Lisa Simpson

Lisa Marie Simpson (born May 9, 1981) is the elder daughter and middle child of the Simpson family and one of the two tritagonists (alongside Marge) of The Simpsons franchise.

In Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words she is also known as Lisa Bouvier. She was named after a train called Lil' Lisa on her parents' 1st anniversary. She is a charismatic 8-year-old girl, who exceeds the standard achievement of the intelligence level of children her age. Not to everyone's surprise, she is also the moral center of her family. In her upbringing, Lisa lacks parental involvement of Homer and Marge, which leads to hobbies such as playing saxophone and guitar, riding and caring for horses, and interest in advanced studies. In school, Lisa's popularity is affected by those who view her as a geeky overachiever, which leaves her with only a few friends. She focuses on her goals and strives to reach her potential, and at the age of eight, she is already a member of Mensa with an IQ of 159.

Appearance
Lisa has yellow skin, black eyes (although the pupils look like 2 black dots just like the other characters), and yellow "starfish" hair that is styled into points and matches the color of her skin. She does not have any visible hairline. She is usually seen wearing a short, strapless red dress with a zigzag hem, matching red Mary-Jane shoes, and a white pearl necklace (given to her by Marge). She is 4'2" tall.[9]

She has had two different outfits for church and family outings: a magenta long-sleeved dress with a ruffled collar and magenta pumps for church, and a baby pink short-sleeved tutu dress with a darker pink belt and collar, and pink Mary-Jane shoes, and she occasionally wears a wide-brimmed hat with the same color scheme with it. At night, she dresses in a turquoise nightgown with a frilly white collar and matching cuffs, as well as turquoise slippers.

Her hair has been styled out of its star shape a few times, such as in "The President Wore Pearls", "22 Short Films About Springfield ", "Teenage Mutant Milk-caused Hurdles ", and "Last Traction Hero". It is also shown to be about chin or sometimes shoulder length. In future appearances as an adult and teenager, her hair "points" are usually worn in a styled back fashion.

Despite her thin weight, she inherited her father's chubby fingers, which somewhat affects her dexterity. If what has been said in several episodes is to be believed, she has a very fat bottom, with several characters in a few episodes making fun of how fat it is, most notably in "Sleeping with the Enemy".

Lisa also has a collection of swimsuits, mostly one-pieces, which she usually wears during a beach or pool setting. She wears a swimsuit in these episodes:


 * A pink bra and a hula skirt in the episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" (worn under a body suit)
 * A magenta one-piece swimsuit in the episodes "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", "Kamp Krusty", "Bart of Darkness", "When You Dish Upon a Star", and "Insane Clown Poppy" (incorrectly colored as light red at one point).
 * A purple one-piece swimsuit in the episodes "Brush with Greatness", "A Fish Called Selma", and "Make Room for Lisa".
 * A red one-piece swimsuit in the episodes "Itchy & Scratchy Land" and "Friend with Benefit" (worn with swim trunks).
 * A pink bikini in the episode "The Great Money Caper" and "Poppa's Got a Brand New Badge".
 * A pink one-piece swimsuit in the episodes "Bye Bye Nerdie", "Dude, Where's My Ranch?", "Pranksta Rap", "The Saga of Carl", "My Fare Lady", "Bart the Veterinarian", "Havana Wild Weekend", "The Cad and the Hat" (mostly worn with a sarong), "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", "D'oh Canada", "Hail to the Teeth", "Mother and Child Reunion", and "My Octopus and a Teacher".
 * A green one-piece swimsuit in the episodes "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation" (couch gag only) and "Lisa's Belly".
 * A blue one-piece swimsuit in the episodes "A Star is Born Again", "Springfield Up", and "In the Name of the Grandfather".
 * A bikini made out of bacon in the episode "The Man who Came to be Dinner".
 * As a mermaid in the episode "Daddicus Finch" (couch gag only, wears only a red fish tail).
 * A blue wetsuit in the episode "Treehouse Of Horror XXX" (during the segment "Danger Things").

Personality
Lisa is an innovative, insightful, and extremely intelligent girl, far exceeding the standards of a second-grader especially in Springfield. Part of her intelligence is due to being so dissociated from her idiotic father whilst growing up and it was strongly implied that her brains were a result of her grandmother; Homer could never keep up with his daughter's startling intelligence due to his slow wit and stupidly, his laziness and their contradicting vices and opinions caused a strained relationship and she practically grew up without a father figure, specifically not a model one (although Homer probably wouldn't have been much help even if he was involved in Lisa's life). As intelligent as she is, her family never encouraged her gifts and her school lacked the resources to blossom her IQ further but overall Lisa has the most promising future. Since she was a baby, Lisa has displayed intellectual independence from changing her own diapers and solving mathematical solutions when she was only an infant. She could be classified as a child prodigy.

Her overall role in the Simpson family is depicted as the voice of reason. Despite her young age, Lisa is a good girl and has a strong sense of right, wrong and morality and she is always there to contradict Homer, Bart and on one occasion Marge whenever they do something reckless, idiotic or illegal, doing her very best to sway them to the path of the righteous due to fearing greatly for her father and brother's immortal soul but her standing as an outsider in her own family cause her to be ignored despite her best intentions. In an argument, Lisa's ethical and logical viewpoint almost always gives her the moral high ground, her family also realize that Lisa is usually right whenever they do something immoral but Homer's tendency to ignore her, uses the excuse of age to send her to her room when they realize that they are in the wrong. In earlier seasons, however, Lisa has been depicted as intelligent yet not as mature due to her squabbling and physical fights with Bart, but she has developed into a more practical being yet her young age also makes her sense of right and wrong slightly malleable at times as she has shown to engage in childish and reckless behavior, proving herself to be like any other Simpson but more grounded and mature. Despite her above-average intelligence, she displays tendencies average for kids her age, such as obsessing over celebrities and playing with dolls.

