Stay In The Kitchen / Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Marceline's ex-boyfriend (who stole her memory of her breaking up with him so he could keep her as his girlfriend) tells her she needs to get back in the kitchen and make him dinner. She responds by kicking him right between the legs. This is followed by Finn jumping on him and a super-sized Jake crushing him beneath his foot.
• Duke Igthorn says this almost verbatim in the Adventures of the Gummi Bears episode "You Snooze, You Lose" while attacking Castle Dunwyn:
  Calla: Your ogres won't get in here without a smarter general!
  Igthorn: Why don't you run off to the kitchen, little girl, and make me some tea? I'll be joining you in just a moment!
  Calla: What's that supposed to mean?!
  [one minute later, Calla's catapulted him into the woods]
• One Aladdin: The Series episode has the Sultan tell Jasmine it is too dangerous and she should stay behind. Never mind that she'd already taken a level in badass between the movie and the series and that there is a semi-phenomenal, nearly cosmic genie around. She responds to this by disguising herself as one of the guards and saving Aladdin. A later episode had Sultan upset because Aladdin was telling him to stay behind from rescuing Jasmine because he was too old.
• Played for one-off jokes in The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan. Anne the tomboy has to put up with "just a girl" comments from her brothers now and then, but it's clear they're just busting her chops and at the end of the day think of her as their equal.
• American Dad!: "Stan of Arabia: Part 1" has Stan sing a musical number about how he wants Francine to adhere more to this trope.
  Stan: I want to be greeted with a massage and a martini, the way Master was by his Jeannie!
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Women in the Northern Water Tribe are expected to use their waterbending for healing purposes only, and leave the combat to men. In fact, a big plot point in the Northern Tribe episodes is to have Katara making them realize that this attitude is harmful — especially in regards to Master Pakku, possibly the most powerful Waterbender alive at the time, who gets some karmic retribution, as he realizes that his chauvinism cost him the love of his life: Kanna, Katara and Sokka's grandmother and his Runaway Bride, who fled to the Southern Water Tribe (the opposite pole of the world) to escape the strict gender rules. Since Pakku did genuinely love Kanna, and one of the reasons he was so bitter against women was her rejection of him, this counts doubly and is vital to his Character Development and acceptance of Katara. And by the Grand Finale, Pakku gets Kanna's forgiveness and they tie the knot.
  • The Southern Water Tribe is more progressive in its attitudes towards women since female waterbenders are seen fighting in flashbacks, but Sokka plays it straight at first, then gets character development after meeting Suki. The next time he meets her, he now has an overly protective attitude, since his last girlfriend turned into the moon. As it turns out, the only reason she came along in the first place was that she had the same attitude toward him.
  • The Fire Nation averts this since women are at every level of authority — you see female Yu Yan Archers, female guards, and no one is gonna tell Princess Azula, Ty Lee, or Mai to stay behind unless they want to be chi-blocked into paralysis, skewered, or roasted. The only exception was in the finale when Azula was told to stay home by her father, but that was more due to her father seeing both of his children as rather disposable and not her gender. She didn't take it well. Come the time of the Sequel Series, The Legend of Korra, Zuko's daughter Izumi is the Firelord and one of three female heads of state in the show, the other being the Earth Queen who gets assassinated and Eska.
• Touched in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Harley and Ivy", where Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy team up, and grumble about the lack of respect they get from males. At one point they briefly get the upper hand on Batman and ask him if he is bothered by being beaten by "mere girls".
  Batman: Man or woman, a sick mind is capable of anything.
  Poison Ivy: A very enlightened statement, Batman. We'll carve it on your headstone.
• Batman Beyond: One episode uses this by having a man tell his wife to "Get back in the kitchen!" to show off how horrible a father he is, which is why his son tries to escape his life (it's a Drug Aesop episode). It has since gone under Memetic Mutation.
• Ben 10:
  • A variation of this occurs in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien after Kevin's Heel–Face Turn. After Kevin suffers With Great Power Comes Great Insanity, Ben insists that he's too far gone and it's time to Shoot the Dog. Gwen continues to argue they should find another way with Ben, and later Max, both state that she should just stay out of the way. More because Gwen is Kevin's girlfriend than anything else, she would try and stop them.
  • There's also an example of this in the original Ben 10 series. When Ben, Gwen, and Max arrive at a Navajo festival they're attacked by an alien that is first believed to be a Yenaldooshi. When Wes, an old friend of Max's, prepares to go out and track it down, he refuses to allow his granddaughter to join them and says "You know only Braves (all who are men) can be trackers." This also extends to Gwen, who obviously objects and has been helping since the beginning, but Max simply replies "Their land, their rules."
