Girly Bruiser

The majority of Action Girls out there are all fairly feminine in their own right, but there tends to be a line drawn between exactly how feminine an Action Girl can be. This character however defies that. She will be a Badass, but she can just as easily be the girliest of girly girls. If there is a Tomboy and Girly Girl situation then she will be the girly girl but will not be any less of a badass. Traits of the Girly Bruiser can include having a love of fashion and make-up, having stereotypically "girly" hobbies, loving cute animals and of course loving the colour pink. She may even do her ass kicking while wearing a dress, though it's not necessary. In media aimed more towards males, a girly girl kicking ass may not go over too well, so if such a character exists there, she'll likely rely on Waif Fu.

Personality traits associated with this character include The Ditz, Genki Girl, The Pollyanna. Can often be a Badass Princess, Cute Bruiser and Badass Adorable too. Note that she differs from the Lady of War in that she doesn't have to be elegant with her ass kicking. See also Kicking Ass in All Her Finery.

The classic Magical Girl intersects with this trope somewhere: she's at her most powerful when she's wearing as many pretty Frills of Justice with Frilly Upgrade as possible.

Examples of Girly Bruiser include:

Anime & Manga

• Digimon Adventure has Lilymon, a pink nature pixie that fires energy rays out of a cannon. Oh and did we mention she's an Ultimate Level Digimon?
• Misty from the Pokémon anime has quite a few stereotypically "girly" Pokemon such as Goldeen - a white fish with frilly looking fins, Staryu and Starmie - starfish that have jewels in their core (the Pokemon themselves are valued as jewellery at times) and Horsea - a cute seahorse.
  • From the third movie, Spell of the Unknown the little girl Molly uses Pokemon such as Flaaffy, a cute pink sheep and Teddiursa, a teddy bear. Thanks to the power of her dreams, they're all nigh unstoppable.
• In Soul Eater Liz and Patty are this trope and a Cute Bruiser respectively (they normally serve as Kid's weapons but they can wield one another just as easily and grew up on the streets of Brooklyn). Tsubaki also counts, being an almost perfect example of a Yamato Nadeshiko (she normally serves as Black*Star's weapon, but she's been shown to be quite proficient with shurikens when he annoys her, and she was very much able to fight on her own against her brother in his Mental World).

Literature

• Rachel from Animorphs is a glamorous blonde who will eagerly morph into a grizzly bear to fight.
• In The Witcher saga, Ciri is the girly half of her Tomboy and Girly Girl duo with Mistle (and the Lipstick Lesbian to Mistle's Butch). However, it is Ciri who is the deadliest fighter in their entire gang, thanks to her training with the eponymous Witchers.

Live Action TV

• All of the Charmed ones likely due to being normal women for twenty plus years before becoming badass witches. All do stereotypically feminine things and are seen wearing the latest fashions every week - most of the time while fighting their enemies.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer is incredibly girly in the first season and her appearance was even tweaked to look more like a Valley Girl. She even defeated a Big Bad while wearing an evening gown. Word of God states that she was created to exist as a subversion of weak feminine characters. Her girliness mellows out a bit after season one and (especially) after she graduates high school though. Willow and Tara also take a level in badass over the course of the show but remain quite girly.
• Used as a plot point in a Lizzie McGuire episode where Lizzie worries that being a great football player who can rough it up with the guys will stop them from thinking she's feminine. The Brawn Hilda of a coach then reveals that she is a girly-girl at heart and likes to sew her own dresses (which are bright pink) and go swing dancing at the weekends.
• Smallville has Kara Kent - beauty queen and superhero.

Professional Wrestling

• Nearly all the WWE Divas, though this is actually enforced from above. Gail Kim has gone on record to state that WWE wants more girliness in the Diva matches. Their title belt even has a pink butterfly on it and the FCW Divas' belt has a pink strap (as well as their other title being a tiara).
  • Natalya takes this trope and runs with it as she wears more pink than any other Diva on the roster (Pink and black are her family's colours) yet it doesn't make her any less of a badass. She's like this in real life too as a glance at her numerous tweets about shoe shopping will tell.
  • Similarly Kelly Kelly arguably qualifies as the girliest Diva WWE has ever had but is quite the Badass inside the ring. In fact she is often underestimated because she is so girly.

Video Games

• Final Fantasy X-2 has two of the main characters as Badass Feminines though even the tomboyish Paine has a bit of a girly side too. Their entire battle system revolves around changing into different outfits to gain new powers. Their arch rival LeBlanc also wears a pink outfit and has a steel fan as a weapon. One of her attacks is even called "Love Tap".
• The Tekken series offers up Ling Xiaoyu, a Genki Girl who loves amusement parks, anything cute and whose best friend is a giant panda. And yes she has her share of pink outfits. Michelle and Julia Chang are more softened versions of the trope being badass versions of Closer to Earth.

Western Animation

• Bubbles from The Powerpuff Girls overlaps with Badass Adorable as she represents "sugar" in the chemical mix that created the girls. Could be justified since she's only five years old. Similarly Blossom (who represents "everything nice") wears a pink dress and is quite girly herself, though not as much as Bubbles. Buttercup is not an example.
• Kitty Pryde from X-Men Evolution fits the stereotypical Valley Girl personality yet still kicks as much ass as the other X-kids.
  • Jean Grey is also quite girly and nobody is about to question her badassery.
• Rapunzel from Tangled though she doesn't discover that she's a badass until she leaves her tower at age 18. To make the example even more pronounced her weapons of choice are her 70 feet of hair and a frying pan.
• Sarah from Ed, Edd n Eddy is a villainous example. She's literally the most out of control little terror on the cul-de-sac with all the kids terrified of her. She also loves playing dress-up, having tea parties, keeps a diary and her prized possessions are her "dollies".
• Starfire from Teen Titans, though according to the episode "Go", her "girliness" is something she's picked up since coming to Earth; before then, she was more of a Proud Warrior Race Guy.
• Rarity from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is a fashionista who runs a dress boutique. She is just as liable to jump into the fray in a dangerous situation as any other pony. Notably in the first episode where she's the first to attack a manticore and a later episode "Dragon Quest" where she's perfectly prepared to lay down a whoopin' to protect Spike.