An enclave of female fans within a traditionally male-dominated fandom. They tend to focus on a particular character or actor, rather than the entire series. Occasionally both sides butt heads over largely superficial reasons, with buckets of opposite-sex awkwardness, which can get defensive. It should also be noted that not all female fans within such a fandom are necessarily of the Estrogen Brigade.
Unfortunately, it is because of this phenomenon that female fans are sometimes regarded with suspicion — especially if she admits that she does, in fact, happen to find some of the male cast members to be physically pleasing to the eye. However, finding certain members of the cast to be pleasing to look at does not necessarily preclude a fan from liking other aspects of a particular work — and, thus, should not automatically invalidate her (or him) as being a "true fan".
An Estrogen Brigade is easily attracted by hints of Ho Yay, since most members of such brigades seem to be Yaoi Fangirls at heart. See also Multiple Demographic Appeal.
Not to be confused with Amazon Brigade. Testosterone Brigades don't really happen quite as often, but they do exist.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Code Geass. Many female fans are there for Ho Yay and bishies. And there's no shortage of either.
Yu-Gi-Oh! has one of these, as do its later spinoffs.
The enormous amounts of fangirls virtually every character in Naruto has, principally with the very bishonen characters like Sasuke, Naruto, and Neji (but even Rock Lee isn't without his fans).
Berserk is set in an ultra violent universe where being female is an even worse fate then just being born in it but the deep storyline and compelling characters have universal appeal. That and the fact that Guts and Griffith get naked almost as often as the ladies and have a rather intenserelationship.
ToshiroHitsugaya of Bleach has such a huge one that he even got his own movie; it's probably a major reason why he ranked the highest in a recent character poll.
To a slightly lesser extent, Cuarta Espada UlquiorraCifer made it to the top 10 of that poll.
ByakuyaKuchiki ranked ''7th' in the latest popularity poll.
Before Grimmjow and Ulquiorra showed up, RenjiAbarai ranked as either 3rd or 4th in the polls he was in, while Gin Ichimaru consistently made it as the 5th.
Just rivaling Grimmjow and Ulquiorra is Coyote Starrk, who gets points for being The Woobie and a Non-Malicious Monster, compared to the rest of his Espada colleagues.
Amongst all of the Fraccion, the one with the most fangirls happens to be the extremely effeminate, but ridiculously attractive-sounding Ggio Vega, a clear-cut Bishōnen that wants to be The Tease.
Swords can have their own fandoms; for every Hitsugaya, Byakuya and Hisagi fangirl, there's one for Hyorinmaru (an older-looking Hitsugaya), Senbonzakura (gets a shot of his wet body on the mens' bath) and Kazeshini (a demonic-looking Badass with Kissho Taniyama providing his voice), despite the latter looking like a demonic, black-skinned Xenomorph . Hell, there's even an Estrogen Brigade for Muramasa, an Expy of Ulquiorra, Shuren, an effeminate Smug Snake, and Kokuto, a Complete Monster that really enjoyed pissing Ichigo off. Let's face it, Bleach is filled to the absolute brim with Mr. Fanservice.
These have been known to crop up in the fandoms of various supposedly seinen series that feature attractive, completely badass male leads; even Onizuka-sensei isn't without a cluster of devoted fangirls.
Back when the show was airing on Toonami, Dragon Ball Z gathered up an Estrogen Brigade larger than the rest of the North American fanbase.
Though Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is a Shōnen, it's safe to say that many of its fans are actually Yaoi Fangirls. Surprisingly there is actually a lot less headbutting, since any male fans tend to avoid most of the online forums or have their voices drowned out amongst the Squee.
Not necessarily true, it has quite a lot of male fans too if you know where to look (hint: NOT livejournal and fanfiction.net).
There's also an in-show Estrogen Brigade for each and every male character, as well as an IRL one.
D. Gray-Man is technically shonen, but with the sheer quantity of bishonen and Estrogen Brigade Bait like Allen, Kanda, Tyki, and Lavi, it's no wonder it tends to have a lot of female fans. But then, it is written by a woman, so maybe it's just Author Appeal lining up with the wishes of the fangirl masses.
Sailor Moon gives us a rare example of a Testosterone Brigade; While it is primarily a shojo anime, it actually has quite a bit of a male following as well, with all the Sailor Senshi being really hot, kickassAction Girls. There is a Testosterone Brigade for approximately all ten of the female leads.
Most of the CLAMP fandom. It helps that CLAMP is basically one themselves.
Saint Seiya maybe is the manga and anime which Clamp drew the doujin as their debut, this series being created by Kurumada guaranteed many bishonen to satisfy fangirls' eyes especially Yaoi Fangirl with it's infamous Libra Temple's scene between Shun and Hyoga. Added that most of the male characters are more attractive than the females. And in sanctuary arc Saga was taking a loooooooong bath time, no wonder there is so many bath scene fanart of him. All of these make one think if this series really created for boys, because there is only one Shower Scene for girl which not all fans even the male one even remember it.
