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alt title(s): Flat Chested Girl; Small Breasts Big Deal; Petankko 
A flat chest is a STATUS symbol! Extremely rare and VALUABLE!
"Well, excuse us for being flat!"
The pettanko is a Flat Character. Literally.
Note that flat-chestedness alone doesn't make one a Pettanko, but rather the associated worries and personality that come with being keenly aware of it, especially compared to girls of more typical sizes around her. A Pettanko should bring to mind a childish cuteness and innocence. This might actually bother her if she is already considered childish and prone to tantrums, so the sore spot becomes endearing. Occasionally, she is proud of that flat chest as a way to appeal to a certain demographic of guys, although real fans in practice make a distinction between one and actual examples of Lolicon. Or, for that matter, Ho Yay. Nonetheless, it is very useful in creating a character who looks younger while not actually being so.
Also known as "Delicious Flat Chest", or DFC, a term apparently coined by Image Boards (AKA Hell).
Contrast, obviously, Most Common Superpower and Gag Boobs. In Real Life, can lead to Big Bra To Fill.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
Art
Comic Books
Film
- Kitten Braden, the protagonist of Breakfast On Pluto, although she prefers to call herself a "svelte gamine," as she indignantly informs the peep show customer who complains about her lack of endowment. Although in Kitten's case, this is only to be expected, since she's biologically male and not on any sort of hormone therapy.
- The title character in Gidget.
- Lara Flynn Boyle, in Men In Black II, had to go through a process where they rolled what little body fat she had up to give her a bosom. Yeah. Of course, considering the other chick in the movie, kinda seems pointless
- The perfect rationale for why many women prefer to have smaller boobs came in Some Like It Hot. Sugar remarked that she admired "Daphne"'s flat-chested appearance — "Clothes hang better on you."
Literature
- Princess Mia's biggest insecurity about her appearance is her extreme lack of a chest - it was pointed out several times by Lana that she doesn't even need a training bra.
- Based On A True Story, Catalina, the teenaged protagonist of the Colombian novel, later international franchise "Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso" is a dark play on this trope. Catalina's real reason for wanting a bigger chest is to catch a rich boyfriend who'll buy her luxuries and get her out of her poor neighborhood, like the ones her bustier friends have. The catch is that those "rich boyfriends" are drug dealers and traffickers. She tries to approach that "rich world" by becoming a prostitute, but her beginnings are harder because most of her potential clients prefer chicks with "more meat". She eventually gets a bust augmentation from a Back Alley Doctor and marries a minor boss of a Cartel, but she's still under her pettanko complex, by that point she has lost her True Love and any chance of escape, and eventually the brutal reality of the shady world she has gotten into hits her hard. When she is forced to reverse her boob job in a Life Or Limb Decision, it's become the last straw for her, so she arranges a Suicide by Hitman to end her suffering. Anvilicious much?
- Magrat Garlick has been described several times as being a physical match for an ironing board with two peas on top of it. Although being flat is not her defining characteristic in terms of attractiveness (the author also makes note of hair which refuses to cooperate) she certainly does seem to be very self-conscious of it.
- Now imagine how she must have felt in Wyrd Sisters when, having stuffed her bra among other preparations, she takes a quick survey of her assets upon encountering Verence and finds that her stuffing has descended approximately to her waist.
- In the animated Wyrd Sisters, Magrat fits neither qualification-her breasts are roughly B-cups and her hair is long and straight. In deference to Pratchett's constant descriptions which paint her as less than ideal if looks are your thing, the animators gave her a big nose. Also she has a rather dull voice not given to expressing emotion, although this has little if anything to do with physical appearance at all.
- Also from Discworld, Monstrous Regiment opens with Polly Perks being annoyed that, when doing a Sweet Polly Oliver, she didn't need to bind her breasts.
- Lisbeth Salander in the first book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium series. Because of her flat chest and the fact that she's short and skinny, she is often mistaken for a 14 year-old. Her legal guardian even uses this fact to his advantage when he drugs and rapes her. He claims no one will believe he raped her since her small cup-size means she's not a turn-on (yeah, he's a jerk). In the second book though Lisbeth has gotten breast implants.
