History Main / SweetPollyOliver

-->-- '''English Folk Song'''

A female character dresses up as a man to accomplish some end. Often becomes a variant of the JackieRobinsonStory. The sports version is especially popular in children's media, since it allows for an {{Anvilicious}}ly contemptuous boys' team for the heroine to win over with her talents.

Named for the old, old folk song "Sweet Polly Oliver" (quoted above), in which a woman disguises herself as a man so she can join the army and follow her soldier lover. However, the trope predates the name, going back further to ''Literature/TheBalladOfMulan'', a [[OlderThanPrint 5th-6th century AD]] Chinese legend. And of course, women disguising themselves as men in order to join the military has happened time and again throughout history, for any number of reasons -- a deeply held desire to do so, a living in times when there was no other way to support herself, even getting away from a terrible situation at home.

Many times when this is done in film and TV, the actress playing the crossdressing character rarely does a convincing job (see HollywoodHomely), requiring SuspensionOfDisbelief on the part of the audience that the other characters encountering her really believe she is male. On the other hand, quite a few women really did get away with this surprisingly easily in the past, which ''The Folklore of Discworld'' phrases as:

To make it easier for the audience to believe that Sweet Polly Oliver passes for male, she'll often be tall and [[PetitePride lack curves]]. If she begins crossdressing at a young age, she might worry about it being harder to pass when she goes through [[PubertyTropes puberty]].

As a type of WeirdnessCensor, the human mind will simply ignore small details that could give the ruse away, once it has classified a person as either male or female. And in societies in which male and female gender roles are clearly separated with no room for overlaps, this effect would be even stronger, as the idea of meeting a cross-dresser would be even more inconceivable than it is today.

* The whole premise of a Canadian TV movie called ''Film/TheChallengers''. [[{{Tomboy}} Mackie]] is a young girl and she disguises herself as a boy to join a boys-only band who has a strict "no girls allowed" policy. She hides her long hair in a baseball cap and calls herself Mack, a fictional cousin of Mackie who's visiting town.

* OlderThanFeudalism: In the fourth century B.C. married women were forbidden to watch the Olympic Games on penalty of death, but a woman named Kallipateira dressed as a male trainer to go and watch her son compete. When her son won, Kallipateira somehow accidentally revealed herself as a woman while celebrating (perhaps as a WardrobeMalfunction). Kallipateira was spared from death, however, since she came from a large family of Olympic victors, including her father, the legendary Olympic champion Diagoras of Rhodes. It is said that this episode was what started the tradition of both trainers and athletes to attend the games naked.

* ''Myth/RobinHood'': In one of the ballads, when Maid Marian journeyed to Sherwood Forest to find Robin Hood, she did so in disguise as a male warrior. The number of above Robin Hood adaptations where Marian does this gambit are probably drawing from this story, especially as it's one of the oldest testaments to her ActionGirl status, given when she found Robin, he was also in disguise and, because neither knew who the other were, they fought for hours to a stand-still.

* In the ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Robin Hood'' "Cyber-Robin" setting, Robyn Lincoln uses an avatar of Creator/ErrolFlynn's Robin when cracking megacorps and giving to the poor, both to conceal her true identity and because she's a fan of the legend. She has no idea that the hacker she assigned the name "Maid Marian" has assumed a) that she's actually male and b) that this choice of name indicates a romantic interest, which Marian thinks she reciprocates. To make this worse, Marian is homophobic, and if she learns the truth will assume that Robyn is a lesbian (which she isn't) and was trying to "trap" her.

