Basic Trope: A tomboy who is nice and a Girly Girl who is mean.
- Straight: Sam is the Academic Athlete who is nice to the people she meets while Julie is into fashion and is a vain, spoiled Alpha Bitch.
- Exaggerated:
- Sam is a ladette and an All-Loving Heroine who battles Julie, the feminine, yet cold-hearted bitch who likes crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
- All Girly Girl characters are portrayed as jerks while all tomboyish ones are portrayed as polite.
- Downplayed:
- Sam is a Tomboy with a Girly Streak and/or is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold or Good Is Not Nice while Julie is a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak and/or is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing or Affably Evil.
- Sam is a nice, sweet cheerleader, while Julie is an Alpha Bitch Gamer Chick. While both are feminine, Sam however prefers being active and loves playing sports, in comparison to Julie, who loves softer traditionally feminine activities like sewing and giving manicures to other people.
- Sam is an introverted Jerk with a Heart of Gold who will always do the right thing in the end despite her aloof nature. Alice is a Faux Affably Evil Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who fakes kindness and uses her feminine charms to exploit others.
- Sam and Julie have similar fashion senses and they even share some interests, but Petite Pride Sam is an energetic loud Passionate Sports Girl who gets along with the boys better than Buxom Head-Turning Beauty Julie, who likes gossips and looks down with anyone but the Girl Posse and her Mr. Fanservice boyfriend.
- Julie is a dark feminine cynical Ice Queen but still has some Hidden Heart of Gold moments, while Sam is a Bifauxnen and generally a nice girl but had many moments of assertiveness, aggressiveness, and meanness.
- Both of them are Heroines but Sam is a boyish All-Loving Heroine while Julie is a girly anti-heroine.
- Both of them are Villainesses but Sam is a boyish Affably Evil while Julie is a girly Complete Monster.
- Both can be qualified as jerks with hearts of gold, it's just that Sam leans more on the Heart of Gold part while Julie leans more on the Jerk part.
- Justified:
- Julie is popular for her feminine nature, giving her power that goes to her head. Meanwhile, Sam is unpopular and sympathizes with other outcasts.
- Sam gets along better with the male protagonists due to shared interests and traits, while Julie is a Straw Feminist who believes that everything masculine is toxic.
- Sam came from a poor but honest family of farmers and manual workers, as well as had many brothers she shared interests like video games and mechanics with. Julie is a spoiled, pampered, inner-city, only child Valley Girl obsessed with pop culture, who leads a popular clique and looks down on dirty people and boyish hobbies.
- Inverted:
- Sam is a Tomboy and the aggressive, Hotblooded Barbaric Bully, while Julie is the sweet-hearted, mild-mannered Proper Lady.
- Class Princess Fashionista Julie is an All-Loving Heroine, while The Lad-ette Sam is a Straw Feminist.
- Gender-Inverted:
- Big Man on Campus Samuel is a Lovable Jock while Julius is a Nerdy Bully.
- Samuel is a brutal boxer yet a calm and humbled nice guy who only fights in the ring while Julius is a Fashionista and is also a Hotblooded, judgemental Jerkass.
- Sam is a well-mannered sensitive Nice Guy and enjoys cooking and sewing while Julius is an aggressive big bully Jerk Jock.
- Subverted:
- As time goes on, Sam becomes meaner while Julie becomes nicer.
- Sam's kindness is all an act while Julie is shown to have a Jerkass Façade.
- Alternately, Sam is nice just because she wants to make someone fall for her while Julie's jerkass behavior is just because of her Tsundere personality.
- Sam is actually a Dude Looks Like a Lady.
- Double Subverted:
- Sam becomes more feminine and goes by "Samantha" after she became a bitch. Meanwhile Julie becomes more tomboyish and goes by "Jules" after she became a nice gal.
- Sam realizes she is so mean and becomes nicer. Meanwhile Julie is Drunk with Power and turns to be a vain bitch.
- Sam is a Sweet Polly Oliver.
- Parodied: All female characters are increasingly mean depending on their level of femininity.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Both Sam and Julie's morality and personalities vary Depending on the Writer.
- Sam is usually nice but she is mean towards Bob and her own siblings. Meanwhile, Julie is usually mean but she can be nice toward her friends and her own family.
- Sam and Julie keep Personality Swapping throughout the series, while sometimes Julie is meaner than Sam, sometimes Sam is meaner than Julie.
- While Sam is nice and Julie is mean, some tomboys are mean and some girly girls are nice. There seems to be a fair balance between nice tomboys, mean tomboys, mean girly girls, and nice girly girls.
- Averted:
- Both Sam and Julie are lovable, considerate, affectionate nice girls.
- Alternatively: Both Sam and Julie are insufferable, cold-hearted, unscrupulous, selfish bitches who hates everyone around them including their own family members.
