One of the things I find fascinating about character designs is if a female character is not very immediately identified as a female character. To explain a bit on what I am talking about, take Minnie Mouse for example: you can tell that she is a female mouse because she has eyelashes, wears high heels and always wear dresses. A similar reason cove be given to Princess Peach, except she has long hair and her default colour is pink (a stereotypically female colour).
Forgive me for delving into the territory of comic strips for a moment, but it is essential for me to do so because this is where my first observation is made.
Take the character of Broom-Hilda. This is what she looks like:
For a long time, I have never assumed that Broom-Hilda would be a lady (she is after all, a witch), and despite the fact that she has a flower on her hat, she never exhibited too much girly stereotypes until I heard how she is voiced in the cartoons, where it was only then I know that Broom-Hilda is supposed to be a woman. Because of how unlikely Hilda is portrayed as saintly (again, she is a witch), it is honestly a bit refreshing that this is truly a female cartoon character without being overly overt in character design.
And then, there's Preteena, who once again, despite the main character's name Teena, never struck me as a girl until she started wearing certain clothes or swimsuits. The same goes with her friend Stick, whose real name I didn't know until later (it's Sabra Naomi Klein).
For reference, Teena is the leftmost one, and Stick is the second-from-left. (The rest of the characters are Gordo, Teena's childhood friend; Augustus, known as Goose, is Gordo's friend; Jeri, Teena's sister who is most definitely easily identified as a lady)
My final example is the character from Brenda Starr:
Unfortunately I cannot find the character as portrayed by June Brigman (the first time I noticed this character's design), so here's one that's portrayed in a Dick Tracy comic strip. Anyway, with a name like Hank O'Hair and the way this character dresses, one would easily mistake her as a male character. But nope, this is actually a lady, and was like this all the way from the beginning of the character's introduction. Similar to the previous example, it's only when I noticed the character in a swimsuit and the fact that she wears a skirt (comic strips don't tend to show a character's full body when unnecessary), it was like a revelation.
To cap all of this off, this one will be from an animated series instead of yet another comic strip. Here is a recent example (to my knowledge) on a character design that I didn't know is supposed to be female, but I liked that it's not so overtly female:
It's not immediately apparent, but the only one in this family of dogs that is a male is the father, which is naturally the largest one (the blue one with black on his head). The others are actually female dogs. Note that I have not heard what they sound like, but I heard of this as an example of a refreshing female character design and I agree that it is.
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To make this short, while it's still practical to have female character designs that can be easily be identifiable, it's also great to have female character designs that are not easily "womanly" at first glance because I doubt that every women (or animal for that matter) looks so sexual, and in fact constantly stereotyping them is perhaps not a good thing.
What are some other examples of female characters that are not immediately apparent that they are female?
Thank you for reading.
Forgive me for delving into the territory of comic strips for a moment, but it is essential for me to do so because this is where my first observation is made.
Take the character of Broom-Hilda. This is what she looks like:
For a long time, I have never assumed that Broom-Hilda would be a lady (she is after all, a witch), and despite the fact that she has a flower on her hat, she never exhibited too much girly stereotypes until I heard how she is voiced in the cartoons, where it was only then I know that Broom-Hilda is supposed to be a woman. Because of how unlikely Hilda is portrayed as saintly (again, she is a witch), it is honestly a bit refreshing that this is truly a female cartoon character without being overly overt in character design.
And then, there's Preteena, who once again, despite the main character's name Teena, never struck me as a girl until she started wearing certain clothes or swimsuits. The same goes with her friend Stick, whose real name I didn't know until later (it's Sabra Naomi Klein).
For reference, Teena is the leftmost one, and Stick is the second-from-left. (The rest of the characters are Gordo, Teena's childhood friend; Augustus, known as Goose, is Gordo's friend; Jeri, Teena's sister who is most definitely easily identified as a lady)
My final example is the character from Brenda Starr:
Unfortunately I cannot find the character as portrayed by June Brigman (the first time I noticed this character's design), so here's one that's portrayed in a Dick Tracy comic strip. Anyway, with a name like Hank O'Hair and the way this character dresses, one would easily mistake her as a male character. But nope, this is actually a lady, and was like this all the way from the beginning of the character's introduction. Similar to the previous example, it's only when I noticed the character in a swimsuit and the fact that she wears a skirt (comic strips don't tend to show a character's full body when unnecessary), it was like a revelation.
To cap all of this off, this one will be from an animated series instead of yet another comic strip. Here is a recent example (to my knowledge) on a character design that I didn't know is supposed to be female, but I liked that it's not so overtly female:
It's not immediately apparent, but the only one in this family of dogs that is a male is the father, which is naturally the largest one (the blue one with black on his head). The others are actually female dogs. Note that I have not heard what they sound like, but I heard of this as an example of a refreshing female character design and I agree that it is.
---
To make this short, while it's still practical to have female character designs that can be easily be identifiable, it's also great to have female character designs that are not easily "womanly" at first glance because I doubt that every women (or animal for that matter) looks so sexual, and in fact constantly stereotyping them is perhaps not a good thing.
What are some other examples of female characters that are not immediately apparent that they are female?
Thank you for reading.