Lifeguard Fanservice

Lifeguards in fiction are an easy source of fanservice for a number of obvious reasons:

• Their job requires them to hang around in swimsuits (if female) or shirtless (if male);
• They're frequently soaked, upping the attractiveness factor;
• They are naturally required to be athletic and in shape;
• The prospect of being rescued by an attractive person, who may or may not need to give CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable or the Kiss of Life, is romantic.

As a result, if characters go to the pool or beach for an installment, expect at least one scene ogling the sexy lifeguard. If the lifeguard actually has to save anybody, expect the characters to swoon over this (or even try to invoke it for themselves). This also has a tamer variation for for child/young teen characters, for whom the innocent activity of swimming in a public place will become more exciting when a hot older teenager is the lifeguard watching over them.

On the other hand, someone might want to be a lifeguard thinking that this trope is in play, and expect to score dates while on the job. If the lifeguard is male and knowingly using his good looks to get girls, he may be a Muscle Beach Bum.

In the United States, the popularity of the long-running television show Baywatch, which put its cast of models and modelesque actors in soapy, sexy situations while lifeguarding, contributes to this trope. Any Baywatch parody/reference will emphasize the hotness of the lifeguards and the sexiness of their plots.

Compare Inherently Attractive Profession (with which it can overlap if everyone assumes lifeguards are attractive), as well as other jobs that are frequently sexualized like Hot Men at Work, Firemen Are Hot, Hospital Hottie, Fair Cop, and Hello, Attorney!.

Please note that this is not about any lifeguard who happens to be played by a good-looking actor. The work must portray them as attractive in part due to their job, or assume that lifeguarding is implicitly a sexy job.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A '90s Taco Bell ad featured several boys on a beach gawking at a sexy female lifeguard (played by Debbe Dunning, better known as Heidi the Tool Time Girl on Home Improvement) while she lunches on a quesadilla. One boy works up the nerve to talk to her, and ends up fainting... and when she muses about giving him mouth-to-mouth, his friends faint too.

Anime & Manga

• My-HiME: Inverted. In episode 9, Mai serves as a lifeguard during her summer vacation. While Mai is the show's preeminent display of Buxom Beauty Standard, and she is clad in a flattering bikini during her lifeguard tenure, it is one of the few times her attractive physique is NOT played for fanservice, as she is clearly bored near to tears as she blandly calls through a megaphone for a raft that is out too far to come back in and says they can still have fun while playing by the rules.
• Squid Girl: Goro Arashiyama, Tatsui Isozaki, and all the rest of the Lifesavers are tall, muscular men who tend to go around in just their swimming trunks, showing off their pecs and abs, and there's an audible gleam to their teeth when they smile. Their Fanservice is Downplayed, though, as Goro has Single-Target Sexuality for Chizuru, and Isozaki usually strikes out with the ladies he tries to flirt with, particularly the Shrinking Violet Ayumi, though that may have more to do with her social anxiety than anything against Isozaki in particular. The rest of the Lifesavers in the show are shown in the background and go unnamed.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: Whenever a story takes place on a beach, expect Betty and Veronica to fawn over the male lifeguard.

Films — Live-Action

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days: Rodrick throws himself into a pool and pretends to be drowning so that the lifeguard, the attractive Heather Hills, will give him mouth-to-mouth. Unfortunately for him, Heather is pretty apathetic about lifeguarding and it's a man who comes to his "rescue" instead.
• Baywatch (2017)'s promotional materials emphasize the attractiveness of its young lifeguard cast, with Matt shown shirtless with a glistening chest and the women posing sexily.
• Invoked in Piranha 3DD, where female stripper lifeguards are part of Chet's Hotter and Sexier renovations at the water park.
  Maddy: Please tell me you didn't just fire our old lifeguards and replace them with strippers!
  Chet: Water-certified strippers.
• In The Sandlot, Wendy Peffercorn, a very attractive teenage girl, is the lifeguard at the pool the kids go to. Squints, the nerdy kid of the group, has it bad for her, prompting him to concoct a scheme where he pretends to drown so Wendy will save him and give him mouth to mouth.
• Parodied in Wrongfully Accused, in which the opening from Baywatch is re-enacted with a number of goofier details, such as adding a "boing, boing" sound to the takes of the female lifeguards running.

Literature

• The Baby-Sitters Club: A younger, invoked example. Stacey immediately crushes on the local lifeguard Scott Foley, who works at the Sea City beach. Stacey starts neglecting her job as a mother's helper with Mary Anne to fetch him drinks and fawn over him, and since he knows he's good-looking, he lets girls do it — though he has a girlfriend.

