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  • Jack Donaghy in 30 Rock once had a collection of cookie jars, but had to get rid of them.
  • In The A-Team, B.A.'s favorite drink is milk.
  • Altered Carbon: For most of the series, Takeshi Kovacs carries an arsenal of deadly weapons in a pink children's backpack emblazoned with the mascot of a My Little Pony Expy. Before loading the guns, the backpack was full of drugs.
  • Angel of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of his own series, admits that he once found a ballet so incredible he cried. Back when he was still the soulless Badass Angelus. Angelus also likes to draw, though admittedly most of his drawings are meant to be left behind to creep out his adversaries. Still, there's no evidence that he had any artistic talent until after losing his soul (and being immortal gives one lots of time to practice). Finally, at a karaoke bar where you sing to reveal your soul to someone who will then read your destiny, he picks Barry Manilow's "Mandy", because he thinks it's "pretty".
    Angel: There's just one thing... I never told anybody this, but I liked your poems.
    Spike: You like Barry Manilow.
    • Gunn also became quite the fan of the ballet when he went to see it.
    Gunn: I was cool before I met y'all.
    • Averted in the more literal sense. Angel tries to get out of wearing a pink motorcycle helmet, much to Wesley's veiled amusement.
  • In Arrested Development, the Scary Black Man bounty hunter ICE (a recurring character) got into bounty-hunting to jumpstart his first love...a professional catering business. Although he's not a terribly effective bounty hunter, he is more than capable of beating people up and looking intimidating.
  • Barney in Barney Miller often wears a pink dress-shirt, as does Sgt. Wojciehowicz.
  • Batman (1966) has two villains:
    • The Joker, famously wore a very iconic pink suit instead of his customary purple.
    • Louie the Lilac. He has the demeanor of a tough guy mobster complete with cigar. He also wears lavender suits, works out of a flower shop, and is intent on cornering the flower and perfume industries.
  • Lord Flasheart from Blackadder; an Ace who likes cross-dressing.
  • Discussed in Black Lightning with Gambi. A former ASA agent, he became a tailor after retiring because it was the furthest thing he could think of from his old job and thus was unlikely to get him back into the bad habits he picked up as a spy. Note that even in his old age, he's still not a man you want to piss off.
  • Shawn Hunter from Boy Meets World is a troubled kid from the wrong side of the tracks. He also admits to writing secret poems to help express his feelings and having "thought about" crossdressing so much that he already has a name for his female alter-ego, "Veronica", and years later he is the go-to guy for advice on crossdressing, when Eric wants help.
  • In The Brady Bunch, Bobby gets a hard time from other kids for participating in the glee club, but some pro football players sent the bullies straight how lots of football stars like Joe Namath sing.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    • Spike has hobbies that include chain smoking, heavy drinking, brawling, gambling, and... watching soap operas and writing rather effusive poetry. He also polishes his nails and likes his blood with the little marshmallows in it. This in no way diminishes his level of badass. He also loves those little onion flowers in Chinese restaurants. After his vampire girlfriend leaves him he actually refers to himself this way.
    Spike: "I may be love's bitch but at at least I'm man enough to admit it!"
  • Michael Westen, resident badass of Burn Notice, has a lot of pink shirts, to Agent Bly's amusement. Apparently you can still get away with that in Miami twenty years after Miami Vice... if you're a badass ex-spy.
  • Chuck: John Casey's "pet" bonsai tree. Played by the same actor as the below-mentioned Jayne Cobb, the 6'4", built-like-a-brick-Buick Adam Baldwin.
    • This is more an allusion to the fact that bonsai keeping is a sniper tradition, owing to its cultivation of patience, attention to detail, and focus on a long-term objective. Which itself is drawn from the samurai practice noted in the Real Life section.
    • John Casey also was a choir boy in his youth and has perfect pitch. Adam Baldwin does a great job of looking and acting badass — in addition to Firefly and Chuck, there's also Full Metal Jacket and Angel — but between character traits like this being played for laughs and the way he often needs to be rescued by the amateurish Chuck just because he's the eponymous hero, Casey's Badassery is subverted as often as it's played straight.
