Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
|
Inside my heart is breaking
My makeup may be flaking,
But my smile still stays on...
— Queen, "The Show Must Go On
"I'm smiling right now...right?"
Everyone loves Purity Sue. They can't help it! She's practically perfect in every way. The Stepford Smiler is much like Purity Sue; she's bright, chipper, and is an all-around pleasant person to be around.
It's all a lie, of course.
The Stepford Smiler is obsessed with projecting an image of wholesome happiness in order to be accepted by her peers. Tragically enough, they'd probably accept her for who she is regardless of her self-imposed Masquerade. Their flawlessly crafted façade hides a real person that’s usually breaking like so much fine china in order to keep up the deception.
Heroines or show co-stars that are Stepford Smilers can either be played straight (they really are that shallow) or to gain viewer sympathy as they struggle to live up to their own impossible ideals. Villainesses like the Evil Matriarch who are Stepford Smilers are usually played one of two ways: it can either humanize them, much like the heroine, or it can accentuate their evil by contrasting it with their soullessness. Feminine pronouns are used throughout this trope because the Stepford Smiler is a traditionally female role, though to be fair male examples are abundant. Sometimes, they're even a couple.
The mask itself can also hide a terrible secret... there is nothing behind it. The void is either a result of using up so much energy pretending to be normal that nothing is left over, or because there was nothing there to begin with.
Scared yet? It gets worse.
If a Stepford Smiler smiles long enough without cracking, she can become the mask. Some Stepford Smilers buy into the dead Barbie smiles to such a degree that they care for nothing other than maintaining appearances, having money, making sure their hair is just right, and improving their social standing, all of which are pursued with equally Darwinian means. Essentially, they become the materialist opposite of the Nietzsche Wannabe.
Not every Housewife is a Stepford Smiler, obviously. They often encounter one as a nemesis instead, in a post- High School example of The Libby.
The Stepford Smiler gets its name from the book and later movies The Stepford Wives, about a village whose men conspire to create the Barbie perfect wife, all with similar eerie smiles.
See also: Comedic Sociopathy, The Cutie, Evil Matriarch, I Just Want To Be Normal, Mary Sue, Masquerade, Uncanny Valley Girl, Yandere. Contrast with: Nietzsche Wannabe, The Stoic, Yamato Nadeshiko. Opposite number to The Daria.
Female examples
Anime/Manga
- Kare Kano's lead female Yukino Miyazawa follows the sympathetic kind (and there's a good lot of jokes on it, too).
- Kasumi Tendo of Ranma 1/2 - though the fandom is divided over whether Kasumi is putting on a happy face for her family (because *somebody* has to) or that she really is that indestructibly upbeat.
- Kasumi is like this all the time, as seen when she was possessed by an evil spirit - it freaked out her family that she was still so upbeat throughout.
- It is strongly implied that Yoko Nakajima, the main character of The Twelve Kingdoms, starts out the series as a junior version of this in regards to her home and social life; she reveals later the fear that there was truly nothing inside.
- Masane from Witch Blade has this to a degree. After losing all her memories in the great quake, and even her old name all she had to build a new life was her daughter Rihoko. She is constantly saying that Rihoko is the only thing she has and aside from being her mom, there really isn't that much to Masane. Well until she activated the Witchblade and became an Action Mom. As the series progresses, she gets better.
- Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket, as well as her mother Kyoko, might be a mild version of this trope—in the manga anyway.
- Tohru is, in fact, a genuinely kind and caring person, and acts as such...but she is absolutely a Stepford Smiler.
- Tohru is a cross between a Stepford Smiler, a Pollyanna and a Plucky Girl. She doesn't ignore her problems, she faces them up front, pushes through, and ultimately prevails. With that (slightly irritating) optimistic attitude and genuine cheerful smile.
- Digimon Tamers had a Stepford Smiler in training in Juri Katou. Everything went to crap as soon as the series' running "joke" happened.
- Asakura Ryoko from Suzumiya Haruhi fits this trope more or less. As she acts like a Purity Sue, she keeps a cute, caring and friendly appearance, even when she is about to stab you with her beloved combat knife, or when dying. Since she is an Artificial Human, unable to empathize with humans, it is very likely that it is just a fixed masquerade.
- It's plainly obvious that the overly optimistic and cheerful Kafuka Fuura from Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei is a Stepford Smiler. Even though she hides her traumatic past, some of her classmates are acutely aware of her mask and are mortally terrified of her. It doesn't help that she's secretly stalking Itoshiki-sensei by disguising herself as a college student who lives next door...
