Misused: Attractive Bent Gender

Though Attractive Bent-Gender was already added to No Real Life Examples, Please!, I think it ought to be In-Universe Examples Only as well; as an audience reaction, it's pretty tawdry stuff. Making the trope in-universe only would entail a well-deserved cleaning of the examples list, which also happens to contain a ridiculous number of zero-context and weblink examples.

edited 8th Sep '14 12:29:22 PM by Prfnoff

Sounds like a reasonable approach.

Viewers just finding a character attractive under such circumstances is not a trope, but characters finding another character attractive under such circumstances is a trope.

Also this is a trope that happens in-universe quite a bit, making it in-universe only should be easy enough.

What about characters that are clearly intended to be attractive (i.e. they are shown in skimpy clothing, demonstrate standard looks for a character deemed attracteive and are subject to fanservice shots) but do not get any actual comments on it. Isn't that a trope?

Yes. In-universe is more than a character explicitly pointing at something and saying "Hey, trope!" If the work treats a gender-bent character as attractive, with lots of male gaze or whatever, it doesn't require someone talking about how attractive they are. Though in the case of appearance tropes like this, you can usually see it in the other characters' reactions anyway, even if they don't actually say it.

I think writing a permissive disclaimer like that into the description would be a bad idea. Tropers might take it as a license to add the sort of "seriously, just take a look" examples that plague some other tropes about characters' looks and voices.

Even though this thread has overwhelmingly supported the proposal, I also created a pro-forma Single Proposition crowner for it, since it'll involve a major amount of example cleaning.

Instead of saying something like "the characters do not have to say it you can tell by how the work frames the person" and just say something like "ways you can tell a character is meant to be attractive in-universe:

• Other character comment on how good they look
• Other character give bent gender character looks that indicate interest; leers, stares, blushes, looking at areas such as the chest and butt
• Camera treats that character as attractive, may use Eating the Eye Candy pan, or shows signs of Male Gaze
• Character constantly shown in revealing clothing or in 'sexy' situations or poses
• Character prominently displayed as bent gender on promotional material with the same exploitative camera/ poses/ costumes "

I think that will encourage people to examine how the works is saying a character is attractive and actually give context to the examples rather that just saying "OMG Bridgette is so hot guys"

Honestly, a casual glance at the page didn't find a whole lot of misuse, other than weblinks and zero context stuff, which isn't a problem specific to this page. All the examples I saw pretty much were in universe.

I suppose you could have a case where everyone in universe says the character is unattractive, but the camera angles and Male Gaze clearly show the reverse is true. I'd probably call that a subversion rather than actual misuse however.

You are right most of the examples appear to be supported by the work they are in. This should be pretty easy.

I think that if you can somehow show that it's In-Universe or definitely intended it would probably fit.

I don't think lack of misuse would be a problem in this case, since I don't think it's a trope if it's just what some troper thinks. How attractive a character is isn't interesting. How a character is shown to be attractive is, on the other hand, since that's a storytelling device, and in this case, how that works out for the involved characters.

It appears that the misuse is not so obvious as I thought. Someone just taking a "casual glance" would see the anime examples, which are generally OK, rather than the live-action film examples, which are mostly not. The examples that provide the page quote and image are poorly explained, if they qualify at all.

edited 11th Sep '14 5:15:12 AM by Prfnoff

I'd like to see a few more votes for the crowner (currently at 11 yeas to 5 nays) before it gets called.

This is looking decisive; calling for making this an In Universe Examples Only trope.

edited 17th Sep '14 5:08:13 PM by Willbyr

I've added Attractive Bent-Gender to the In-Universe Examples Only list and tagged it as such on the page. There's more cleanup to be done here, but does this mean anything needs to be changed about it also being No Real Life Examples, Please!?

The No Real Life Examples, Please! thing can be left alone, methinks.

I've just gotten around to cleaning out the Live-Action Film example section, removing all examples that didn't look legitimate enough (as well as the page quote). The removed examples are below; some of them are likely legitimate cases, but lack proper context.

Gender-bending character looks hot (presumably to audiences):

• Angel from RENT
• Dil in The Crying Game - and, in fact, the actor who plays her - makes a stunningly beautiful woman.
• Dr. Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Crossdressed actor looks hot (often with weblinks):