• The Biker Mice from Mars occasionally treat Charlene like this—even though she's not burdened with an ego as massive as they are.
• One Care Bears episode depicts Braveheart as the captain of a ship who believes that boys can handle fights better than girls. During an attack on their ship by pirates, Braveheart puts the Duchess he was transporting in the captain's quarters for safety. Unfortunately, he did this right when the Duchess was overpowering the leader of the pirates.
• Used against Chowder by Gorgonzola in a baseball-like game. And he really would prefer to go back.
• Numbuh 19th Century from Codename: Kids Next Door believes that girls are inferior to boys, as he holds antiquated views from his original time period, the early 1800s. When he is thawed out after having been frozen in time, he is appalled to see that there are female KND operatives in the present day. Numbuh 86 arrives with the intent of decommissioning him (as he is technically "like, forty-eight kamillion years old!"), and the very first thing he does is tell her to make herself useful by cooking and doing his laundry. He is subsequently clobbered by her.
• In Daria, combining this trope with Obnoxious In-Laws: after Jake's heart attack, the family is visited by his mother, Ruth, whose more traditional views on homemaking clash with her Workaholic daughter-in-law, Helen. Later, Daria hears her and Jake talking about their bad memories of Jake's father, and Ruth admits that she'd do a lot of things differently if she had the chance. The next time Daria hears her berating Helen she brings this up, and Ruth seems to realize that her attitude isn't really helping things.
• Inverted in Ed, Edd n Eddy: the Kanker Sisters view the Eds (and men in general) as weak and more fit for housework. It's implied that this view comes from their mother, who is implied to have had several bad romances.
• In The Flintstones, Fred often made comments like this towards his wife Wilma, but this was more of the Innocent Bigotry variety.
• Futurama:
  • Master Fnog in "Raging Bender" refused to send Leela, his best student, to the Junior Karate Championships, instead sending the two students she defeated in the qualifiers, because he claimed she did not have the Will of the Warrior - which according to him, only men can possess. Later, Leela encounters him during Bender's final bout in the Ultimate Robot Fighting League as the trainer of a new star, Destructor. She eventually uncovers Fnog was cheating and though he still taunts her for being a woman, she gets to beat him.
  • Also shows up in "A Bicyclops Built for Two", where Leela meets a surviving man of her species, who seems nice at first but acts increasingly sexist towards her. It turns out he wants women to stay at home because if they wandered too far from their mansions, they might discover the other mansions containing the other women he's seduced.
  • In "Insane in the Mainframe", Fry thinks he's a robot and Leela tries to get him to snap out of it.
    Leela: I'm going to remind Fry of his humanity the way only a woman can.
    Professor Farnsworth: You're going to do his laundry? [slap]
  • "Roswell that Ends Well" has the cast sent back to Rosewell, New Mexico in the year 1947. As part of the preparations to get back to their own time, Leela and the Professor have to buy a new microwave. Because this is before microwaves were invented, the appliance store salesman they speak to tries to convince Leela to buy a state-of-the-art oven, pointing out one of the features being a basin to soak her feet. "Since, as a woman, you'll be standing in front of it all day." After Leela "accidentally" hits him with the oven door and coolly repeats her request for a microwave, the salesman decides she's hysterical and only interacts with the Professor.
    Salesman: This baby can cook a roast in five hours.
    Professor Farnsworth: Ohh, that's good news! You know, you really don't cook enough roasts, Leela.
    [Leela sets his tie on fire with a burner]
• Hudson in Gargoyles tried to pull this. Once. Doesn't work well.
• Inverted in the Hercules: The Animated Series episode "Hercules and the Girdle of Hippolyte". Herc and resident Amazon classmate Tempest get into an argument during a Home Economics class. Taking Phil's lead, Hercules insists that Tempest do all the work, on the grounds that she's a girl, so of course she has to do the housework. Tempest, being an Amazon, was raised to believe that men are the ones who should do all the housework. Later Herc actually meets Tempest's parents. When her father intervenes in her mother's overly militaristic handling of Tempest's mistakes her mother actually tells him to "Get back in the kitchen." He refuses and then delivers the episode's aesop.
• In the Canadian short Hot Stuff, when the caveman's wife tries to advise him not to listen to the gods (again) when they offer to give him warmth, he tells her to stay out of it, with his snake adding "Go back to your apple turnovers!".
