Welcome, traveller, welcome to Omsk
Yeah, I agree. Unfortunate Implications abound.
It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird
Having not seen the show, the trope probably doesn't apply to it. The main characters seem to be kids and are depicted comically, not sexy. So I would really be surprised if adult women watched the show just for the male characters attractiveness.
A 10 year old girl might find the characters to be cute, but I don't think that would count. In part because she would fall into the target demographic.
Cool Loser
Confusingly, Testosterone Brigade also includes a number of works that don't seem to be about sex appeal, e.g. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn reminded soldiers of home, Daria was well-written and snarky, and Game of Thrones... had hot women which fortunately distracted men from the brutal violence and political scheming that they otherwise would have hated(?).
Edited by RLH4 on Jan 15th 2024 at 12:18:57 PM
RJ Savoy
"Show aimed at a male demographic gets an unexpected female audience" could be meaningful if restricted to cases where the creators said they leaned into that audience, like some mangaka on Shounen Jump have. Otherwise it's covered by the likes of Sex Sells and Periphery Demographic. And A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was never aimed at a specific audience in the first place.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
I don't think the creators have to say it, there are some genres that are assumed to appeal to certain demographics.
TLDR: I feel like "group thinks X is hot" isn't tropeworthy on its own, as that was why Evil Is Sexy was disambiguated, but "Women like X work because Y is hot" could be covered by Just Here For Godzilla and Periphery Demographic, and avoid sweeping generalizations that fall into stereotyping. Idk I just saw one example on Xiaolin Showdown that annoyed me because it said "There's a surprising number of female fans of this show, and that could be due to the attractive male characters" and it rubbed me the wrong way because it felt like it was saying "Girls only like it because of this thing!", which is even something the trope description for Estrogen Brigade mentions:
Edited by RainbowPumpqueen on Jan 15th 2024 at 8:13:43 PM
Sandbox help wanted.