r/TopCharacterTropes • • Sep 06 '26

miscellaneous Tropes that became problematic

The Persistent Suitor: A guy who is after the girl and just wont take no for an answer. Nowadays we just call stalking and harassment, but it used to be romantic. Example: The Notebook (2004), Noah asks Allie out while she's on a date with another man. She refuses, but he threatens to let go and fall unless she agrees to go out with him.

Comedic Woman On Man Violence: Mostly seen in anime, recently it has decreased a lot but years back every show had a woman hitting a guy and showed it as funny. Example: Toradora!, where the quintessential tsundere, Taiga, beats up the MC regularly.

Kid Bags Adult Baddie: I remember a few of these, sometimes it was to show how cool and awesome a kid was because an adult woman fell for him, now it's just seen as problematic shit. Example: Blank Check, the woman likes the kid and kisses him telling him to look for her in 10 years.

14.2k Upvotes

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

388

u/Altayrmcneto Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26

It can be polemic, but “Women which are Mean, but Competent Bosses”, precisely the ones like Miranda Priestly, which was stronger last decade.

Why? Because they appear to be progressive, but it only reinforces the patriarchal structure by giving for some women key positions from where they can absorve most of the criticism while doing the same like men in her position.

The system is bad? No, the boss that is mean, but look how cool is to have such empowered woman as leadership!

29

u/Francytj Sep 06 '26

I don't know if Miranda is the best example. I remember a scene making a small comment on it, the one where she's dealing with the aftermath of her husband leaving and she says something along the lines of "[quotes newspaper headline] Snow Queen drives another one away. If I were a man, no one would bat an eye."

She wasn't really an attempt at progressiveness, she was a parody/critique of Anna Wintour

I completely agree with your point, though! I just wanted to defend Devil Wears Prada lol

18

u/ZeronicX Sep 06 '26

Meryl Streep also got some advice to never yell during the film making because it shows a loss of power and is stereotypical of male bosses.

Miranda never raises her voice and does care deeply about the magazine. The belt scene comes to mind.