• Parodied in a Justice League episode in which the team ended up stuck in a reality based on a comic book from the fifties. It, therefore, wasn't considered at all awkward for the only female member of the '50s-esque team to suggest to Hawkgirl that they go get cookies while the "men" talked out the whole dangerous supervillain issue. The Flash is amused. Hawkgirl... isn't.
  Hawkgirl: One word and you'll be the Fastest Man Alive with a limp.
• Kaeloo: In Episode 130, Mr. Cat says that he believes that girls and women should cook and do housework. He puts a bow and an apron on Kaeloo, makes her stand in the kitchen, and asks her to cook something while he sits on the couch and watches sports on TV. Kaeloo doesn't take this very well - she winds up Hulking Out and then chasing him around with the frying pan.
• King of the Hill: This is Cotton Hill's general attitude toward women, he gets called out on it several times especially from Peggy, especially during the episode where Bobby started imitating him. In the episode "Goodbye Normal Jeans", Peggy inverts this trope by telling Bobby to "get out of her kitchen".
• The Looney Tunes Show: Downplayed with Frank Russo, Tina's father, in the episode "Daffy Duck, Esquire". He makes it clear that he wants his daughter to be with some who can support her to the point that Daffy pretends to be a lawyer to get his approval. Originally liking Daffy because he seemed to fit his view as a good boyfriend, he starts to dislike him because he's too much of a "Workaholic" to spend time with his girlfriend. Eventually, Frank realizes Tina can take care of herself and now wants her to be with someone who can actually spend time with her. Eventually, Daffy comes clean and manages to get Frank to like him, somewhat.
• In the Mega Man cartoon made by Ruby-Spears, in the first episode Roll is explicitly told to stay home because Mega Man doesn't need a "girl robot" getting in his way. However, this only happens in early episodes, and she still goes out to fight in spite of it. By the fourth episode, it's never brought up again.
• Self-inflicted variation in The Penguins of Madagascar: a faulty DNA test convinces Skipper he's actually female, and so he intentionally starts acting in a way he considers feminine, e.g. by wearing a pink bow, refusing to get into "dangerous" situations, and (horror of horrors) asking for directions.
• The Powerpuff Girls had exactly 2 episodes in its entire six-season run about sexism. One was a Take That! at Straw Feminism, but the other involved the girls meeting this trope when they tried to join a Justice League expy.
• In the Rugrats (1991) episode, "Aunt Miriam", the title character makes it clear to Didi that she thinks Didi should be a "full-time mother" rather than continue to teach.
• Subverted in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Donner tells his wife to stay in the cave ("No. This is man's work.") simply because he feels responsible for Rudolph having run away and believes that he should be the one to look for him; the whole gender roles thing was merely a convenient excuse.
• The Simpsons:
  • Played with in the episode "She Used to Be My Girl". At a conference for women, Homer tells Marge to stay there while he goes to rescue Lisa, whereupon he's booed by the women. He then says that he'll stay there, and Marge can go and rescue Lisa, to which he's booed again. Homer then asks the women what they want (and they both end up going).
  • In the King Kong (1933) parody segment in "Treehouse of Horror III", Smithers avers that "women and seamen don't mix" while the crew is sailing to Ape Island with Marge in tow. Given what we now know about Smithers, this could be interpreted another way.
    Mr. Burns: We all know what you think.
• SpacePOP has a particularly forced example with Captain Hansome, whose first few missions have him asking the girls to spy on things and report back, which they disobey and end up destroying Geela's weapons. He also attempts to break in and rescue them during another mission, only for them to rescue him and demand he treats them with respect from then on. Despite this, he still does it on occasion, and it's made worse by Luna's crush on him, ignoring how he treats her and her friends.
• In Super 4, this is Pirate Girl Ruby the Red's Berserk Button. Tell her that she should stay in the kitchen, that girls are too fragile to fight, that she should switch her cutlass for a rolling pin, or any variation thereof, and you're certain to have a swordfight on your arms. Then again, she used to be a tavern wench in a pirate town, and she heard this during her whole childhood from the macho pirates, so it's understandable that she'd be sick of it.
• Lampshaded by Donatello in an episode of the first series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: "No, April. It's too dangerous. You wouldn't last 5 minutes in a ninja pizza parlor!" [turns towards Fourth Wall] "I love saying lines like that!"
• Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: Referenced a few times in the show. In "I Am Marie Curie", Marie isn't allowed to go to university because she's a girl. In "I Am Susan B. Anthony", Susan says that at her time, only men could vote.

---