Misused: Biker Babe

Biker Babe is a trope that, IMO, is barely a trope. Its description boils down to "attractive badass female biker" with a mention that it's the Distaff Counterpart to Badass Biker. The on-page examples were a mess of ZCEs, so I was curious if the same problem persisted to the wicks. Because the trope is so broad, I was picky with the criteria requiring all four aspects for a valid example, as I also checked to see if BB has descended into chairs.

The wick check determined that the trope suffers greatly from misuse. To the point I did not find one correct example in the wick check. Most of the misuse is complete Zero-Context Example entries — either just the trope name, or the trope name with the name of a character. The next most significant usage boils down to partial context examples, which were most likely to not include 2 aspects (7) with the most commonly excluded aspects being character's supposed badassery (13) and attractiveness (12). An overview of the summaries found here:

• Correct Usage || 0/50
• Missing one - three aspect(s) || 14/50
• Other Misuse || 1/50
• Pothole || 5/50
• Complete ZCE || 30/50

So, with a 0% correct usage rate, I don't see how we can save this. Looking over the PCEs, a lot of them boil down to "female character rides a motorcycle" which isn't tropeworthy. Perhaps if there was a large effort to fully contextualize the examples, we might be able to tell how much correct usage we might have, so we can maybe pop this over to a short-term project thread, but it might waste away and nothing gets done. We could cut the trope and/or redirect it to Badass Biker as a Distaff Counterpart, and clean house. There is also the potential to yard the concept of a "biker girl" if there are enough differences from Badass Biker to separate it as a trope (and it might be, might not). There's also the possibility to disambiguate Biker Babe between Badass Biker and Hood Ornament Hottie, although none of the wicks I checked mistook BB for HOH. No matter what, a large majority of wicks will need to be deleted/commented out.

Possible Courses of Action:

• Keep trope as-is and move to ST/LT Projects to fully contextualize and clean up examples.
• Cut the trope.
• Redirect Biker Babe to Badass Biker.
• Disambiguate.

to redirect to Badass Biker

Redirect

Redirect sounds good.

for redirecting.

Redirect

Majority of use is pure ZCE and no correct use, yeah, just redirect.

Since it's basically "Badass Biker but female", move everything to Badass Biker then.

Redirect

+1 to redirect.

That sounds fine. I think "motorcycles have sex appeal" could be a thing but this is not it.

Redirect

Remove the ones that don't include mention of badassery then transfer the rest + redirect.

Redirect.

Personally, I'm gonna go against the grain and vote for the contexualize and clean up examples option. If it passes, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and start the thread myself; if it's voted down, I'm willing to take the yarded concept to TRS under a different name.

I mean, you can put your money where your mouth is now and try and contextualize the examples on the wick check to show that suck a thing is even possible.

I can see the concept of a female character being notable for driving fast vehicles (which is seen as a male thing) being tropeworthy, similar to how the Passionate Sports Girl and Gamer Chick tropes exist. But if ZCE are that bad, this likely needs an entirely new name/description.

I'm not sure if the "badass" part, or being a Distaff Counterpart to Badass Biker, is supposed to be all that important. This is supposed to be a fanservice/attractiveness trope, not a badass one. Of course, most of the examples checked didn't mention the character being considered attractive any more than being badass (I think there's one example that would move from PCE to correct if "badass" weren't required), which just shows that as it stands this is being treated as chairs.

Edited by MorganWick on Aug 3rd 2022 at 10:51:00 AM

For fanservice we can yard Hot Bikes (Hood Ornament Hottie?) and Hot Leather (if Spy Catsuit and Hell-Bent for Leather doesn't work out) since these are what make Biker Babe tropeeworthy.

I'm not sure if Hot Bikes would be redundant with Hood Ornament Hottie, and thankfully, that is one misuse issue that Biker Babe isn't suffering from.

Well, if you want some proof of concept, I can turn this:

• Golden Boy has one, in the fifth episode of the anime. She has a....strong attachment to her motorcycle.

To this:

• Golden Boy: The OVA's fifth episode introduces Reiko, a young woman who loves her motorcycle and uses it to pull all kinds of badass daredevil stunts. Kintaro finds her very attractive.

You think I did a good job adding sufficent context?

Does Kintaro like her because she's a biker, or for some other reason unrelated to her biking (her voice, her eyes, non-biking clothing)? That is the crux of the argument.

Pitching my vote to redirect.

Is it though? I don't think characters often list out the traits which make someone attractive, but if the narrative framing lingers on windswept/shaved hair, roughed leather, casually leaning forward over the handlebars while a powerful engine quietly rumbles beneath them, it seems obvious it's meant to be seen as attractive to the audience (or at least the author) whether anyone actually comments on it or not.

...is there even really much of a difference between "character has a trait which makes them attractive" and "character is attractive and this extends to their traits"?

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Aug 4th 2022 at 6:44:09 PM