- Wakaba Shinohara in Revolutionary Girl Utena. Effervecently bubbly, energetic, and perky... until during the Black Rose Arc, we find that she deeply resents people who are special, having a rather low sense of self-worth herself.
- As of episode 6 of the second season, Ef A Tale Of Memories's Amamiya Yuuko. Complete with Broken Smile to the extreme.
- Orihime Inoue from Bleach is a very gentle, sweet girl as well as the local Genki Girl Barrier Warrior. Also has huge self-esteem problems, views herself as inferior to the Shinigami, feels troubled because she adores said Shinigami (and specially Rukia) and is in love with Ichigo. Cue to her almost having quite the breakdown in the Arrancar arc...
Comicbooks
- Mary Jane Watson in Spider Man Loves Mary Jane has something of the Smiler about her, as she tends to bottle up her insecurities and unhappiness and project a cheery, happy persona to everyone around her. She's more on The Woobie-ish side of the scale, however.
- She was also like this in the earlier Spider-Man comics, putting up a party girl facade to cover for a rather unstable upbringing.
Film
- Just about... scratch that, every character in the movie Pleasantville is a Stepford Smiler, what with it being a 1950s sitcom world made real. Subverted later on when the teens zapped into Pleasantville start spreading new thoughts and emotions, cuasing the townsfolk to literally gain color, and with it, depth.
- Gina McKee plays a particularly creepy variant of this in Mirrormask.
Black Queen: Because...what?
Guard: This is not a home to Mr. Grumpy.
Black Queen: That's right!
- The Chumscrubber is essentially about an entire suburb full of Stepford Smilers.
- In Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Violet Beauregard's mom has definite Stepford vibes, especially regarding her perfectionist coaching of her daughter.
- Child star Darla Dimple of Cats Don't Dance maintains a facade of being sweet and adorable.
 Heaven help you if she's angry at you when it breaks.
- Carolyn Burnham from American Beauty is a prime example of this trope, subscribing to the adage, "In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times."
- Katherine in Cruel Intentions pretends to be an upstanding junior-league type schoolgirl, when in reality she's an oversexed, scheming coke fiend.
- Asami Yamazaki in Audition. The male protagonist Aoyama is instantly smitten with her beauty and demureness, and ignores his friend's comments on how there's something wrong about her. She turns out to be a victim of childhood abuse and an Ax Crazy murderer, which would be a spoiler if not for the DVD cover and trailer showing her wielding a syringe. The climactic scene is made all the creepier by her perky voice and grin ("Deeper, deeper!").
Literature
- On the heroic side, Leitha from Eddings's The Redemption Of Althalus — she pretends to be cheerful and witty, but is secretly neurotic, insecure, and self-hating.
- Petunia Dursley from the Harry Potter novels is a fine example of the sort who is her mask.
- However, "Deathly Hallows" suggests that her mask developed as the means to deal with her jealousy over her older, "perfect" sister Lily getting magic and not herself.
- William Sleator's Others See Us has Annelise, who is well loved by everyone (including the main character), until he gains telepathy and realizes she's a Stepford Smiler of the worst sort. At one point he visits her mental landscape, it's an infinite sun-parched desert with her face as the huge sun, and the only other feature is a gigantic mirror, reflecting her face.
- C.S. Lewis' short story "The Shoddy Lands" also has its protagonist experience a telepathic vision of a Stepford Smiler's mental landscape.
- The Goddess Media from American Gods by Neil Gaiman was like this in her true form. As the humanoid manefestation of The Media, when she wasn't possessing characters on television she was described as looking like the sickeningly sweet hostess one of those morning shows filmed in a fake living room.
- Countess Rostov from War And Peace is very much like this except when she's talking with her daughters. Pierre Bezukhov's wife Hélène would be a subversion in that she goes from having no role in society except being beautiful (and smiling a lot) to one of the eminent hostesses on the Moscow and St. Petersburg scene after getting married.
- Part of the reason Will Navidson moved his family into the titular house in House Of Leaves was to get closer to his family, including his Stepford Smiler wife, Karen Green.
Live Action TV
- Many, many characters in Desperate Housewives — but Bree stands out as the most Stepfordish.
- Julia McNamara from nip/tuck is half Stepford Smiler and half Defrosting Ice Queen. You have to have a little sympathy for the woman, as she has been keeping her son's paternity secret from both his natural father and assumed father. Unfortunately, her eternal struggle over "Sean or Christian?" just annoys most people.
- Betty Draper from Mad Men could be used as a textbook example; she's playing the role of '50s wife and mother so perfectly that her impending nervous breakdown seems like a surprise even to her.