* During the UsefulNotes/FrenchRevolution farmer's daughter [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9e_Bordereau Renée Bordereau]] (1770-1824) lost several relatives to the Terror and and saw [[YouKilledMyFather her father killed before her eyes]]. Dressed as a man (not that hard, apparently, as she was described as very ugly) she fought in the wars in the Vendée on the royalist side under the ''nom-de-guerre'' Langevin (i. e. "the Angevin" or "man from Anjou") and was wounded several times. Since the forces of the Republic and Empire kept looking for a man, she managed to evade capture after the Vendéans' defeat until 1809. At one point she was accused of raping a girl, but was able to prove her innocence by revealing her gender, but not her real name. Imprisoned on the Mont-Saint-Michel, she was liberated after Napoleon's abdication, following which she dictaded her memoirs before taking to the field once more in the war of 1815.
* As per the ''Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag'' example, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Read Mary Read]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bonny Anne Bonny]], two Sweet Polly Olivers on the same ship, no less! Apparently the practice of women joining pirate crews disguised as men was common enough for Black Bart to specifically forbid it in his formulation of the pirates' code. Ironically, both escaped hanging because they claimed to be pregnant, since it was a pretty standard way of forestalling a death sentence, as there wasn't any immediate method to definitively confirm the allegation. Read later died of a fever while in prison, while Bonny disappeared from the record.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milunka_Savic Milunka Savic]], a Serbian war heroine from UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne, was a rather awesome subversion of this trope. She joined the Serbian Army during the Second Balkan War in the place of her brother after he was drafted, and served with distinction until she was wounded in combat and her gender was revealed to the attending doctors. Her commanding officer wanted to transfer her to the [[StayInTheKitchen nursing division]], but she responded that she only wanted serve as a combatant. The officer said he'd think it over; one hour later he granted her request. Yes, she was such a bonafide badass that the military ''literally couldn't waste her as nurse''. According to some sources, her subsequent career in WWI may have made her the most decorated female combatant ''of all time''.

* Ursula from ''Literature/TheWellAtTheWorlsEnd'' spends much of her journey disguised in armour. When she and Ralph meet outside Utterbol, Ralph is briefly fooled by her disguise even after hearing her voice.

* ''All the Murmuring Bones'' by A. G. Slatter has a female protagonist who disguises herself as a man to flee an arranged marriage. It helps that she's very tall.

* A thirteenth century French [[Myth/ArthurianLegend Arthurian Romance]] is arguably one of the earliest texts to use this trope. A woman, Eufeme ("Alas, woman!") gives birth to a daughter, Eufemie ("Alas, girl"; or, "euphemism", a way of speaking around the subject). Her parents decide to raise her as a son, named Silence ("Seriously, could the metaphor be more clear?"), so that she can inherit her father's land. She becomes famed as a minstrel and a knight, captures Merlin, and is unmasked. Unfortunately, it's not quite as feminist as it sounds; Silence is depicted as the "perfect woman" precisely because she was raised as a man, and thus is not as susceptible to evil as other women are.
** Since Silence ''prefers'' being a man, albeit because of the social advantage it affords him/her, s/he could be considered a [[UsefulNotes/{{Transgender}} trans man]] by today's standards.

* Marie Marvingt, being the "Fiancée of Danger" that she was, once decided to join the French Army and eagerly serve her country (as well as propose her concept of an air ambulance to the top brass) when UsefulNotes/WorldWarI broke out. However, she was fully aware that women were not accepted in the army. For her first attempt, Marie disguised herself as a man and entered the French Infantry. However, this didn't work, as her ruse was discovered three weeks later and that got her sent home (of course, [[{{Determinator}} this didn't stop her]]).

* In ''VisualNovel/TheGreatAceAttorney 2: Resolve'', [[spoiler:the main character's assistant Susato Mikotoba disguises herself as a male defense attorney to defend Haori Murasame, under the name 'Ryutaro Naruhodo' (registered as such by her father).]]

* ''Literature/TheBeatryceProphecy'', In a land where it is illegal to teach girls to read or write, a mysterious young girl, wracked with fever, is found at the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. All she remembers about herself is her name: Beatryce. To protect Beatryce, who can read and write, Brother Edik cuts off her hair, disguises her as a boy, and lets her stay at the monastery.