    • Also, he is apparently quite skilled at wedding planning and decorating:
    Subordinate (showing Casey a ream of pink fabric): "How about this?"
    John Casey: "No, no, no. That'll clash with the bunting."
    • Casey is also an excellent cook, especially when it comes to quiche.
  • In Community episode "Interpretive Dance" Troy learns how to be manly while still enjoying his dance class.
  • Doctor Who has Grant Gordonnote , aka The Ghost, appear in the episode The Return of Doctor Mysterio. Superman Substitute, Ascended Fanboy, and Flying Brick, he is a force to be reckoned with. And what's his day job? Being a nanny. At one point, he catches a spaceship one-handed... with his off-hand, because the other one is holding a baby monitor.
  • Firefly's Jayne Cobb is a musclebound hulk, an amoral mercenary, a seasoned combat veteran, a crack shot with a rifle or pistol, and a brutal streetfighter. He also wears brightly-colored bobble hats with earflaps that his mother knits for him.
    Wash: A man walks down the street wearing a hat like that, people know he's not afraid of anything.
    • It's technically known as a tuque. Jayne puts it on and remarks, "Pretty cunning, don'tcha think?" Google "Jayne's Cunning Hat" and you'll find hundreds of tuque patterns posted by Firefly fans who can knit.
    • This extends to another character who fits that description: thanks to a Team Fortress 2-playing Firefly fan, the Heavy Weapons Guy can sport Jayne's hat too.
    • Mal also crossdresses in the episode "Our Mrs Reynolds" and seems to like that pink bonnet of his. Later in the episode he implies with apparent fondness that he's done so before.
    • YMMV on Mal, though — part of the script that didn't make it past the Fox Executives suggests the only reason Mal's in the dress is because his Lancer, the even more badass and intimidating but not quite manly Zoe refused to wear it.
  • Flashpoint: Kevin "Wordy" Wordsworth is probably the most physical guy on Team One, being the team's hand-to-hand specialist. Off-duty, he enjoys watching "chick flicks" with his wife and three young daughters. He's also made reference to braiding his daughters' hair.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Ser Loras Tyrell decks himself in ornate armour, clothing and accessories embellished with flowers. Justified, since his house's sigil is a rose. However, in-universe he isn't considered particularly manly; he's Straight Gay by our standards, but practically flaming by the standards of a culture that runs on Testosterone Poisoning like Westeros.
    • Michele Clapton (the costume designer of the series) describes Prince Oberyn Martell's style in this featurette as, "It's actually quite a feminine look, but he wears it in a really masculine way." This probably explains why the pendant of his necklace features flowers. His clothing is also noticeably brighter and more colourful than what we typically see on Westerosi males.
  • On Gossip Girl Chuck Bass frequently wears pink, but even more often wears purple. Enough for him to make this comment about a letter his father left him along with his will:
    Nate: Aren't you curious to know what it says?
    Chuck: I think I can guess. "You're a disappointment of a son. I'd die of embarrassment if I wasn't already. Why do you wear so much purple?"
  • One episode of Greg the Bunny reveals that one of the male human characters wears women's clothing... to the shooting range.
  • BBC 2's The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Two guys who look pretty much like All Bikers are Hells Angels... travelling around the UK to look at local recipes.
    • One of the Bikers, Dave Myers, is a double example: before becoming a TV presenter, his career was as a TV/film make-up artist.
  • Roderick Spode from Jeeves and Wooster has the public image of a not-genocidal Hitler stand-in, but his actual day job is designing women's underwear, a secret that Bertie and Jeeves use to blackmail him at the beginning of Season 2, even though Jeeves is initially the only one who knows what "Eulalie" actually means.
  • Himitsu no Hanazono (2007): Satoshi is usually a stern, serious man, but he loves reading Shōjo manga, and expresses a desire to learn cooking from Ryoko.
