Femme Fatale is a villian from "The Powerpuff Girls."
Background[]
She's a bank robber and master thief who hypocritically claims feminist arguments to justify her crimes despite not knowing even the simplest facts about the woman she claims to be honored with her thefts. With shoddy reasoning, wrapped in some lies, she convinces Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup to fight against men so she can continue to rob banks. Despite her misandry, her speech to the Powerpuff Girls and the designs on her costume, Femme Fatale is equally cruel to women. She stole Susan B. Anthony coins from a female bank employee broke the arm of a police woman and stole the hairstyle of a teenage girl.
She steals only Susan B. Anthony coins since all other forms of money have men on them (at the time of the series at least). At the end of the episode Equal Fights, she is promptly defeated (quite harshly) and taken to jail after the sisters tell her who the suffragist Susan B. Anthony really was. She has blonde hair and blue eyes (resembling the aforementioned teen girl, albeit slightly older with no braces) wears a white jumpsuit with multiple blue stripes, a blue mask which she conceals her eyes and headband, and white boots. After being defeated by the girls and taken in prison, she was seen in a prison uniform and a matching prison cap.
Trivia[]
- "Femme fatale" literally means "fatal woman" in French.
- The symbols on her outfit and weapon are based on the symbol ♀, which stands for Venus, coming from the mythology goddess Aphrodite, and extending into the meaning of the female sex.
- Also in Equal Fights, she makes references to Princess Morbucks (as "that little brat") and Sedusa (as "the chick in the underwear").
- She is one of five female villains to have been featured in the 1998 series.
- When she is wearing convict stripes at the end of Equal Fights, we find out that she has blue eyes and she complains that the horizontal stripes of the uniform make her look fat.
- While Femme Fatale raises a good point in that female superheroes tend to not be as popular/revered as male superheroes and that heroines like Supergirl and Batgirl are basically just extensions of their male counterparts (Superman for Supergirl and Batman for Batgirl), there are plenty of female superheroes besides Wonder Woman who aren't intended as direct extensions to already existing male superheroes.
- Femme Fatale also points out how villainy is similarly dominated by men like heroism is, even though there are actually tons of female supervillains.
- It is never actually explained why Femme Fatale is a misandrist. One theory is that she was badly mistreated by some male figure in her life, and it caused her great emotional discomfort. Given her selfish nature, it is possible that she simply blamed men in order to excuse her crimes. However, this may not be the case as she really did steal only Susan B. Anthony coins since "all other forms of money have men on them".
- It is possible that Manboy, a villain from the 2016 reboot series is loosely based off this character.