In the event of a
Gender Bender or
Gender Flip, it makes sense that a newly made "girl" would have a more female body, rather than being just as muscular, but with boobs, of course, and vice versa for the rarer "boys". It is common for the woman to have blond hair and fair skin, even if the man had dark hair and skin. This is to an extent Truth in Television, because women generally do have lighter pigmentation than men because, during pregnancy, lighter skin and hair cause the absorption of vitamins from the sun's rays.
Older than Dirt, because
ancient Egyptian and Minoan artists
◊ drew men with dark skin and women with light skin to distinguish the two.
This can also
coincide with the woman having a "lighter" alignment, as in more feminine, less aggressive and gentler than the male version; however this trope just refers to skin and hair pigment. See also
Gendered Outfit. For animal and nonhuman examples, see
Pale Females, Dark Males.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Ranma in Ranma ½ normally has black hair and darker skin than "Ranko", who has red hair in the anime, and has had a variety of different hair colors, usually not black, in the colored covers of the manga.
- Futaba in Futaba-kun Change! has green hair when female and black hair when male.
- Inverted by his sister Futana, who has black hair when female and blond hair when male, and averted by Misaki who has the same hair color regardless of gender.
- In One Piece, Emporio Ivankov turns a prince into a woman for trying to kill him with a cannonball. In the anime, his transformation comes with an obligatory skin bleaching.
- This is a unique case in One Piece. The transformees normally keep their hair color and style.
- In Birdy the Mighty, Tsumotu has black hair and darker skin than Birdy, who has half white and half red hair.
- In Pretty Face, when Randoh gains a girl's face, his hair also turns blond because of the burns he received.
Comic Books
Film
Live Action TV
- True in all versions of the show Lalola. At least the lighter skin part.
Video Games
- Street Fighter has Cammy, who is an Opposite-Sex Clone of Bison, but has blond hair, blue eyes and white skin, and really looks nothing like him. Also, Cammy is a good gal, unlike Bison.
- Kunimitsu◊ in Tekken has red hair, Yoshimitsu◊ has brown hair.
- Samus, despite originally having brown hair, now has blond hair.
- In Metal Gear Solid, many Action Girl characters are blond, like The Boss, Sniper Wolf and African-American Fortune, while the Action Heroes are often brunet.
Webcomics
- The Wotch has red-haired "Sonja" when Jason is genderbent, but other characters, like Robin, keep their original hair color.
- In The Order of the Stick, this trope is "anti-subverted", because Roy, when genderbent, actually has the same bald head, but ends up wearing a wig that makes him look blond most of the time he is female.
- Recently in El Goonish Shive, Elliot's female forms aren't just "his body, but female", but are instead completely different people. The Party Girl form has lighter hair than Elliot.
◊ drew men with dark skin and women with light skin to distinguish the two.
This can also coincide with the woman having a "lighter" alignment, as in more feminine, less aggressive and gentler than the male version; however this trope just refers to skin and hair pigment. See also Gendered Outfit. For animal and nonhuman examples, see Pale Females, Dark Males.