  • Kamen Rider has gained a bit of a trend of taking its franchise that targets young boys and giving some of the heroes pink armor.
    • Miyuki Tezuka from Kamen Rider Ryuki wears magenta colored suit as Kamen Rider Raia. He set out to change the bad future he could foresee even if it meant his death. His counterpart in the Western adaptation, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, also qualifies; as Chris Ramirez/Kamen Rider Sting is a Military Brat with Marine training who gladly took on the magenta suit if it meant he could protect people.
    • An example involving cooking as opposed to pink armor: Tendou Souji from Kamen Rider Kabuto, a man so badass that time itself bends to his will, is a gourmet chef who dotes on his little sister and constantly quotes wisdom from his beloved grandma.
    • Kamen Rider Decade's costume is primarily white, black, and (you guessed it) pink. One of the webisodes lampshades this by having Tsukasa/Decade, frustrated at everyone calling it pink, insist that it's actually magenta; given that photography is an important theme of the show, this might actually be the case, especially since The Rival Diend is cyan-colored.
      • Of course, that same net movie jokingly claims that the show's producers made Decade pink because Real Men Wear Pink, citing their boss, who's wearing a bright pink three-piece suit.
      • Not to mention the fact that Tsukasa often wears pink ("MAGENTA!!") clothes in his day-to-day life, including a pink gi when in Hibiki's World.
    • Kamen Rider Gaim has Oren Pierre Alfonzo, a Camp Gay pastry chef whose flamboyancy is often Played for Laughs. But he's also ex-special forces, and got involved as Kamen Rider Bravo because he viewed the teenage main cast as young punks who needed to be taught what real fighting is like. (And while the Bravo armor isn't pink, he is shown lounging in a pink bathrobe at home at least once.)
    • After the two magenta riders came Emu Hojo aka Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, whose Rider suit has predominantly pink color scheme, including pink Anime Hair. He is an All-Loving Hero with a manipulative streak who looks dumber than he is.
    • Kamen Rider Zero-One has Kamen Rider Jin, who spends the first arc of the show as a Psychopathic Manchild who happens to have pink armor. He later matures, but switches out for red armor at that point.
    • In Kamen Rider Saber, Kamen Rider Slash's armor is not only (partly) pink, but (as part of the show's fairy tale motifs) his theme is the Gingerbread House from Hansel and Gretel. Even with the chocolate-frosting-and-bubblegum-colored armor, he's not portrayed as a silly character a la Bravo, but instead as a relatively-serious hero like any other Rider.
    • Kamen Rider Revice features Kamen Rider Revi, whose suit is pale pink, purple, and blue-green. Any potential girliness is offset by the fact that, by default, he has the power of a Tyrannosaurus rex and his helmet sports a Slasher Smile.
  • Mick Rory of Legends of Tomorrow is a booze-swilling, gravel voiced, sports loving, rock music enjoying, pyromaniac ex-criminal. He also writes sci-fi romance novels under the pen name Rebecca Silver.
  • Eliot Spencer of Leverage — unstoppable hurtin' machine, liberator of Croatia, regular taker-out of entire gangs of armed men, may have once killed a man with an hors d'oeuvre — will have to be forcibly prevented from going after you if you insult his cooking. (He also appears to spend quite a lot of time on his hair.)
    • In "The Runway Job", Eliot wore guyliner. He was in character, of course...
  • The Lexx universe dials this trope up to eleven. I mean, just look at the battle wear of the renowned Brunnen-G warrior race. Or of badass rebel leader Thodin.
  • Gene Hunt from Life On Mars has some very nice pink shirts.
    • Pink was the yuppie shirt color in the 1970s West Midlands in the early 70s — along with a drooping Zapato moustache and a Jenson Interceptor.
  • The martini-guzzling, womanizing Deadpan Snarker Roger Sterling on Mad Men gets mani-pedis, and tries to defend this when he senses that Don is judging this as "feminine."