Thanks to estrogen-brigade drawing efforts of Kotetsu, Barnaby, and Keith, many fans of Tiger & Bunny started to suspect that it was specifically geared towards women and Yaoi Fangirls despite statements to the contrary*
Kotetsu, for example, was written to draw in older men
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Comic Books
The Green Lantern Corps has a surprisingly strong following in the Feminist Comics Blogosphere, only in part because of the franchise's 50-year tradition of spandex-clad butt shots. Hal is "endearingly sexist", John is "the serious one", Guy is the "gruff den mother", Kyle is The Woobie, and Alan is the sexy older guy, and, Great Galaxies, I think I'm about to make a Five-Man Band entry about the GLC.
Deadpool has had an estrogen brigade of fun, quirky, female geeks for a few years now, mostly because they get a kick out of his Black Comedy sense of humor. Now he's getting a more traditional estrogen brigade, since he's being portrayed by Ryan Reynolds.
The female Batman fandom is still very small, but type any combination of male characters into the search bar on deviantART some time, if you dare. With all the Foe Yay, the fact Bruce Wayne is generally depicted as a rather handsome fellow, ass-kicking female characters, Nightwing, and a huge cast of interesting villains, many of whom are just begging for Draco in Leather Pants treatment... it's sort of a wonder the Estrogen Brigade for Batman isn't bigger.
At least one "estrogen brigade" site for Darth Maul that was done mostly tongue-in-cheek, and it was brilliant.
Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke, and Anakin can also be considered this
Let's just say all males except Palpatine and Dooku. Wedge has one in the Star Wars Expanded Universe; in one of the comics it's mentioned that he gets marriage proposals in the mail.
Pictured is the cover to a FoxTrot collection, showing how a good portion of Lord of the Rings viewers were fangirls oogling Orlando Bloom (many others differed chiefly in that they preferred Viggo Mortensen).
Then there was the embarrassing fawning over an extra that female fans christened "Figwit."
The "mud wrestling" fight in Thor does a lot for the ladies in the audience, I'm told.
Thor has fans, but Loki's (and by extension, Tom Hiddleston's) Estrogen Brigade is incredibly vocal and devoted. They call themselves "Hiddlestoners." You can read a (very profane) Affectionate Parody of their behavior here.
The movie also comes with Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, and a scene with a half-naked injured!Stephen moaning in a way that sounds a tad erotic. While Jack's hands press down on his naked abdomen.
Stephen's LOVE INTEREST even says to him that "anyone would think you were married to that man"!
While perhaps falling short of this trope, Terry Pratchett says in The Art of Discworld that Greebo (yep, that Greebo) garnered a lot of female fans after his first appearance in human form.
He also says of Vetinari "I hear he has his own, all-female, fan club." (The "Sisters of Vetinari").
Les Misérables' Amis de l'ABC: A group of 9 young revolutionaries, some of whom are very close, results in a pretty much all-female fandom. While there is a preference for Enjolras, fangirls often write slash involving any pairings of these.
Hell, an almost entirely male cast of charecters pretty much guaruntees fangirls will find someone to Squee about!
In the first volume of Ivanhoe, the narrator spends a lot of time repeatedly pointing out how much the ladies enjoy tournaments and matches between knights even more enthusiastically than many men. Lampshade Hanging or just Genre Savvy?
Live Action TV
The David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade (The X-Files) and the Peter Davison, Paul McGann, and David Tennant Estrogen Brigades (Doctor Who) are two (four?) of the most famous examples. The episode "The Shakespeare Code" even had the eponymous playwright joining the Tennant Brigade.
It got to the point where there was a one-hit wonder by Bree Sharp called "David Duchovny, Why Won't You Love Me?"
There was a Sylvester McCoy Estrogen Brigade on rec.arts.drwho.
Christopher Eccleston still has his own, slightly more mature, college-age, following. This might seem odd, considering he only got one season, but consider that Paul McGann only had one TV movie, yet still got a Brigade.
Jamie Bamber, most recently of Battlestar Galactica fame, has a posse of girl fans known in the community as "The Bamber Bunnies", and yet people still misspell his name as "Barber".
Not mentioning, of course, "Baltar's Nymph Brigade." Note that by the final season, he had gained an in-show, religiously fanatical Estrogen Brigade derided as a "nymph-squad" by the President.
And "Trucco's Troops".
The Colbert Report, being primarily political satire, has more or less equal gender appeal — but Colbert's personal Estrogen Brigade has to be seen to be believed. There are threads on the show's official forum dedicated solely to collecting pictures of his fingers.