Despite her young age, Lisa is extremely passionate about ideologies and other social movements. She has been shown to support PETA (although she eats eggs and dairy) and the Free Tibetan movement, is highly against animal cruelty and has adopted a diet of vegetarianism from Season 7 and keeping this dietary regime onward. She encourages the idea of feminism, women's rights, and the crusade against objectification and stereotypes of women. Lisa's role models and ideals are based on Mohandas Gandhi's enforcement of nonviolent pacifism and Emmeline Pankhurst.

Whilst her social movements are generally considered to be heroic, Lisa's reasoning is not solely to make the world a better place. A life of being shunned out and ignored by her family has developed attention-seeking traits and a desire to be heard, once going to a dig site solely for the basis to complain about it, an area where she is usually ignored further. She used to force her beliefs on others due to a sense of self-righteousness and moral superiority specifically her vegetarianism but Apu also taught her a degree of tolerance for others' beliefs. Lisa is against the ignorance on others' behalf, believing the truth is the truth and is unable to be dissuaded no matter what it was, which she learned from Marge. Without anyone else caring she continued to pester that the town founder, Jebediah Springfield was in actuality a murderous pirate and only refrained herself from revealing the truth when she realized how it brought the town together.

At her school, Lisa is considered to be a nerd because of her bookish and quiet nature. A teacher's pet and proud of it, she is depicted as an introvert with few friends and those she does have are as much as a nerd as she is. Her lack of popularity is generally purposeful yet her lack of social skills and different hobbies to what is considered fun to the rest of the girls leads her to want more friends. On one example she changed her personality to fit a more rebellious nature like Bart and actually gained an entourage of friends at the Flanders beach house but when her true academic nature was revealed, they continued to befriend her due to viewing her as a kind, gentle person rather than just a nerd. Lisa has had a few boyfriends, though all of them were brief, despite her status as a geek such as Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, and Colin.

Extremely nonathletic, she fails at sports completely, and her liberal stance and high intelligence gives her little bonding ground with her peers and Homer who is also passionate about sports and connects with Bart more for this reason. Lisa is so weak that she could barely through a piece of paper into a rubbish can that was one away. However, she also displayed an uncharacteristic level of hand-eye coordination when she caught an incoming hockey puck from Apu and proved herself to be an extremely hockey player when she was a goalie.

Similar to Bart, Lisa's high academic intelligence and her desire to go far in life is greatly driven by her future goals. Bart never focused on his book work as he and basically everyone else knew that he would amount to very little when he grew up whereas this is the opposite for Lisa who saw the potential in her life to achieve fantastic goals. When her career aptitude test came back that she would likely become a homebody when she grew up and her music teacher told her she could never achieve her dream of a jazz musician on account of "stubby fingers", crushed her dreams. After this, the quality of Lisa's work and behavior declined drastically as Bart's improved exponentially after his career aptitude came back that he would become a police officer, such as refusing to go to band practice, encouraging the bad girls to deface Skinner's puma statue and being rude to her teachers. She went as far to steal everybody's Teacher's Editions, a line that even Bart Simpson would not cross. Lisa would have undoubtedly become as an even worse rebel than that of her brother if Bart had not taken the blame for her crime. That said the prospect of a dull future also encourages Lisa to study further rather than immediately omit defeat as she did her very best to not become a housewife like Marge when their paths became very similar.

Overall though, Lisa's tendency to lash out towards her family is based on the beliefs that they don't understand her rather than actual spite. This proves to be true as jazz is the only thing that expresses her inner thoughts and how she is feeling whilst her family only silence her creativity further due to their great annoyance of her saxophone. She often embraces relationships with other paternal figures that encourage her to embrace her passions to fill the void that her real lazy and uninterested father left. When she became depressed in the second season and none of her family seemed to understand the reason behind this, opened up more to the troubled jazz musician, Bleeding Gums Murphy who told her to sing what she felt helped her emotional state greatly. She became deeply close to her substitute teacher, Mister Bergstrom who again noticed and encouraged her intelligence to blossom. Over time, Lisa, although embarrassed by her family, is no longer ashamed to be a Simpson.

One of her negative traits would be her penchant for narcissism. In one of her daydreams, she envisioned herself as bringing about world peace and being revered by world-famous scientists, chanting in her presence "we're not worthy". She prides herself on her intelligence and integrity but if her ego is at risk, displays a willingness to breach her morals such as sabotaging her rival Alison's diorama at the school fair, humiliating her in front of her peers. Even so, Lisa's conscience is too strong to commit an unethical act and not punish herself such as giving herself an F for her test which she cheated in and apologizing to Alison for her act of sabotage.

She is one of the few characters in Springfield without a signature trademark or catchphrase, shown specifically at the end of Bart Gets Famous when Marge, Bart, Homer, Nelson, Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns, and Barney all do their trademarks of the characters and wait for her to do anything, Lisa dryly replies "if anyone needs me, I'll be in my room", leading Homer to state "what kind of catchphrase is that?"