  • Easy-going funny man B.J. Hunnicutt of M*A*S*H spends about half his screen time actually wearing a pink shirt. He also spends a lot of time darning socks, though that may be more out of necessity than choice (keeping in mind that foot care is extremely important in the Army). Charles Emerson Winchester III has bamboo wind chimes with a big pink butterflynote . Also, there's this.
  • One episode of Matlock has the titular defense attorney visiting a local bar to question a big, hulking biker. Matlock thinks he's the killer, for obvious reasons, and keeps pressuring him to reveal where he was at the time of the murder. The biker looks around nervously, then reveals that . . . he was reciting a poem.
  • Sonny Crockett (and, by extension, Don Johnson) pulled off pink and other pastels on Miami Vice. Part of this is it was South Florida in The '80s, where you could get away with that sort of thing.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus's Lumberjack. He's a lumberjack and he's okay, he sleeps all night and he works all day, also skipping, jumping, pressing on wild flowers, putting on women's clothing, hanging around in... BARS??? — err, he also wears high heels, suspenders and...a bra.
    • This guy is a lumberjack! The descendant, of course, of Pirates! Who were also known for this trope. See, they were mighty and vicious. And when they looted, if they found any expensive clothing like a noblewoman's dress, it was unlikely that they would be able to dock somewhere and sell it, being wanted men. So they wore it. It's not like anyone would laugh at them, and they can't exactly buy new clothes regularly themselves.
  • In My Three Sons, the adoption of son Ernie is held up because his adoptive father Steve is a widower, so there is no woman in the house — but there is [Great-]Uncle Charley, who learned his housekeeping and cooking skills in the Navy — and in universe took over coparenting duties from his brother, the children's maternal grandfather "Bub" [when that actor's health forced him to step down as a regular cast member]. This is solved by deciding that what is really required is an adult who can be at home all the time (this was the 1960s, after all) and the legal fiction that Uncle Charley is the "housemother".
  • Crony from Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. Tough guy, bully's um... crony, and sewing club member.
  • Orange Is the New Black gives us Desi Piscatella. He's physically massive, domineering, at best tough as nails and at worst a violent psychopath. He's also a prize-winning table decorator.
  • Player: Jin-ung is a One-Man Army who enjoys cooking and manicures.
  • On Pushing Daisies, Emerson Cod, a fairly archetypal Private Detective, loves to knit. He's also a big fan of pop-up books. He also wears a bright magenta floral shirt, though no one wears drab colors on the show anyway.
  • Power Rangers: The franchise has shown a large number of male Rangers whose sensitive sides in no way detracts from their ability to vanquish the forces of evil. Examples include Eric who kept pet birds that he was very caring of, Cole who was an animal lover and empath and Trent who was a sensitive artist.
  • In Queen of the South, when Pote Galvez isn't shooting people on behalf of his boss Teresa, he's cooking, and is apparently pretty good at it; Teresa has offered to give him his own restaurant when he retires.
  • Retro Game Master: Abe wears a bright pink and white spotted apron while making Arino lunch for his 24-hour Lemmings episode. Said apron was then given away as a special prize for a "lucky" viewer.
  • In Scrubs, Turk used to take ballet; the other surgeons were a bit surprised at first then give him a pass when he waves this off as agility training for sports but give him crap about it when JD says that he not only enjoyed it but also loved wearing the tights.
  • Herry from Sesame Street loves dolls, and is not the least bit ashamed by it. It at least somewhat makes sense given his Gentle Giant personality.
  • 7th Heaven has an episode where "The Colonel" comes to the Camden house and does all the domestic things they've gotten behind on. He says that the army taught him how to do that stuff.
  • Sherlock loves dancing, as revealed in "The Sign of Three", and towards the end of the aforementioned episode he demonstrates some ballet.
  • Don't let the pompadour, organic cooking or tricked out leather jacket fool you. Bobby "Elvis" Munson is as badass as any other member of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club.
