What's wrong with you girls? You're supposed to start crying when we hit you...

'The Powerpuff Girls' is an American animated TV series that ran between 1998 and 2005. It features three young girls, Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles, who are superheroes running around fighting crime. This might seem like an excellent show for young children regarding their understanding of gender roles, but actually it's pretty shocking. The attitude laced through the show is that the girls being strong and powerful is completely abnormal.
One character, Ms Sara Bellum, the mayors secretary, is never shown with a face and is merely a body, specifically legs, waist and chest.

This is interesting particularly considering she is named after the Cerebrum and we led to assume she is 'the brains of the mayoral operation' yet she is entirely dehumanised and objectified by only ever appearing as a body.
One particular episode entitled 'The Rowdruff Boys' shows three super hero boys being created by villain Mojo Jojo, in order to defeat the girls.
During the show we are told that the girls are created with "sugar and spice and everything nice" to which Mojo Jojo says "that's too girlish. I need something tougher, harder, more manly. What are little boys made of?" it turns out "snips and snails and puppy dog tails.
The boys are stronger and more powerful than the girls and they loose the fight. That is until the headless woman steps in to explain;
"you haven't lost, you've just been attacking the problem from the wrong angle. What do little boys fear most in the world? You have what boys fear most, instead of fighting try being nice."
During this speech the shot is of the girls confused faces but when Ms Bellum says the words "you know, nice" the shot swaps to her moving her hands away from her chest as though presenting it to explain her point.

We then understand that she is telling them to kiss the boys and Blossom says "Come on girls, lets go get them" with a wink.

After this piece of clearly excellent advice the girls are depicted with longer eyelashes than before, presumably representing makeup, which they flutter as they approach the boys. 

They each then kiss their male counterparts causing them to explode.

I think that it's very sad that this cartoon, which promises so much due to its heroes and most intelligent characters being all female, seems to fall so hard at the last hurdle because they are forced to use their beauty, instead of intelligence and strength, to be successful.