Jon Stewart gets some too, usually in response to the latest episode where he rips some douchebag a new one.
The Marcus Cole Estrogen Brigade, honouring the Ranger from Babylon 5, is still in existence. It doesn't talk about Marcus very much any more, but it has a distinctive voice and staying power.
Vincent D'Onofrio has acquired a brigade based on his work in Law and Order: Criminal Intent, though his recent weight gain seems to have caused a lot of internal friction among them.
The beard has also led to raised eyebrows.
One of the earliest Estrogen Brigades was David McCallum's, which sprang to life when the 60s spy series The Man From UNCLE introduced us to minor character Illya Kuryakin. Kuryakin almost immediately caught the attention of (mostly) female fans, and McCallum went from mere Recurring Character to series regular to second billing (behind series lead Robert Vaughn) in the first season alone. By the second season, McCallum shared equal billing with Vaughn.
All three presenters on Top Gear (Clarkson sometimes jokes about Hammond being on the show solely to attract female viewers). And The Stig. And producer Andy Wilman. And James May's blue-patterned flowery shirt...
The Magnificent Seven has seven of these, one for each character. They are: Larabee's Ladies, Buck's Babes, Vin's Vixens, Josiah's Jezebels, Nathan's Nightingales, Dunne's Darlins, and (the only non-alliterative one) Ezra's Brigadears.
Angel and Wesley have the biggest Brigades from Angel.
The men from Mystery Science Theater 3000 all seem to have their own little pockets of fangirls if one puts enough effort into finding them (i.e.: head onto deviantART or LiveJournal, for starters). Joel, Mike, Forrester, Frank... even Torgo has his fangirls.
And if you look on youtube, you will find that Crow and Tom both have their fair share of fangirls too. Despite (or because?) being robots.
Iron Chef, particularly in the later years. Sakai, Chen, Kobe, and Morimoto all have their fangirls. Kaga's got some as well, naturally, but surprisingly there are quite a few for the announcer, Kenji Fukui.
Its successor, Iron Chef America is the same way.
Methos of Highlander: The Series had/has a Boxer Brigade, due to his appearing in his underwear in an episode.
On account of Perlman rarely giving interviews and being a virtual nobody at the time. Most viewers didn't even know what he looked like out of makeup and the Brigade was therefore based on sheer romanticism.
"The Giddies", a group of female The Goodies fans, described in The Clue Bible as having a shared interest in the shortness of Graeme's shorts in "Scoutrageous".
Conan's HCPN (Hot Coco Picture Night) Wenches. Go to the Team Coco Facebook page on a Sunday night to witness lots of R-rated drooling over photos of him.
Music
The Beatles, especially compared to their indie years.
Kate Bush is one of the few female singers to have a very large Testosterone Brigade among her fanbase.
Female fronted symphonic metal bands such as Nightwish, Epica and After Forever also have sizable Testosterone Brigades.
Most men in symphonic metal bands tend to have rugged looks and long-flowing hair. Is it a stretch to think that the looks of the other members besides the hot female lead matter too?
Professional Wrestling
Tends to be rather obvious in Professional Wrestling, and tend to have their own favorites apart from the rest of the crowd. Ever notice how the cheers for a Jeff Hardy, or a Randy Orton, or especially John Cena are much higher-pitched than the cheers for any other wrestler? Especially when Jeff takes off his shirt...
Randy, to be fair, makes all his matches overflow with Ho Yay. He has a rather... "intense" battle stare, no?
This can certainly be traced back to Ricky Morton of the Rock 'n' Roll Express, who was one of the first wrestlers to be continually beat up to appeal to the mothering instincts of female fans.
"Clique"-era Shawn Michaels was blatantly marketed at female fans, to the point of doing a spread in Playgirl. Of course, the result was the male fans turning against him in a way that makes the current reaction to John Cena seem positively tame, culminating in Madison Square Garden rabidly cheering Sid of all wrestlers at Survivor Series 1996. In the pre-Attitude era, that type of fan revolt was shocking.
Many male fans take great pleasure in the stunned reaction of a female fan in the front row of that match when Sid pins Michaels clean in the middle as MSG erupts in cheers.
This seems to happen to any wrestler that has tha many fangirls. They usually get a lot of hate from the male fans.
Sports
Formula One. No, seriously. Ask a girl why she's watching it, most likely she'll say for the pretty boys.
Rugby — the most commonly cited reason from female fans as to why they like rugby is "Johnny Wilkinson's legs! Phwoar".
A few soccer players. Helps that the players usually exchange shirts at the end of a game. In the 70s and 80s, the size of the shorts was also prime Estrogen Brigade Bait.
Roger from RENT definitely has one! As does Mark to a lesser extent.
