Basic Trope: A feminine badass male character, whose badassitude is aided rather than hindered by his femininity (A sensitive guy/man with some masculine traits).
- Straight:
- Bob is a fun-loving sensitive guy but is also a headstrong action hero.
- Bob is a Pretty Boy, but has a boyish personality, and his interests are a mixture of girlish and boyish interests.
- Bob is a highly competent pirate captain whose dandified appearance and feminine mannerisms are as much a part of his personality as his being a master swordsman. This combination serves to make him seem particularly secure in his masculinity which makes his opponents uncomfortable.
- Bob is Camp Straight Casanova who uses his natural feminine personality and appearance on most women to get into their pants. And it works on the gays and bis too.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is the best secret agent in the world: he's a master of disguise because he's taught himself so much about makeup, he's got superb balance from walking in heels, he's so beautiful that Even the Guys Want Him (as well as all the girls), and he uses things like stilettos and straightening irons as deadly weapons when he doesn't have his color-coordinated gun handy.
- Bob is very effeminate and literally looks like a woman yet they make him a Manly Man.
- Bob, the World's Best Warrior, has the build, costume, and mannerisms of a Magical Girl.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is an effeminate member of a Glam Rock band (like David Bowie† in his Ziggy Stardust days) who happens to be very muscular because he lugs heavy amps and other equipment.
- Bob is a feminine cloth design-loving sensitive guy, but is actually a Action Hero and has standards of how much to push the concept.
- Justified:
- Bob's naturally feminine and flamboyant personality and bishounen and pretty boy looks have made him a prime target for bullies and others who think he's gay or bi because, and those who don't like the idea of a spear counterpart of a tomboy. So he takes up some masculine traits and self-defense and is actually attractive to women and has proved to his love ones and peers that he's not a disgrace and useless.
- Bob was raised by Amazons as a girl and now rules with a bejeweled, iron fist.
- Bob's mom nurtured his femininity between the ages of 3 to 10. From 11 to 17, his father tried to balance the effect by taking him fishing, hunting, getting him involved in sports, etc. Rather than choose between these two traits, he decides to blend them to make for an interesting persona.
- Bob is bi, non-binary or other designation in an era where you had two choices if you were a government agent: be so flaming that any attempts at blackmail would be useless or live in the closet and risk being blackmailed by enemy agents. Bob chose the former and proves his worthiness to his country as well.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a Butch Lesbian who's a total priss.
- Alice is a Ladette who's kind of a wimp.
- Real Men Wear Pink
- Bob is a Manly Man and a Non-Action Guy.
- Gender Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Bob is shown to be highly effeminate—wearing makeup and walking very swishy—and then beats a guy up for irritating him. However it turns out that Bob is just undercover as an effeminate man, and in actuality he's quite butch.
- Alternatively Bob bursts into tears after beating up the guy. He's naturally effeminate, but absolutely hates doing anything badass despite being good at it.
- Alternatively, Bob is effeminate and set up as a huge badass, but then loses miserably to his opponent.
- “Bob” is actually a woman pretending to be a man.
- Double Subverted:
- Alternatively, Bob is initially shown to be quite effeminate, as well as quite badass. He then claims that the effeminacy is just a ploy and that he's normally quite butch, however it turns out that he's actually even more effeminate than initially shown and was playing at being masculine as part of another cover.
- It seems Bob is naturally effeminate but hates doing anything badass (despite being shown to be good at it); however it turns out that his reluctance to be tough is just a ploy, and he's actually been working as a super assassin without anyone knowing.
- Alternatively Bob is effeminate and set up as a huge badass, and then seems about to lose horribly to his opponent, but then at the last second, he starts fighting in earnest; turns out he was just getting them to let their guard down.
- Bob eventually reveals he is saving money from his mercenary work to fully transition and has no desire to change his attitude afterwards.
- Parodied:
- Bob is an effeminate man who after being buried in a shipment of designer clothes gains fashion based super powers.
- Bob chooses a peacock to represent his emblem.
- In a World of Funny Animals, one of the badass characters is an actual peacock.
- Zig Zagged: Bob was originally Alice, who was a Bifauxnen princess who has elected to live as a Camp Gay man. The hardships of being a trans man as well as being an effeminate male have made Bob the toughest guy in the kingdom.
- Averted:
- Bob is effeminate, and not badass at all.
- Bob is badass, but not effeminate.
- Bob is neither particularly effeminate or badass.
- Enforced: Bob was always written as a manly badass but an actor with a more effeminate look pulls him off so well they rearrange the character to match the actor's appearance.
- Lampshaded:
- "Bob's so sexy even lesbians want him… though the dress he's wearing probably helps."
- "This guy? This is your war machine? He's positively mincing!"
"And you're positively mincemeat, honey… 'cause I'm more than just a pretty face!" - "I wonder if your blood matches my shoes…"
- Invoked:
- Bob is badass, and effeminate by nature. He plays up his effeminacy to freak out opponents.
- Bob doesn't want his opponents to take him seriously until it's too late. The body glitter isn't there to make him feel pretty… well, not just to make him feel pretty.
- Exploited: "Uh-oh, this guy's pretty girly, so we're in for a tough fight!"
- Defied:
- Bob makes sure he never does anything unladylike in his career as a Drag Queen, and makes sure he butches it up when he's working as a riot cop.
- Alternatively; Badass Bob makes sure he doesn't do anything effeminate, so that way, people will take him seriously as a fighter even if he really wants to.
- Discussed: "No, I'm just a hairdresser—despite what fiction may say, I'm not a super spy."
"That's just what a super spy would say!" - Conversed: "Ever noticed how in all these animes the campiest dude is always the toughest?"
- Deconstructed: Bob feels the need to be the alpha-male because he was taunted and harassed for being "girly" when he was younger.
- Reconstructed: Bob was always the alpha-male because his extroverted flamboyant personality makes him a great leader.
- Played for Laughs:
- Bob is shown as Always Camp and people's shock at this mincing girly boy being the world's best swordsman in the world is frequently shown.
- "Having been buried in a shipment of designer clothes, I gained fashion-based superpowers! And thus I am now called Agent Peacock!"
- Played For Drama:
- Bob must learn to cope with the fact that people often don't take his strength seriously because of his flamboyant personality.
- Bob's angst about societal norms and masculinity initially hurt his confidence, until he realizes his femininity is a part of his toughness and he goes on to be the hero.
- Played For Horror: Bob is every vile stereotype about the unmanly male and the Depraved Bisexual wrapped in a blood-thirsty Psycho for Hire who causally murders dozens of people at the time with his bare hands by day and tortures prisoners to death by night and is aroused by all of it.
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