• Leslie Cheung: in◊ various◊ films◊ like this◊
• Goodbye Charlie has a dead mobster come back to life as the beautiful Debbie Reynolds. In a 1984 failed pilot for a TV series, he's Suzanne Somers.
• Switch (a loose and unofficial remake of Goodbye Charlie) has Perry King "trading up" to Ellen Barkin.
  • Though it's more a case of a handsome man◊ becoming an attractive woman.
• Barry Watson (and some would say Michael Rosenbaum) in Sorority Boys.
• In Back To The Future Part II, Michael J. Fox plays several of Marty's family members, including his future daughter. He makes a pretty good looking girl.◊
• Rare example of a female to male, but in Boys Dont Cry about the real life murder of Brandon Teena, who was a trans man, Hillary Swank not only looked convincingly male, but was not bad-looking.
• Breakfast on Pluto goes to show that Cillian Murphy makes an awfully pretty girl.◊
• Cillian also cross-dresses in the movie Peacock. He is...alluring.
• Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie. Charles Durning's character said something near the end of the movie to the effect of "The only reason you're still alive is that I never kissed you."
• Billy Crudup made quite the popular and attractive lady when he played one of the last of the Restoration era boy players Ned Kynaston in Stage Beauty.
• Stephen Dorff in I Shot Andy Warhol.
• A female version of this is seen in the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There. Cate Blanchett portrays the "electric" Dylan, and looks very good while doing so, gaining quite a female following.
• Jeffrey Donovan played a crossdressing character in the obscure 1997 thriller Catherine's Grove. He looks pretty fetching as a woman.
• John Cameron Mitchell as the titular character in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Even with a good gendar, you have to keep reminding yourself he's a guy.
• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: Guy Pearce.
• Gael Garcia Bernal in Bad Education.
• Let's not forget about Jude Law◊ in the film Rage.
• Believe it or not, Steve Buscemi in the 1994 film Somebody To Love.

Too difficult to tell if they're examples or not:

• The classic Hollywood version of this trope is Some Like It Hot, whose final lines provide the page quote.
• Subverted in Victor/Victoria, with the man dressed as a woman actually being a woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman. (and when a man dons one of her outfits, he is certainly not convincingly female.)
• This is the central theme of the film Zerophilia, which centers around a character whose sex changes back and forth several times throughout.
• Tilda Swinton has done this twice: As the title character in Orlando. Orlando starts off as a rather attractive man in Renaissance England when, enamoured by his beauty, Queen Elizabeth I orders him never to age (so he doesn't). Roughly 150 years later, after seeing the horrors of war that he is expected to endure as a man, Orlando goes into a days-long sleep, only to wake and find himself transformed into a woman.
• Will Keenan as Casey in Terror Firmer, when it's revealed he's the mysterious woman who's been committing all the murders on the set.

On the topic of this trope do transsexual characters count or not?

I'd say if they haven't changed physically because of it, but it's certainly a grey area.

I've gotten back to the wick-cleansing after nearly a year of unexcused absence. It's still a horribly daunting task, but I've brought the number of wicks to under 1,000.

Some of the out-of-universe examples should be reclassified as Rule 63.

I vote in favour of making it In Universe Examples Only. Most of the time, if the character falls under this trope, they're shown as being considered sexy In-Universe anyway, with that kind of being that point.

EDIT: Nevermind, it's been called. I'm a bit of a noob to the whole wick cleansing thing, but it looks like all the Trope Repair Shop threads I look at are dealt with.

edited 3rd Sep '15 10:37:44 AM by DarkPhoenix94

I thought the In-Universe version of this trope was Sweet on Polly Oliver?

No, that's a subtrope for there being actually a romance or at least an attempt at courting. You can acknowledge someone as attractive without wanting to get in their pants.

Sweet on Polly Oliver is a specific subtrope for when a character thinks that the person they're attracted to is a member of their non-preferred sex, but it's actually a member of their preferred sex in disguise. For example, Bob, an otherwise straight man, has the hots for Alan, who's actually Alice in disguise. If Bob is also attracted to Carol, who's actually Carl in drag, that's an in-universe example of Attractive Bent-Gender that is not Sweet on Polly Oliver.

Should we add in respensive's list? To repeat:

"ways you can tell a character is meant to be attractive in-universe:

• Other character comment on how good they look
• Other character give bent gender character looks that indicate interest; leers, stares, blushes, looking at areas such as the chest and butt
• Camera treats that character as attractive, may use Eating the Eye Candy pan, or shows signs of Male Gaze
• Character constantly shown in revealing clothing or in 'sexy' situations or poses
• Character prominently displayed as bent gender on promotional material with the same exploitative camera/ poses/ costumes "

Or we can use the same format that's been used elsewhere such as Amazonian Beauty. Copied for convienence: "Finally, is she accompanied by tropes which emphasize Fanservice, Beauty, and/or Attractiveness? Examples: Strip Perific, Male Gaze, She Cleans Up Nicely, Beautiful All Along, Show Some Leg, etc."

Also, I think Polly Oliver applies only when the genderhiding is for some agenda, such as 'entering a male-only miltary'. Drag queens, just for fun, and such don't count.

edited 17th Sep '15 10:52:17 PM by hellomoto