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This trope applies to any female character who sports a moustache or beard at some point. This is almost inevitably Played for Laughs.

The most common variant involves a woman wearing a fake moustache, possibly as part of a Sweet Polly Oliver, or temporarily growing one due to some form of Applied Phlebotinum. Sometimes it may even just be a part of an Imagine Spot. Permanently moustachioed women are rarer. If they do appear, expect them to be a part of an anachronistic Freak Show as "The Bearded Lady".

If female dwarves appear, they are likely to sport beards similar to those of the males.

Examples of Girls with Moustaches include:


Anime and Manga[]

Comic Books[]

  • One of the characters in Castle Waiting is a bearded nun.
  • In the graphic novel Persepolis, a teacher tells her female students to wear headcoverings because a glimpse of any of a woman's hair is a temptation to men. The main character's father comments that the teacher's moustache is hardly seductive.

Film[]

  • In Life of Brian, some women had unconvincingly disguised themselves as men, complete with big bushy beards, in order to attend a stoning.
    • Those women were played by men.
  • Played for Drama in Sylvia Scarlett. Sylvia does not wear a false moustache in her diguise as a boy; but her father's girlfriend Maudie suggests that "Sylvester" should grow one, and playfully gives "him" a dashing moustache with her eyebrow pencil. Then, much to Sylvia's horror, she says, "I wonder what it would be like to kiss anybody with a moustache like that..."
  • Divorce Italian Style: The unwanted wife (Daniela Rocca) of Marcello Mastroianni's character has a perceptible moustache on her upper lip before her makeover.
  • But I'm a Cheerleader: Butch Lesbian Jan has a moustache. Except she isn't really a lesbian; everyone assumes she's lesbian because she's butch.
  • In Yellowbeard, 'Mr Prostitute' is obviously a woman wearing a false moustache.
  • Two female soccer players have fake facial hair in Shaolin Soccer.
  • Dodgeball featured a mustachioed female dodgeball player on the villains' team. She ended up being romantically involved with one of the main characters.

Literature[]

  • All female dwarves in Discworld, openly female or not, have long, flowing beards.
  • In Tour of the Merrimack, the otherwise very attractive Amadea sports a small beard, one of several traits that make her an Uncanny Valley Girl.
  • Lionboy features a carnival "Bearded Lady" variant. She is described as being quite attractive.
  • Female dwarves in the Dragonlance series have "sidewhiskers" or beards that are less full than those of male dwarves. Male dwarves seem to find this attractive.
  • Subverted in War and Peace with Princess Lisa Bolkonskaya. She has a small moustache and Tolstoy keeps going on and on about how beautiful it is and how charming it makes her.
  • Marian Halcombe in The Woman in White is a borderline example.
  • Aunt Marge in Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, in addition to being 'large, beefy and purple-faced,' has a small mustache. Yuck.
  • Queen Selysse Baratheon of A Song of Ice and Fire has a mustache in addition to being generally ugly looking and personally unpleasant. There's also a random Lannister soldier mentioned whose nicknamed "The Beardless" or something to that effect because his wife has the facial hair for both of them.

Live Action TV[]

  • In Young Blades, Jacqueline wears a fake mustache and beard to infiltrate a gang in the episode "Rub-a-Dub Sub." Halfway through the series, she permanently augments her male disguise with a fake goatee.
  • The title character of The Aunty Jack Show.
  • The Nanny: Fran infiltrates a men-only club dressed as a man, complete with facial hair.
  • On an episode of Sliders, the characters travel to a world where women have mustaches. Rembrandt complains about how it feels to kiss a woman with a mustache and Wade comments that now he knows how women feel.
  • My Name Is Earl: In junior high, Earl made fun of a girl with a moustache, so now she's on his list. He tracks her down and discovers she's got a full beard and is in a carnival Freak Show as "The Bearded Woman". He convinces her (and the other freaks) to quit the freak tour and follow their dreams - in her case, being a realtor.
  • An episode of Wicked Science has a female character grow a beard after her Mad Scientist friend tried to cure her baldness.
  • Molly wears one as part of a throwaway gag on The Basil Brush Show.
  • On The Sopranos several of the wiseguys are sitting around their no-work jobs, "breaking balls" about each other's girlfriends. One teases another, saying his girl had a moustache so bad it must have been like kissing a fireman.
  • Ray's wife on Everybody Loves Raymond had a mustache that she waxed regularly. He didn't know this until years into their marriage.
  • On Arrested Development, GOB set Michael up with a mustached girl out of revenge.
  • Marjorie Goodson-Cutt once wore a fake mustache on Classic Concentration.
  • One Affectionate Parody of Doctor Who exaggerated Ace's Butch Lesbian tendencies by giving her a moustache.
  • Frequently used in Allo Allo, whenever the female Resistance fighters and waitresses have to pose as gendarmes, engineers, soldiers and so forth.
  • Thirty Rock - Liz, to get Jenna to own up to her age, promises in return to grow out her moustache, which she has named 'Tom Selleck'.
Cquote1

