Smurfette principle

Concept formulated by Katha Pollitt in The Smurfette Principle (1991) and developed by feminist and post-feminist theories to describe the phenomenon that occurs when literary works and other fictional products (comics, films, television series, video games) feature an eminently androcentric worldview. The male world constitutes the norm of the diegetic universe, which portrays gender roles in a very marked way. In these productions, men are the main protagonists and all have some defining characteristic (in the case of the Smurfs, a trait that makes them different and unique from one another: Papa Smurf, Jokey Smurf, Harmony Smurf, etc). There is only one female member, Smurfette, whose distinctive feature is that she is the only girl or woman. As she is isolated from other female Smurfs, she cannot establish bonds of sisterhood. Moreover, she is marked by very limiting gender stereotypes and is also objectified because she must be young and beautiful. The female figure becomes a complementary character who is usually the object of male desire, often the cause of dispute between competing men and, on many occasions, represents the damsel in distress trope. In some cases she does not even have a name and appears only as ‘the girl’. As for Smurfette, the diminutive morphology used in her name infantilizes and diminishes her even more in relation to her peers.