- Keeping Up Appearances is basically a long look at one woman's failing attempts to maintain the mask. Hilarity Ensues.
- Celia from Weeds, then later Nancy.
- Barb Ballantine, the 'perfect' mom from The Mommies showed signs of this trait.
Theater
- Mrs. Lovett in the play Sweeney Todd. She is cheerful and kindly, but has no problems whatsoever chopping up human bodies nor really with Sweeney's killing, and she is really only interested in improving her social standing. While not necessarily hollow, she certainly doesn't give a lot of moral considerations to her actions.
- In the musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, Rosemary is a Stepford Smiler in training.
- All four main characters in the Sondheim musical Follies are Stepford Smilers of one sort or another. Their masks do fall eventually, and the comparison to their younger counterparts in Flashbacks becomes painful: back then, they had a reason to smile — at least, they thought they did. (It says something that Desperate Housewives gets many of its episode titles from musical numbers in Follies.)
Video Games
- Psychonauts features both a female and male example. Crystal and Clem are two seemingly cheerful and enthusiastic campers who like to root their fellow campers on (especially Raz)... and also harbor suicidal tendencies.
- Some of their dialogue seems to suggest that they think this will have an Obi-Wan Kenobi effect, or possibly I'm reading too much into it. Either way the whole thing is played largely for laughs. "I feel so stupid for throwing myself off the roof!" "Why did you throw yourself off the roof?" "Because the poison didn't work, duh!"
- A more depressing version is Milla. A perpetually cheerful party girl, who hides the fact that she worked at an orphanage that burned down, killing all inside.
- Proving once again that Your Mileage May Vary, this troper though that Milla was meant to be an example of someone who'd coped. Despite having tragic incidents in her past, they're kept safely away from the rest of her mind, and when brought to face with them again (when Raz opens the box with her Nightmares in it), she doesn't overreact, and simply admits that it's "not a happy place." She's come to terms with her past and doesn't let her destroy her life, which, given her second memory reel, has been pretty groovy since then. Arguably, Sasha, whom you "break" (Or Do You?) in his level, is a better example—though he doesn't smile all that often. Of course, interpretations will vary with the player.
- Actually, just listen to the laughing in the background music of her level. It's crying. The music is her way of trying to get rid of the memories, making her a fairly effective Stepford Smiler.
- I thought she wasn't trying to get rid of them; instead, she was subconsciously pushing it to the back of her mind, and when she thought about it, she was mostly over it, though she could never really forget. That place is essentially her repository of nightmares, and not much more. And finally, since this all occurs in her own mind, and she still acts cheerful there, it's pretty clear that she's not faking her bubbliness.
- Sagiri from Suikoden V was trained to be this kind of character, a ruthless killer with a permanent smile on her face. By the time you meet her she's mostly rehabilitated, however she still finds herself unable to adopt any other expression.
- Colette from Tales Of Symphonia is a Stepford Smiler, always having a smile on her face, even as she starts to lose her humanity and later on starts slowly turning into a Cruxis Crystal while trying as hard as she can to keep it a secret from everybody.
- Thank you. This troper used to think it was just stupid, but given some of the examples on this page now he thinks it's creepy too.
- Zelos too hides behind a cheerful mask, but his goal is to drive his comrades away from him, because he doesn't want to be missed. Realising the Butt Monkey of the group is also a Sad Clown can be quite jarring, especially if you chose the ending where you kill him.
- Shiki from The World Ends With You has this as she tries to pretend to be her bubbly best friend because she feels the real her is worthless.
- Mary Magdalene in Chrono Crusade almost constantly smiles, even though she's constantly having visions of the future and the past, some of them horrifying and violent. In fact, she has so many visions she has no memory of her childhood or even her name—except for a reoccurring vision of Chrono killing her with tears streaming down his face. She's even smiling when she dies.
- In Fire Emblem 7, the Cleric Serra is a mix of Genki Girl and Rich Bitch who acts like a princess... but truly is an orphan dropped at a small, miserable Ostian convent by an Etrurian clan in danger of being wiped away. Her parents never came back for her and she was badly traumatised by their abandonement. Get her to support with people like Hector or Lucius to get more details.
- Tsukihime (the game, at least) has Kohaku.
- Perhaps Midna of The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess qualifies; for the first part of the game, she's almost always cackling with amusement and smugly going about her own plan, but later reveals how torn up she is that she, as the titular princess, fled her people after being turned into her imp form by Zant, and how touched she was watching Link and Zelda's self-sacrificing ways.