- Neither Sam nor Julie is seen as particularly nice or mean.
- Sam and Julie are either both tomboys, or both girly girls.
- Enforced:
- The author notices how tomboys are typically portrayed as rude, mean and aggressive while girly girls are nice, gentle, and passive, and this gave him an idea to create two new female characters with inverted personalities.
- Alternatively: The author was bullied by an Alpha Bitch and/or have negative experiences with feminine mother or girlfriend and can't get over it. So they portrays a tomboyish character as nice and a girly character as a jerk in order.
- Lampshaded: "You'd think the girly girl would be nice, but she's awful." "It gets better. That scruffy-looking girl who plays basketball and wears a spiked collar and combat boots? She's the nice one!"
- Invoked:
- Sam tries to be nicer because she doesn't want to be a rude tomboy, while Julie thinks being nice isn't satisficactory enough while being a mean brat is cooler, so she becomes a jerk.
- Julie starts taking revenge against people who treated her badly due to her girliness. Meanwhile, Sam has no reason to take revenge because she can get away from them and she has been already Easily Forgiven by everyone else.
- A misogynistic wizard who is a firm believer in Real Women Don't Wear Dresses casts a spell that will turn all feminine women ranging from tomboys with girly streaks to full blown girly girls into jerksnote so that people will think his cynical view on feminine women was right all along.note
- Exploited: The Jerkass tomboys use Sam as an excuse of the reason why they're superior to girly girls.
- Defied: "Tomboys are jerks and girly girls are nice! EVERYONE knows that!"
- Discussed: "Why this boyish girl is nicer than a girly one?"
- Conversed:Alice: "Why does this show think that being girly is the exact same thing as being a dick?!"
Billie: "Girly girls aren't always delicate and they can even be More Deadly Than the Male, also plenty of Sensitive Guy protagonists have Jerk Jock rivals, so I guess it's only fair to avoid a Double Standard."- “Finally! A Tomboy and Girly Girl pairing where the tomboy is the nice one, while the girly girl is the mean one, instead of vice versa!”
- Implied: Sam and Julie aren't especially characterized beyond their clothing and activities, but people are a lot more friendly to Sam.
- Deconstructed:
- People start hating Julie due to her Jerkass behavior, so everyone abandons Julie and sides with Sam, even her Girl Posse friends.
- Sam has a crush on Bob, but he chooses Julie instead and rejects Sam's kindness due to her boyish appearance and behaviors, causing her Tomboy Angst thoughts.
- Julie is so mean to the point where people can’t even tolerate girls being traditionally feminine without the thought of Julie’s cruelty coming to their minds. To make matters even worse, Sam being a Nice Girl leads to the people who hate Julie’s guts thinking that being girly is mean and being boyish is nice according to the way Sam and Julie behaves. This leads to a
horrible stereotype about girly girls, and a shunning of feminine women that could have been avoided if Julie wasn’t such a jerkass.
- Reconstructed:
- Then Daphne, Julie's former friend, becomes the new Alpha Bitch who is also Drunk with Power and Face–Heel Turn into a relentlessly mean Girly Girl.
- In the end, Sam accepts herself as she is and embraces her boyish activities, While Bob realizes that Julie is a bad girlfriend.
- None of the characters are stupid enough to think all girly girls are as mean as Julie. Plus the show has plenty of Tomboy and Girly Girl characters of various levels of morality and common sense favoring neither of them, even if Sam and Julie in isolation would seem to be playing it straight. So people are able to distinguish gender expression from morality.
- Alternately, Julie has her Jerkass Realization by the sheer thought of something like this happening if she continues her abrasive behavior. So she becomes a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and shows everyone that Good Is Not Nice.
- As mean as Julie was, she was never outright sexist, while the femininity shaming mob are already the Hate Sink characters. As a result, they have officially grown worse than Julie.
- Played For Laughs: Whenever Sam becomes more boyish, she's also Took a Level in Kindness as well. By the time she reaches the Testosterone Poisoning Dumb Jock tier, her meanness is as low as her intelligence. Meanwhile Julie is a Bratty Teenage Brainless Beauty who is comically petty and harmless.
- Played For Drama:
- Julie bullies and harasses Sam for not being feminine and pretty enough, causing Sam to hate her masculine behaviors and activities, and even begins to contemplate suicide due to it.
- A Henpecked Husband version of Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple; Sam always caves to Julie's decisions, even if she doesn't really agree with her. Sam never stands for herself even if Julie abuse her.
- Played for Horror: Sam is the cop in a horror movie who is hired to take down Julie, a Faux Affably Evil Serial Killer who enjoys indulging in Cold-Blooded Torture and/or Cruel and Unusual Deaths.
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