Acceptable Feminine Goals/Playing With


 * Basic Trope: Life goals expected from a fictional woman for her to be considered a "true" woman.
 * Played Straight:
 * Alice is a doctor, but is only shown treating children.
 * Bernice wants to be a babysitter.
 * Exaggerated:
 * Alice is a doctor and refuses to offer help to anyone over 12 years old.
 * Bernice quit university and vowed never to have children in order to have more time for babysitting.
 * Justified:
 * Alice is a doctor, but is only shown treating children because she works in a children's hospital.
 * Bernice wants to be a babysitter because she's underage and can't be legally employed in her country.
 * Alice comes from a culture that considers gender roles to be Serious Business.
 * Inverted:
 * Alice is a pediatrician, but wants to become a merchant marine.
 * Bernice is a babysitter, but wants to mow lawns.
 * Subverted:
 * Alice wants to be a pediatrician, but on her way to get her licensing for pediatrics, she witnesses a car accident and decides to be an EMT instead...
 * Bernice becomes a babysitter, only to realize that the money is poor and the clientele is awful, so she decides to mow lawns instead...
 * Double Subverted:
 * ...but is only shown rescuing children.
 * ...and only mows the grass in elementary school playgrounds, so kids have a safe place to play.
 * Deconstructed:
 * Alice wants to be a doctor, but is pressured into pediatrics because she's a woman and is therefore best suited to treating children, and Alice explores the reasoning behind it.
 * Bernice wants to mow lawns, but is pressured by her parents to babysit because pushing a lawnmower is too much hard work for a girl, and Bernice must find a way to deal with it.
 * Reconstructed: Alice decides that she should choose the way she wants her career to go, and not her parents. She returns to medical school, and trains to become a doctor.
 * Zig Zagged: The story follows Alice in a number of careers in her lifetime. She goes to medical school to becomes an EMT, but later has kids, quits her job, and is a Housewife. She decides to go back to work, but during an economic downturn, so the best job she can get is a school nurse. She becomes frustrated in the job after a few years, goes back to school, and becomes a brain surgeon. She has a fulfilling career as a brain surgeon for 15 years, but after that, she finds it too stressful for her old age, so she retires and becomes a school nurse again.
 * Lampshaded: "Alice, you don't need to hone your surgery skills. Being a successful homemaker is all that a woman should aim for in life."
 * Averted:
 * Alice is a doctor, and is shown treating people of all ages.
 * Bernice wants to be a scheduling consultant for busy parents.
 * Enforced:
 * Alice wants to be a doctor, but is only shown treating children because the company that produces the show didn't allow the writers to show a sick or injured adult.
 * Bernice wants to be a babysitter because her show is Merchandise-Driven and the children she babysits are an easy way to introduce new characters for future toy lines.
 * Invoked:
 * Alice is a doctor, but only treats children in order to appear more feminine for her friends.
 * Bernice is forced into babysitting because she lives in a society that prevents women from attaining a better career.
 * Defied: "I don't have to conform to your idea of femininity. Just because I want to be a surgeon doesn't make me any less of a woman!"
 * Discussed: "And exactly why should I quit being a successful surgeon?" "Because you're a woman and your role in society is to make babies, Alice."
 * Conversed:
 * "It's scary how an individual woman is still looked at weird whenever she veers away from homemaking."
 * Played For Laughs:
 * Alice is a doctor and only treats children, but she's hilariously bad with kids.
 * Bernice wants to be a babysitter because she wants to dig through strangers' stuff while they're not home.
 * Played For Drama: Alice is a doctor who only treats children, but they are from poor families and she would gain money and recognition if she would treat wealthy adults.

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