The title character of The Phantom of the Opera has a pretty large one, resulting in an almost all-female fandom. And if you don't like Erik, there's always Raoul...
Video Games
Tomb Raider has the "Kurtis Trent Estrogen Brigade". Larson's getting pretty popular as well.
Raziel from Legacy of Kain has this, despite lacking a lower jaw.
well, every single male character in Legacy of Kain.
The vast majority of Star Control II fans are male, but the FrungyLoversLiveJournal community is almost 100 percent female, and was 100 percent female until recently. Several of them are Admiral ZEX fangirls (unsurprising if you've played the games, but if you think it's only because of the Ho Yay, you have no idea). They like to call themselves Deviant Schoolgirls On Speed, thanks to a colorful description of them made by a poster on a more... 'conservative' forum.
This is even referenced in Twilight Princess. If the player finishes the STAR minigame in Hyrule Castle Town, a group of girls will squee and run away every time Link goes by. You get a couple of free hearts from the pure power of estrogen left in their wake.
Metal Gear's Solid Snake and Big Boss have very devoted fangirls. Snake's ass and Big Boss's crotch and chest are all very well rendered. Coincidence?
A subgroup could take or leave the Snakes themselves, as long as they can keep his English voice-actor.
After the players were introduced to their younger selves, both Ocelot and Roy Campbell have been gathering fangirls rapidly.
The Ace Attorney fandom is extremely... vocal about prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. The "Edgey Fan Base" on the biggest fansite's forum takes up literally more than half the posts in the section about Edgeworth's game in the series.
Apollo gathers fangirls too, especially from the more disturbing fan sections.
Godot/ Diego Armando has a smaller but vehemently loyal fangirlbase. Even though (and sometimes because of) his relationship with Mia Fey.
The Arbiter and possibly Sangheili/Elitesas a whole, have their own Estrogen Brigade. Not to mention of course, the ''MasterChief.'' Despite how hard it is to find a Halo fangirl (not just a casual player, but a straight-up fangirl) they are out there.
Sengoku Basara all the way. If the hot, predominantly male cast isn't enough to satisfy you, then the ridiculous amounts of Ho Yay and/or Foe Yay will.
Professor Layton's Future Luke/ Clive is definitely the character that generates the most fangirls out of the series.
Ben 10 and its sequel are both aimed at preteen boys, but the shows have garnered a fair amount of teenage-and-up female fans. Some of them enjoy the show as an entity, but others just watch it for one of the male characters (or for the Shipping...). Kevin is the most popular (particularly when he grows up), but some girls prefer Grandpa Max.
Perhaps to answer this question one should partake in a bit of a drinking game. Whenever you see a male character on Avatar lack a shirt take one shot. If you can see their chest but they still have their clothes on, take half a shot. There is your answer.
Don't go through with this drinking game. Your liver will die before you're halfway through the episode.
Transformers has always been aimed at boys, with female characters in the franchise few and far-between. Despite this, the series has a female fanbase — which is commonly portrayed in the fandom as being full of fangirls who ship Megatron/Starscream.
Starscream in general seems to be fangirl bait, no matter the continuity. Nobody's really sure why.
Dragon Booster was also aimed at boys, with only a smattering of female characters. The message board which provided the nexus point for most of the fandom, however, has a substantial female population.
Parodied in the episode "The Ring", where they point out that most girls for the Jonas Brothers (or any boy band for that matter) just go to their concerts to look at them rather than listening to their music.
In King Arthur's Disasters, Lancelot has his own little cult of ladies following him around in "The Yodeling Dolphin of Kirkwall" and "Mission: Implausible." Hell, some gaurds were hired in one episode to drive 'em away.
Random girl takes a lock of Lancelot's hair Random Girl: I'VE GOT SOME OF HIS HAIR!!!!!!
Danny Phantom apparently has a huge college age female following. A lot of that has to do with Vlad and Dark Danny.
In an inversion, what male fans exist of the Disney's Tinkerbell movies tend to be a Testosterone Brigade, as there is a surprising amount of Fanservice in the films.
Camille Desmoulins also qualifies in a slightly cuter, revolutionary-next-door way. Shouting love letters to his wife while he was being led to the guillotine? Awwwwwwww!
Vic Mignogna, arguably. Originally famous for his English voice-acting of Edward Elric, not something originally aimed at preteen girls, Mignogna has an enormous fandom that may or may not be for anything other than his looks (he's not bad for a guy in his forties, which may add to to Squick factor of twelve-year-olds loving him) and voice.
Arguably nothing. It definitely helps that the majority of characters he voices are Bishonen. His fans call themselves the Resembol Rangers, btw.
Barack Obama, his chief of staff, and for that matter most of his administration. Yes, it's true.
At least two entries in thisCracked Photoshop Contest.