    • Speaking of Sam Crow, Tig Trager — professional killer, perverted sex god, bare-knuckle badass and owner of the most evil-looking facial hair in the Western hemisphere — seems surprisingly at ease wandering around in a pink robe.
  • The Sopranos: Furio Giunta, the Neapolitan Camorristo brought in as an enforcer for the DiMeo/Soprano/North Jersey Family. Sports a ponytail. Wears silk shirts with patterns ridiculous even in The '90s (as part of a sort of "Eurotrash" persona). Good dancer. Competent cook (he's officially brought over as a mozzarella maker, and is shown making his own dinner in a scene to contrast to Tony dejectedly microwaving Carmela's rigatoni). Wants to grow grapes in his backyard in Nutley. Very sensitive (which is why Carmela falls for him). But still: not only a made man, but an enforcer, seen savagely beating several men for being late on their loan payments to Tony, Ralphie, and others, and killing several men in cold blood.
  • Mike from Spaced owns this trope. He's a tough-guy gun nut who was kicked out of the T.A. for trying to invade Paris in a stolen tank... and on various occasions he happily joins in Marsha's step-aerobics, cooks in a novelty apron, and of course actually wears a tight pink tank top. Add this to his overly protective attitude towards Tim...
  • One episode of Stargate Atlantis reveals that Major Lorne's hobby is painting. He's pretty good, too.
  • Worf of Star Trek: The Next Generation has moments like this. He's very proud of Klingon poetry, which surprisingly, is romantic and sentimental instead of epic and bloody. According to Worf, Klingon men in general are expected to be able to recite romantic poetry since it plays a major role in mating rituals. The Klingon "first base" is for the men to stand and recite love poetry, while the women crawl around on the floor, snarling at them and throwing heavy objects at their head.
    • Klingon ideas about romantic though tend to have "more aggressive connotations" anyway and Worf obviously enjoys the epic and bloody as well as is shown by the glimpses we get of Klingon Mythopoeia.
    • Worf also loves prune juice, which he believes to be a warrior's drink. All Klingon men also love opera and perform tea ceremonies, though their concept of it is a bit different than ours. Their most romantic opera is about their equivalent of a messiah, Kahless, and his wife standing back to back and slaughtering an army before making love among the corpses. And the tea of the tea ceremony is a lethal poison watered down by the tea to just at a survivable level.
  • On an episode of Storage Wars, Barry Weiss once bid on and won a storage locker just to get his hands on a pink scooter. He also found an old tether car worth $7000, but the highlight for him was the pink scooter.
  • Mr. Moseby of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody mentions having practiced ballet as a young man. When some other, "manlier" men start making fun on him, he replies "Mock me if you will, but I was the only boy among twelve pretty girls! Momma didn't raise no fool." The other men have to admit he has a point. In one episode of "The Suite Life on Deck", he is mocked for his pink jacket. He initially insists that it is "salmon colored", but later admits "Actually, it's pink. But a real man can pull it off."
  • Supernatural:
    • Dean is a badass demon hunter... who admits to watching Oprah. And "Dr. Sexy, MD." And Black Swan. And he has a secret fetish for wearing women's underwear. Also, he's a great cook.
    • Bobby, his even more badass mentor, likes to get a monthly pedicure.
  • Super Sentai:
    • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has multiple examples, as Gai Ikari likes pink pants and Don "Doc" Dogoier also wears a fair amount of pink; plus Joe likes to bake. And in their third movie the whole team uses their Power Copying abilities to turn into a team of Pink Rangers.
    • In Ressha Sentai ToQger, the Rangers can use "Transfer Changes" to swap colors with one another, so everyone takes a turn at being a Pink Ranger a few times.
    • Stinger/Sasori Orange from Uchu Sentai Kyuranger. Mean fighter, great at sewing. He made plushies to comfort a teammate who was (essentially) hospitalized. Anyone who even implies there might be something odd about this earns a very stern look.
