She was created by the evil Gargamel to help capture the Smurfs. Of course his plan failed and soon she joined the Smurfs. But it poses the question, would the other Smurfs still try to score with this mechanical-blow up doll? Or would Big Poppa Smurf try to pimp her out for a buck-twenty?

Actually, the interesting part of this node is that the second part. "Ette" does not mean the feminine of a noun, it indicates the diminutive. Kind of an insulting facet of the English language, huh? Smurfette means "little smurf," not "female smurf." Smurfette didn't look any smaller than the rest of the miniature Smurfs to me...

Well, one could say all that, but, living with the rest of the smurfs, she'd be entitled to call herself a smurf, wouldn't she? I mean, being a citizen of America makes a person American, so being a citizen of... smurf... wherever they are would make her a smurf. To wit, she is a smurf after all! As for the idea that ette is only used for the diminuitive, and not the feminine, in the English language, I'd have to disagree there. Ette is a French ending that points out femininity, and I can think of more examples in English of ette being used for the feminine than for the diminuitive version of something. Well, actually I can only think of one. Dudes and dude-ettes.

Hmph. Actually, all the ette endings I can think of are slangs or made up names... Could it be that the French are making up new words in an attempt to overthrow the English language that we, as Americans, have already overthrown?

Only the smurfette knows.

Ahem. "Smurfette really wasn't a 'smurf' or an 'ette.'" This practically screams the next word: "Discuss."

The fact that KaZe JoNeS then proceeded to discuss in adequate detail detracts little from my point. Smurfette was not a true smurf, I agree. Nor was she an ette, for much the same reasons. But the very crux of the formulaic exposition technique demands that not only must excessively long words be used whenever possible, the stock phrase "foobar was neither a foo nor a bar. Discuss." is the only one that suffices.

That said, it not is my opinion that Smurfette wasn't a smurf, and could not be a smurf, simply because smurf culture obviously does not contain a notion of female smurfs (nor, by extension, explicitly male smurfs, lacking any sort of clear differentiation in terms).

This happens to overlook the little, or possibly extra-little, smurfs that popped up in later seasons, of unknown provenance. (Bah. This weakens my argument. I shall conveniently move to another point.)

Further, the smurfs lived amongst humanity for quite some time (or at least near both Gargamel and whoever that other person who appeared to both dislike living smurfs and be of the feminine persuasion was). So perhaps they learnt of gender differences that way. Can the only smurf-sized blue talking thing with a figure to speak of be considered a member of a society with no other being remotely like it? Sure, you're unique, just like everybody else - but imagine how odd it would be if only one person in the entirety of known humanity had gazongas?

This leaves out the more important question of whether or not Gargamel's deranged interpretation of Frankenstein's monster was alive or not, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.

Judging by the extremely immature flirting that the various smurfs participated in with Smurfette, the answer to KaZe's first question is yes, they certainly would "try to score with this mechanical-blow up doll," albeit with limited success. And it sure looked to me as if the other smurfs were wishing every night that Big Poppa Smurf would pimp her out, buck-twenty or no. (A hundred and twenty whats? What was their currency, anyway? A topic for another node, perhaps even this one.)

A thought question for the reader: Does it matter whether or not Smurfette did not have a two word name like Clumsy Smurf or Sleazy Smurf, but instead had the typical Smurf surname preprended to her name?


I think I put way too much thought into this. No noding this late ever again. I mean it this time.

According to the bande-dessinée "La Schtroumpfette", by Peyo (Éditions Dupuis, 1976), the smurfette was created by Gargamel who wanted to destroy the Smurfs (which is a strange idea, because the reason why he started to bother the Smurfs was because he needed them as ingredients for creating gold (see "Le voleur de Schtroumpfs" in the book "Les schtroumpfs noirs" (Éditions Dupuis, 1975).

In the book "La schtroumpfette", Gargamel created a small statue of a Smurf (using regular clay) and after use a spell named, "How to make a statuette with a feminine personnality". According to that fact, the smurfette is not a smurf, she is only an animated statuette, but to me, she is a -ette (in the feminine sense of it), since she has a feminine personnality. This fact bring the discussion to another level: does the fact of being a man or a woman is only determine by physical attributes?

What L'Homme Tomate says would provide an explanation (albeit hypothetical) to some of the previously asked questions: Why would Gargamel want to destroy the Smurfs? and Where did the 'kid' Smurfs come from?

Basic data:

  1. G. needs the Smurfs as an ingredient
  2. G. knows how to create a Smurf (or something quite similar to a Smurf, both in visage and behavior)
  3. G. wants to destroy the Smurfs in one episode
  4. In several/many other episodes, he attempts (and sometimes temporarily succeeds) in capturing Smurfs/a Smurf
  5. Under normal conditions, there are no Smurfs visible in G.'s house - a captured Smurf always manages to escape (=there are no Smurfs in his house at the beginning, there are none at the end)
  6. In one episode, the kid Smurfs just are there as if they always were, am I correct?
  7. G.'s house is in quite a decrepit state
Now, let's speculate: Gargamel has created ALL the Smurfs for the purpose of making gold. Some of them have escaped, now they live as "wild" Smurfs. Q:Why "some"? A: I'm more and more convinced of it. He must be getting his food from somewhere and he doesn't strike me either as a farmer nor as a hunter. Therefore, he must trade the food (and other things) for something, presumably gold. That he makes from the Smurfs - but he is in a constant lack of these Therefore, from time to time, he goes to hunt the "wild" ones. From time to time, when he creates new Smurfs to be converted to gold (I don't know how he does that and I probably don't want to know), some of them escape. That would explain, why the 'kid' Smurfs just appear and nobody seems to take it as an important event - it must be pretty commonplace, then. Why did only the 'kid' Smurfs escape? A question to be answered. (Maybe they could squeeze through cage bars or something of that kind). Are they 'kids' after all? Maybe they are a result of one of G's 'not-quite-finished' spells - he's not too good a wizard.

Which would leave only the Smurfette unexplained. The usage as a lethal weapon could be justified in a time of plenty of "captive" Smurfs - then the "wild" ones would prove only an annoyance to be wiped out (something feels wrong in this last theoryconjecture...but what?).

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