 Jenna: How soon can he be here?

Liz: If I do nothing, two days!

Cquote2
Cquote1

 Gloria: Nowadays, with simple hormone treatment, there are no unpleasant manifestations.

Edith: Well, my Aunt Elizabeth went through this, and she didn't get manifestations... she got a mustache!

Cquote2


Religion and Myth[]

  • According to The Other Wiki, Guanyin, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion is sometimes depicted as having a mustache, despite being usually considered female. Some images displayed Guanyin attributes of both genders, in accordance with the Lotus Sutra.
  • Wilgefortis, also know as Kümmernis, was an apocryphal Christian saint, venerated in The Late Middle Ages. The story goes that she was a Christian princess, forced to marry a heathen by her father. To avert this fate, she prayed for her face to look repulsive. Her wish was granted by her miraculously growing a beard, whereupon her father had her crucified. The myth probably arose from depictions of the crucified Christ wearing a long robe, which to some audiences would have looked like a woman's dress.

Tabletop Games[]

  • The Dungeons and Dragons spell "Silverbeard" gives its caster a magic silver beard that blocks attacks. The spell explicitly notes that the user grows a beard if lacking one (casters with an existing beard have theirs modified), even if they can't normally grow one (Listing Elf or female Human as examples).

Theatre[]

  • Depending on the production, Viola in Twelfth Night might wear a fake moustache in order to masquerade as her brother.
  • The three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth are bearded.

Video Games[]

  • Team Fortress 2 has Australia, where this is actually the norm for women due to Australium. If you look at the Loose Canon webcomic, Australium has made all the men and women in Australia become geniuses...and obsessed with acting stereotypically macho, gain mustaches and enhanced muscle mass (the last one is only shown for the men in art though).
  • In The King of Fighters XI, the Kyokugen team's ending has Yuri, of all people, don a fake moustache as part of her disguise. Needless to say, Ryo and King aren't fooled, nor are they amused.

Web Comics[]

Web Original[]

  • The "MOUSTACHE" song started as a one-off gag about Saiyan moustaches in in Dragon Ball Abridged, and eventually grew into a music video featuring, among its many cameos, a number of girls wearing moustaches.

Western Animation[]

  • In Grossology, Abbie grows a beard after being subjected to an overdose of testosterone by Freddy Folicle.
  • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Dr. Robotnik's mother has a moustache similar to Robotnik's own.
  • An episode of Storm Hawks has the characters, including Piper, eat some "Beard Berries".
  • Girl Hitler from The Venture Brothers has a Hitler moustache, as her name implies.
  • Rebecca Cunningham from Tale Spin disguises herself with a moustache and beard in two episodes.
  • The Strong Bad Email "retirement" from Homestar Runner had Strong Sad dress as a bearded woman.
  • The Soothesayer from Kung Fu Panda 2 is an elderly female goat with a beard.
  • In a 1980s episode of Scooby Doo, both Daphne and Fred wore false moustaches when they were disguised as British police officers.

Real Life[]

  • Female rulers of Egypt (such as Cleopatra) used to wear the same royal attributes as the males when performing their official duties; which includes a stylized fake beard.
  • Frida Kahlo had a visible moustache in most of her self-portraits.
  • Magdalena Ventura, an Italian woman who suffered of hirsutism and who had her portrait painted by Jusepe de Ribera.
  • Some females do have moustaches, albeit thin ones.
  • Victoria Justice is a big fan of moustaches and wearing fake moustaches, to the point that most of the emoticons she uses have moustaches on them.
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