Webcomics
- Erika in Megatokyo, while currently a Deadpan Snarker as well as a Badass Action Girl, was a voice actress and Idol Singer in her day, and still can't bear the thought of her fans thinking of her as anything but upbeat and bubbly. Dom calls her out on it by showing that even in the midst of a rampage of rabid fans and excessive taunting by him, she feels a need to keep her smile going.
Web Original
Western Animation
- Lois in the Christmas Episode of Family Guy tries mightily to salvage Christmas despite her family's efforts to the contrary, climaxing in a nervous breakdown over missing wash towels and an epic freakout.
- The brainwashed Joo Dees (shares acronym with Jane Doe) from Avatar The Last Airbender. Mentally, they're practical Stepford Wives.
- Bloberta Puppington, Orel's mother from Moral Orel, exemplifies the psychotic version of this trope. "Ah, yarn... yarn... yarn ! YARN ! YAAARRRNNN < ... Welcome home, dear !"
- Marge Simpson of The Simpsons has repeatedly been portrayed this way, commenting on bottling up her feelings and staying with Homer "no matter what" after he does something truly horrible. Lisa has pointed this out on at least one occasion. However, due to inconsistent characterization, Marge has also more regularly been shown as a confident and adjusted individual, and that Homer is still a loving husband despite his hijinks. Examples of her being a Stepford Smiler depend entirely on who writes the episodes.
Real Life
Male examples
Anime/Manga
- The villainous Sojirou Seta, The Dragon of Rurouni Kenshin's best known story arc, also fits here — a cheerful young person who's capable of incredible violence because he has no soul or conscience behind the mask. (Or at least that's what he thinks.)
- Ichimaru Gin of Bleach hides a sadistic personality behind a set of perpetually closed eyes and a dumb grin.
- You Takami from Deadman Wonderland seems to be one of the friendlier people in the prison/themepark, but he's not above stealing the antidote for Ganta's poison, taking someone's entire ear for their earring, selling out ditzy possible Dark Action Girl Shiro to the guards, and killing his own father, although the last part was because he thought he was protecting his sister. Then again he doubted that his dad could've really raped her so one wonders exactly what kind of person You was before being imprisoned.
- Wolfgang Grimmer, from Monster, a rare male version of the mask as the only personality. The fact that sometimes he snaps in a Hulk-like killer alterego with no memories afterwards doesn't help his case, although he pleads childhood abuse and unethical assassin training.
- Fay from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has traits of the Stepford Smiler, though by the time the series Grows The Beard this has begun to crack and continues to do so as more and more time passes.
- Chichiri from Fushigi Yuugi has a literal mask that helps him pull off the goofy, care-free smile; it's a significant plot-point when he takes it off to relay his tragic backstory.
- Yuki Sohma from Fruits Basket is so terrified of being rejected by his peers that he uses his numerous skills (martial arts, good looks, charisma, etc.) to hide the issues that Parental Abandonment and Akito's Mind Rape gave him.
- Souichirou Arima from Kare Kano is, at the beginning, as much of a Stepford Smiler as his girlfriend Yukino is. Except that while Yukino does it out of obsession with her own image and is a bit of a Butt Monkey for that, Arima does it to prove himself a worthy person after hearing his relatives wonder if his parents' bad traits may be passed on to him even after they left him to be adopted by his uncle and aunt after years of neglect, and also because of the abuse doled on him by his mother.
- Trigun's Vash the Stampede combines this with Obfuscating Stupidity so that nobody realizes just how dangerous he is, or what horrific memories and experiences he lives with every day. In the whole series, only Nicholas D. Wolfwood is able to see right through Vash's act - in his first episode, Nicholas shares some food with a pair of hungry children while Vash watches, then tells Vash that he looks good with a real smile on his face, not the fake one he's been showing.
- Manga Millie, who's dumbfounded by this, eventually compares Vash's fake smile with the grey colour you obtain when you mix paints of all colours.
- Wolfwood himself thrives on this trope, although it's clear almost from the beginning he is a dark, conflicted, and potentially angsty character.
- And let's not forget that in the manga, young Knives managed to hide his feelings of agony and murderous hatred from Vash and Rem by having fun with them just as usual, making crepes while smiling and laughing, claiming to go all 'business as usual' because he had to go on with his life etc.
- Cho Hakkai from Saiyuki qualifies, as he smiles constantly even while fighting, despite his angsty past which includes but is not limited to killing over 1000 demons to rescue his lover Kanan (who is really his twin sister), then watching Kanan kill herself with his sword because she was raped and impregnated by a demon, then to top it off, becoming a demon himself. Whew. His companions note that whenever he actually does stop smiling and looks angry, it's extremely scary.