- The Doctor's companion (later ex-companion and Adventurer Archaeologist) Bernice "Benny" Summerfield from the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novels. One could probably draw quite a few conclusions about certain members of the writing staff by counting up the number of times per book some of them have felt the need to mention her legendarily petite rack.
- Bennie's creator, Paul Cornell, had a character describe her (in dialogue) as having "no tits".
- Trix MacMillan, from the Eighth Doctor Adventures, is a less-prominent example, so to speak. Her breasts aren't big enough for her to have what you'd call cleavage. This only seems to bother her when she's feeling especially self-conscious, though. Also, she has some kind of sex-work-ish career in her Backstory, although that isn't necessarily saying a lot, at least in Real Life, and she manages to look glamorous and another character actually has nice things to say about her rack... but he Really Gets Around and has a 6'6" ex-girlfriend, so maybe he's not all that picky.
- Jame in P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath is flat-chested and self-conscious about it. She's flat to the point of being mistaken for a boy all the time (being rather tomboyish doesn't help, of course). The master thief she's apprenticed to in the first book thinks she's a boy the whole time, even when she strips to the waist in front of him. After that, she gives up trying to tell him otherwise; granted, he's eccentric and has bad eyesight, but still. She also doesn't ever understand the crushes other characters have on her, convinced that there's nothing worth looking at in her. (One suspects she's rather blind to what she does have...)
- In the fourth book of The Belgariad, Castle of Wizardry Princess Ce'Nedra has a suit of armor made for herself, and makes a point of trying to get a Breast Plate much larger than her actual chest. he settles for one just breasty enough that she won't be mistaken for a boy in armor.
Live Action TV
Theater
- Parodied in the stage play Psycho Beach Party, where the main character laments her figure to the audience while topless ("It's like I have the body of a boy!")... and while played by a boy.
- (In)famously, Val in A Chorus Line, who never grew the womanly attributes necessary for Broadway success, so she went to a plastic surgeon and got them installed.
Video Games
Web Comics
- Missi Fuller from Misfile is by far the flattest member of the cast and frequently complains about it. (though she may be the only character to fit this description to have nipple rings). This culminated in an amusing fantasy sequence where she imagines what she'd do if she was built like Ash
 .
- Blossom from Rhapsodies
- Secret from Keychain of Creation displays elements of this, particularly around Marena.
- The now-defunct adult furry webcomic Shayla the Pink Mouse. For Shayla, it was both the size and the number of breasts other (anthro) women had compared to her.
- In Peter Is The Wolf we meet Cherry, a Chinese-American Were-Raccoon-Dog (don't you dare call her a Tanuki!) of modest proportions in human form who is inordinatly proud of the D-cups she sports in were-form... until she sees the were-forms of Sarah the Werewolf and Ashley the Were-Vixen.
- Sarah herself, in her human form, isn't exactly big either, thought it seems to vary from page to page.
- In the web comic Magnificent Milkmaid, one villain (JuGGGz) fought early on starts out like this. Made fun of by everyone else, rejected by a boy she has a crush on, incredibly insecure. The series bible outright says that, in her mind, breast size determines a "woman's worth" and she despises being puny. So naturally she gets help from a mad scientist to grow breasts bigger than her entire torso and then some which she can make larger still, at will. Brutally, cruely subverting Bigger Is Better, her supervillain career is brought to a close when the boy she had a crush on actually laughs at her new physique, and calls her "grossly oversized". As if that weren't enough to crush her hubris, she tries later to take down another villain, a lesbian teen vampire (don't ask) and is handily overpowered and sexually humiliated in public.
- In her sometimes semi-autobiographical webcomic "The Fart Party" the author/artist Julia Werz tells of the day in the 7th grade when a cute guy that she had a crush on sat next to her in the lunch room and out of the blue asked her what her bra size was. She was so surprised that she immediately blurted out "32AA" without thinking and was known as "Tiny Tits" for the rest of the school year. [1]
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, the booby fairy skipped both Lily Turner (Wallflower) and Jadis Diabolik (She-Beast) when it was handing out the Most Common Superpower.
- Also, played with in the Ayla stories, where Ayla helps one person at powers testing get implants to fix this, and get the guy she likes. When one of her own
relatives close friends wants Gag Boobs to become a stripper... Ayla rejects that whole-heartedly.
- Jade Sinclair (Generator) is closer to the flat girl who worries about her lack of size and maintains that childishness too. In fact, she still looks like she's about eleven.