    • Avataro Sentai Donbrothers finally introduces the first male Pink Ranger in franchise history. However, there's a limit to how much girliness he'll go along with; while he doesn't mind wearing pink (or at least has gotten used to it by the time the show starts), he's not happy to find that Power Copying other Pink Rangers means that he takes on their appearances right down to the Minidress of Power.
  • Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It, a complete and utter bastard who is feared throughout Whitehall thanks to his liberal use of Cluster F Bombs and Country Matters, his regular threats to cut his colleagues' hearts out with spoons, and the occasional bit of good old-fashioned Glaswegian violence. When he isn't doing all of this he is busy unnerving his male co-workers by flirting with them incessantly, and at home he is into cooking and interior design. Best of all, he once shouted out "DON'T TOUCH THAT SCARF, THAT'S PAUL SMITH!" during a fight. Oh, and no one dares to laugh at him when he runs like a girl.
    • He also happens to be played by a Real Life example: Peter Capaldi is an art school graduate, is rather fond of literally wearing pink, and has described himself as "an incurable old fop". One would never guess from seeing him in character as Malcolm.
  • Top Gear's James May. On the show, he's mocked by the other two presenters Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond for having "ladies' hair", wearing flowery shirts, a love of fine wine and Bach, and generally being a pedantic nerd note . In response, James claims to be the only "proper bloke" on the show due to his love of pies, tools, fart jokes, and appreciation of cool cars, trains, aircraft and ships. In the show's challenges, he has demonstrated that he is the best shot, and he's handy with a machete. He even has his own show, James May's Man Lab, where he dedicates himself to manly pursuits, all while remaining his usual unbothered self. One could summarise him as a 'Gentlemanly Man'.
  • Ianto Jones of Torchwood, who not only frequently wears pink shirts, but also coordinated his ties and three piece suits. While not prone to violence, he did once taser a man in the head because he was holding Captain Jack and the rest of the team hostage, and shot a teammate to prevent him from risking all their lives. Also supremely badass, he head-butted a cannibal who was threatening to eat him.
  • Albert Lambreaux in Treme is a stoic construction contractor who isn't afraid to brawl with the police and hunt down a thief to beat him within an inch of his life. He's also the Big Chief of a New Orleans Indian tribe, who prance around in outrageously garish feather costumes during certain holidays. At one point, his son has to reassure him that his tribe will be "the prettiest" at the next event.
  • Daniel Meade of Ugly Betty sure does wear a lot of purple for a straight man. Who works in fashion, admittedly.
  • On Weird Creatures, naturalist Nick Baker wore a flouncy-looking black kilt while searching the outback (unsuccessfully) for the rarely-seen marsupial mole. Both he and the locals chuckled over this trope, though he insisted it was merely a good way to keep cool.
  • The West Wing: When Leo McGarry was being eulogized one of the characteristics his friends remembered was his fondness for pink shirts.
  • Winter Begonia: Yes, Shang Xirui wears dresses and generally plays female roles while onstage. No, that does not mean he can't completely curbstomp anyone badmouthing him or the people he cares about with his extensive kungfu skills/skill with a staff.
  • Without a Trace's Martin Fitzgerald has worn a pink shirt during several episodes, prompting a lot of swooning and gushing from the show's female fans.
  • Word of Honor: Wen Kexing wears lots of brightly coloured robes, including a pink one patterned with blossoms. He's also the Master of Ghost Valley and will kill anyone who gets in his way.
  • The Repair Shop: Dom, the shops metal worker, manliest of all the craftsmen/woman, knitted a scarf for Will during the shops secret Santa. Everyone in the shop was completely surprised by this talent, and even caused Will to tear up.
  • In Wynonna Earp when Wynonna gives Doc the Stone Witch's car, he claims the only thing it has going for it is its pink paint job, which he notes as being strong and masculine. Back in the 1880's, this was Truth in Televison. He's very confused when Wynonna tells him pink is now considered a "girly" color, commenting in his day that was blue.


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