- Shuusuke Fuji of The Prince Of Tennis was a bit like this due to the problems with his younger brother Yuuta that caused him to bear a huge guilt. He starts acting more genuinely cheerful when he and Yuuta patch their relationship.
- In Tokyo Mew Mew, Masaya Aoyama is revealed to be one of these, keeping up his "perfect" mask to hide the fact that he hates all of humanity. Ironically, most of the fandom seems to ignore this, taking his Smiler-ness as both his true personality and an excuse to pair Ichigo up with someone else.
- Koizumi Itsuki from Suzumiya Haruhi always keeps a constant smile and a cheerful attitude, regardless of how much is Haruhi casting upon the Universe. Granted, he's still mostly sane and calm, but his Stepfordness always creeps Kyon out to no end. But when his smile disappears... you better start fearing the worst!
- Both male and female Contractors in Darker Than Black qualify and while sociopathic rather than psychopathic like Dexter are much like him personality wise and feel bad about this to varying degrees. One, a British spy code-named November 11 might be the best fit, as he's very much The Charmer, unfailingly friendly and polite but in a way that's so calm it's unsettling. Admittedly, he and other contractors are generally open about being this way.
- Russia from Axis Powers Hetalia, played entirely for comedy. If he just smiles pleasantly, he can send other characters into absolute Freak Outs. (Poor England)
Comic Books
- Ken in The Sandman collection, The Doll House. He lives with a woman named Barbie, and while she has depth that is later revealed, he's a creepy Bateman-esque living Ken Doll.
- In Transmetropolitan, one of the presidential candidates is known as 'The Smiler', and is shown as willing to kill just about anyone, including his wife, to improve his ratings.
Commercials
- That creepy Bob fellow in those commercials for Enzyte's "natural male enhancement". If you can't quite seem to figure out just what he's smiling about from the Double Entendre laden narration, give it time.
- That is not a smile. That is a rictus of agony from unceasing pain. The eyes implore the viewer for the merciful release of sweet death.
- The King from the Burger King advertisements is a particularly disturbing example (it could be that he is wearing a mask though...).
Literature
- Patrick Bateman in the book and later film American Psycho. In fact, everyone in American Psycho is like this, but he's the only one who has anything underneath — the others are of the 'there was nothing there to begin with' type, whereas he is only just deep enough to know that he is essentially superficial.
- Ciaphas Cain is supposed to be a fearless Imperial commissar who is willing to lay down his life to destroy the enemies of the God-Emperor of Mankind. He isn't, although that doesn't stop him from accidentally bumbling into Crowning Moments of Awesome time and again.
- Discworld serial killer Carcer is deceptively cheerful and innocent-looking, with his smile catching people off gaurd...until they look in his eyes and see the madness behind the mask.
- From The King in Yellow: "I wear no mask."
- Todd Bowden from Stephen King's Apt Pupil maintains the image of a cheery all-American golden boy even while he's blackmailing the neighborhood Nazi-in-hiding into telling gruesome concentration camp stories. It's all downhill from there.
Live Action TV
- The android Ted from Buffy The Vampire Slayer was obsessed with reliving his creator's idea of a 1950s dream marriage, albeit with the aid of narcotics. (Though an android, he's chauvinistic enough to qualify.)
- A pair of Pagan gods in an episode of Supernatural. One was the traditional female Stepford Smiler, the other was the male variant.
- If you know what's going to happen next, Dean comes off as a version of this trope in the supposed lighter moments. Whether it's the Daddy Issues or Survivor Guilt or his impending death/suicide, he loves to pretend that everything is perfect whe it's really, really not.
- Dexter. On the surface, he comes of as a well-adjusted and funny, if somewhat morbid blood spater expert (and even his more morbid tendancies can be explained by having to work with corpses on a regular basis). On the inside, though, he's empty.
- More accurately, he thinks he's empty, which is a fairly common pathological trait among serial killers due to any number of dissociative mood disorders linked to their psychosis that suppress extreme emotions such as anger. The emotions are there, and they're expressed externally (say... with an axe) but not felt internally. Dexter Morgan seems to actually be relatively well-adjusted, comparitively, at least until he comes up on a room completely soaked in blood, but as a psychopath I think we can call him an Unreliable Narrator.
Video Games
Web Original
- In Survival Of The Fittest, former gamer Warren Pace gives himself a complete image makeover to fit in with the football team due to his perceived images of jocks.
- V3's Amanda Redder, in order to keep up the image of Team Mom, is constantly optimistic, despite being haunted by the fact that she may soon have to kill her friends in order to survive.
|
|