- Yuko from Johnny Wander (both in comic and in real-life).
Western Animation
- As mentioned above, WITCH has Wilhelmina "Will" Vandom a boyish looking redhead who is openly displeased with her chest's small size, and Hay Lin a pretty, popular but vain and stupid girl who has similar concerns about her undersized breasts. They grow up (and how) in Guardian form, pumped up to about D-cups, and much happier for it. Will is especially prideful about her buxom Guardian body.
- Jinx and Terra, Anti villainesses on Teen Titans, are outright Pettankos pure and simple. Neither have any visible bustline at all, and virtually no hips either for that matter, and Jinx's reaction to the more buxom Raven is particularly spiteful. Starfire, however, is not so immature about it but is definitely the flattest main character, coming in at maybe an A-cup. This is in stark contrast to her comic counterpart who is hugely well endowed. In the comics, Terra's Pettanko status is much more obvious and she's more resentful of it, making jokes at Starfire's expense and coming off as genuinely envious.
- Sharon Spitz, the title character of Braceface, is constantly and excessively insecure about her chest, being completely flat-chested. So much so in fact that she tried on one episode to increase her breast size with a pneumatic pump... her breasts literally explode.
- This is one of the reasons that the daughter on American Dad is such a bitch, as she's apparently bitter about not "filling out" the way she wanted. One episode had a flashback to her early teens when she angrily screams at her parents "What do you mean they won't get any bigger?!" and then torches the house in anger. Now that is Pettanko friends.
- A throwaway line hints that Angelica is this on Rugrats: All Grown Up. Apparently she's a little bitter that her bra-stuffing campaign didn't turn out the guys like she wanted... considering she practically has no breasts when she stuffs her bra, one wonders if her chest is concave without it.
- Despite not being particularly flat-chested (like, at all) Jen on 6Teen is this, especially around her sister. She went as far as to try flashing some guys to get attention.
- Candace and Stacy from Phineas And Ferb have literally flat chests despite being sixteen. In contrast to this Vanessa Doofenshmirtz is the same age and curvy. But, of course, because this is a Disney series neither Candace nor Stacy show any insecurity about their chest size.
Real Life
- Shakira. She points it out in one of her songs: "Lucky my breasts are small and humble, so you don't confuse them with mountains." It sounds better than it looks written down. The song's called 'Whenever, Wherever'.
- Keira Knightley. In Pirates Of The Caribbean, her chest was made up to create the illusion of cleavage.
- Natalie Portman. For a while between Attack of the Clones and Curse of the Black Pearl, she was every geek's dream. Apparently, nice abs counted more than cup size...
- Of course, to be fair, compared to Keira Knightley, she's Mia-friggin'-Tyler.
- Nicole Kidman, particularly in her first films.
- Thandie Newton.
- Okay, maybe I'm thinking of someone else, cause I seem to recall her having a fairly large bust.
- The bulk of supermodels through The Sixties and The Nineties. The perceived attractiveness of this is apparently a Cyclic Trope. Like Twiggy, Milla Jovovich(until her pregnancy), or Kate Moss.
- Well, also due to the fact all fashion designers like dudes...
- P. J. Harvey.
- Pam Dawber (Y'know, Mindy.)
- Director Billy Wilder said of Audrey Hepburn, "This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past."
- Alexa Hamilton.
- So popular in The Roaring Twenties there were underwear produced to flatten the chest. The "washboard" look was meant to stick it to the man in the early days of feminism, the same as wearing too much makeup and cussing was. In other words, it was all about projecting an un-ladylike image.
- Though everything else about Paris Hilton may be fake, she insists that she will never get a boob job because she likes her "tiny chest" and thinks it looks better in the couture designs she wears constantly.
- Gigi Edgley (Chiana on Farscape) is quite small-breasted, though you perhaps wouldn't think so to look at her in costume. In an interview with TV Guide, she recounted telling her family that the Chiana makeup took ninety minutes to apply, leading her father to joke "Oh, so they spend half an hour on your face and an hour on your breasts?"
- Jane Birkin is a combination of that and a Hot Shounen GRANDMA.
- Reeeeally weird RL inversion: Australia bans graphic depiction of too small breasts.
TV Tropes
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