Live-Action TV

• 1000 Ways to Die: From a mid-segment interview with a lifeguard in "Muffed Dive":
  As a lifeguard, we tend to get hit on by single moms all the time. It's kind of nice. It's one of the perks. We tend to call them MILFs, GILFs, cougs — if you're looking for that type of thing, I'd check out your local pool. I mean, where the babies are swimming, there's gotta be a MILF around there.
• The Baby-Sitters Club (2020): In "Boy-Crazy Stacey", Stacey goes to the beach with Mary Anne to help babysit Mallory's many siblings, but she gets distracted mooning over a cute older lifeguard, who teases her and calls her cute. A comment by his girlfriend at the end of the episode implies that he's accidentally led on many a tween girl.
• Baywatch became known for putting its cast of attractive lifeguards into several sexually comedic situations.
• In the "Summer, Kind of Wonderful" episode of Gossip Girl (2007) an unnamed hot lifeguard (who has a Camaro, and not in the ironic way, apparently), asks Serena out. Blair acknowledges his fling/rebound potential:
  Blair: A hot lifeguard is like Kleenex, use once and throw away!
• Muppets Tonight: Played for Laughs in the Baywatch parody "Bay of Pigs Watch"; Spamela Hamderson (whose puppet is designed to be noticeably busty) is so attractive that David Hoggselhoff/Champ Schwimmer falls into Gibberish of Love when he first sees her in her bikini, and constantly ignores what's happening on the beach in favor of making out with her.
• Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: In "Ocean Alert", the Show Within a Show of the same name is a parody of Baywatch, with the show's star, Nikki Valentina, being stated as very attractive in-universe.
• Son of the Beach is basically a Baywatch parody starring a cast of babes who work as lifeguards on a beach. It cranks the fanservice through the roof but also focuses on world-renowned lifeguard Notch Johnson (played by Timothy Stack). Notch is considered by several members of the female cast to be the hottest man on earth but is intentionally cast a very average-looking, pasty-skinned and out-of-shape man.
• Stranger Things: In season 3, the fit and handsome Billy starts working as a lifeguard at the Hawkins pool. He gets an extended Shirtless Scene of him walking poolside in slow motion as the moms of Hawkins gawk over him.

Music

• The music video for "Superlove" features Tinashe and several other women as lifeguards rescuing hot men and dancing sexily in red swimsuits. In one part of the video, two of the female lifeguards fight over which of them gets to perform CPR/make out with one of the beach-goers.

Video Games

• League of Legends: Taric, the Shield of Valoran, is already easy on the eyes as is, but his alternate "Pool Party" skin redesigns him as a hunky lifeguard (who uses a dual-sided megaphone instead of a mace), and his splash art is about 70% of his man-chest. This notably makes him one of the few "Pool Party" designs that are played for straight fanservice — compare him to Renekton, who is also made a lifeguard, but he's still a 9-foot tall crocodile man.
• Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance: One of the purchasable items in the Krypt is a picture of Sonya in a red bikini, working as a lifeguard. The text warns against faking a drowning to get mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from her.
• Overwatch: Mercy's summer skin has her as a lifeguard. If this skin is equipped and one of her highlight intros plays, the camera slowly pans up her body Baywatch-style.
• Summertime Saga: Cassie is an attractive female lifeguard at the Summerville Public Swimming Pool who swims there naked after closing time. She agrees to a Friends with Benefits arrangement with the MC when he stumbles upon her.

Visual Novels

• Being A ΔΙΚ: Heather shows up to the Halloween party in Vixens dressed in a red speedo as a lifeguard; hilariously, it's the same speedo Tremolo wore for the car wash in Episode 4 (she insists she has washed it multiple times). This trope is brought to the fore if a DIK Tremolo accepts her advances towards him after she sees Tommy take Christine to bed.

Webcomics

• Transmission: In "The Otter Side of Reggie" a hunky surf instructor acts as Reg's bisexual Closet Key.

Western Animation

• Bob's Burgers: In "Boywatch" Tina signs up to be a junior lifeguard because she thinks she'll get to flirt with shirtless cute boys, only to find that she's in over her head.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Parodied. A trio of lifeguards, consisting of two attractive women and a muscular man, are featured as a Running Gag in "Beach Bummed!" Whenever Timmy needs their help, they are shown running towards the camera in slow motion, until they finally arrive at the end of the episode. Their reputation as useless eye candy is lampshaded and accepted in-universe.
  Timmy: Man, they are slow... but they look good!
• Gravity Falls: In "The Deep End", Dipper's crush Wendy Corduroy becomes a lifeguard at the local pool, making Dipper decide to try to become an assistant lifeguard so he can spend more time with her. Downplayed, since, outside of Dipper's crush and a single line of dialogue from Mabel pointing out that Wendy could be in a bikini, the lifeguard job isn't particularly sexualized.
• Hey Arnold! has a Show Within a Show called Babewatch, an obvious parody of Baywatch, starring some hot lifeguards. Arnold meets a girl named Summer who wants to be on the show. In the end the potential for romantic shenanigans with lifeguards pops up when Helga and Arnold get on Babewatch and Helga takes the chance to kiss Arnold when his character needs mouth-to-mouth.
• Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil: In "Pool Daze", Brad is so besotted with the pool's attractive lifeguard that he agrees to keep Kick and the others out of the pool for her (as she cares very little about the job and doesn't want to actually do any lifeguarding work).
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "SpongeGuard on Duty", SpongeBob notices how everyone at Goo Lagoon is admiring Larry the Lobster who's serving as the lifeguard at the beach. This makes him want to impersonate a lifeguard so he can be popular too. He later finds out that Larry isn't just there to look good and actually rescues a drowning swimmer which makes the sponge worry that he's over his head because he can't swim.
  SpongeBob: If being a lifeguard meant guarding their lives I would have never said yes.

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