure him (she hits him with the family car, spills hot soup on him, and kicks a cane on which he is leaning). They visit a psychiatrist to see how this can be solved, only to have the issue skirted and the focus put on how selfish Homer is. Am I the only one this bothers? Homer's selfishness may be a problem, but it's not the issue at hand here.
- Actually, it is; the only reason Marge was doing that was out of her subconscious thinking that Homer was a godawful husband and wanting to punish him for it. If I remember rightly, Marge herself doesn't even realise she's doing it either. I'm not denying that the trope applies, but there are better example - that "That 90's Show", where despite Homer making it possible for Marge to even go to college, she breaks up with him because she spends all her time with an attractive professor of hers.
- That 90's Show didn't present things as being Homer's fault at all, the flashback ended with Marge realizing Homer had loved her all along and coming back to him. Homer was portrayed more positively than Marge was.
- Another thing that is often glossed over is that Homer is incredibly faithful to Marge. He was driven to tears when he thought that fate was conspiring to make him cheat with an co-worker who seemed like his perfect match, and never once thought about having an affair with the attractive country singer he was managing. Contrast this with Marge, who gets extremely jealous extremely quickly.
- The trope gets taken to its logical extreme in the episode "Lisa The Simpson", where Lisa discovers that the Simpson males are genetically determined to lose their intelligence as they age, eventually becoming idiotic man-children with menial jobs. Of course, this doesn't affect the female Simpsons, who are all incredibly smart and successful. This is presented as a happy ending; Bart is understandably worried about his future, but no-one cares about him!
- Lois and Peter Griffin in Family Guy.
- This is somewhat subverted in that Lois is far from perfect herself, often giving into temptations such as theft and lust. While she always outshines Peter, she is often outshone by their intellectual and compassionate dog, Brian. Of course, even Brian has a number of character flaws like alcoholism and angry outbursts.
- An intellectual living with those clods would have probably moved up to mainlining heroin. Booze is pretty mild.
- Cocaine, and he did. Though his addiction was accidental and unrelated to that.
- Totally inverted in King Of The Hill. Hank is down-to-earth and grounded (even to the point of being a wet blanket). Peggy is crazy and out there. She perceives the situation... differently.
- The Flintstones: Fred and Wilma and to a lesser degree Barney and Betty.
- Cosmo and Wanda in The Fairly Odd Parents.
- Also, earlier in the series, Timmy to Cosmo and Wanda (who shared the Idiot Ball)
- To a lesser extent, Timmy's parents. Sure, they're both nuts, but his dad's considerably more nuts.
- Drawn Together' is an odd case, both Toot and Clara are often portrayed as just as bad, if not worse than the males in the house. Foxxy Love, however (although she's certainly no saint) has been described as the only one "not totally retarded" and is generally the most caring, responsible, and motivated person on the show. She's also black, so it's probably another form of Positive Discrimination.
- Played straight and subverted with Maddie from Danny Phantom. While she definitely plays a better parental figure then Jack, she will be just as obsessed and out-of-focus as her husband if a ghost catches her attention. With a series about ghosts, this happens quite frequently.
- Even in that case, she's much more competent and rational in her ghost hunting, and tends to avoid seeing ghosts where there are none and overreacting, like Jack does.
- Though Jimmy is smarter than both of them, Hugh Neutron is definitely the stupid one in the family.
- Played with in American Dad. While Stan is no doubt much more out of touch and outright insane than his wife, considering some of the things Francine's tried to do, she's Closer To Earth the same way Mars is "Closer To Earth" than Neptune is.
Video Games
Real Life
- A real life example is GK Chesterton and his wife Frances. She managed all the practical details in their lives, while for all of Gilbert's intelligence and wit, often forgot where his appointments were and did most of his writing in depots because he missed his train. In one notable incident he sent her the following telegram: "Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" She replied: "Home."
- This Troper works from home as a writer. His head has been in the clouds his whole life, whereas his wife is a down-to-earth accountant. She manages the money, pays the bills, and often reminds him that he's nearly forgotten to leave the house wearing pants again. He's had friends tell him that were it not for the woman, he would likely forget his own head in the morning. This would seem to apply.
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