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[T] he only 'strong' in many 'strong female comic book characters' are the oblique muscles required to point their ass and boobs in the same direction.
When a character or model poses with her back to the audience, but twisted round to look at the viewers so that her torso is almost pointing backward. If the fanservice is more blatant, she will probably be sticking her butt out and curving her spine vertically rather than merely twisting sideways. Probably used for a few reasons:
- Lets you see the character's face. Having her look at the audience is more engaging.
- Can be used to give a coy impression ("Oh, what are you doing back there?") or to make the character look mysterious.
- Tends to enforce a sidelong glance from the character, intending to invoke a submissive or vulnerable image.
- Shows that the character is supple and limber.
- As the name suggests, lets you see the character's butt and chest at the same time, so both Ass and Tit fans get what they want. If it's trying to be anatomically realistic, the "tit" part will usually be restricted to Sideboob.
Popular with glamour models and animated characters. Naturally, characters not portrayed by real life actresses can pull this off more effectively, since they can twist in ways that would snap a real woman's spine or at least be darn uncomfortable.
At least one glamour model has attributed her back problems to having to repeatedly pose in this way. Not that glamour models don't have other causes of back pain.
Compare Coy Girlish Flirt Pose and Leg Cling.
Examples:
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Advertising
Anime and Manga
Art
- Judith by Jan Sanders van Hemessen, circa 1540 CE, may be Ur Example. A nude in the "spine twisting exercise" pose and holding a sword overhead, all right
 . That being Renaissance, however, she doesn't look gutted and with broken spine. In fact, she got enough of muscles that Willing Suspension of Disbelief is not needed to see she can lift that sword in one hand without falling over and even decapitate something significantly bigger and tougher than a chicken.
- Diana by Paul Manship. The goddess is running full-tilt in one direction while twisting her body around so she can shoot at the unseen Actaeon (subject of a separate statue) who's directly behind her. Anyone who wasn't a goddess would probably fall and break both legs if they tried something like that.And don't ask why she's not running toward him instead of away!
- Male sculpture example: Henri Peinte: Orphée endormant Cerbère◊
- The artist Luis Royo sometimes◊ does this◊ in his◊ works◊. Note that all of these are probably NSFW.
Comic Books
- Rob Liefeld is an artist well known for drawing busty women posing in such a way that you can see their ass and breasts at the same time. As they use to say on the late lamented ScansDaily, "anatomy doesn't work that way".
- Anything drawn by Terry "boobs-and-butt" Dodson. An issue of Generation X featuring a watermelon-based duel between Emma Frost and "slutty space Snowhite" probably takes the cake.
- As shown above, Psylocke does this in almost every panel that features her. Seriously, look her up in Google Images and you'll find several shots in this position. The page picture in particular shows off the impossible extremes of this trope. What freaky Body Horror is going on with her spine?
- Ms. Marvel on occasion.
- Luke Skywalker, according to Marvel's comics◊.
- Good luck figuring out how Catwoman got into this pose!◊
- So incredibly common in the medium (along with terrible accompanying anatomy) that there are several blogs dedicated to the phenomenon and its friends.
Fan Works
Film
- Frequently used in film posters and promotional material:
- Scarlett Johansson strikes this pose in the Iron Man 2 posters. Have a lookie.◊
- Scarlett Johansson did it again in a promotional photo◊ and a poster◊ for The Avengers. The second pic was even on IMDB's mainpage to advertise Superbowl trailer, but it was replaced by something else.
- This poster had all the men in heroic posses and black widow in brokeback pose again. This deviant art images suggests an alternative.
- Interestingly enough, though, the final film poster and DVD/Bluray cover has her in a forward-facing pose, while the male Avenger doing the classic B&B pose is the Hulk.
- If mystical constructs count, the Destroyer from Thor pulls one off after Mjolnir is restored to Thor.
Live Action TV
Tabletop Games
- The picture for the Dragonmarked Heir prestige class in the Eberron book shows a half-elven woman in a backless dress posing like this.
Video Games
- Jade, on the cover of Beyond Good And Evil
- A concept title screen◊ for Sonic Gems Collection, featuring Sonic's scrapped human love interest Madonna.
- Taki◊ and Ivy Valentine◊ from Soul Calibur.
- Super Smash Bros features Samus Aran in this pose◊.
- Nina Williams' character profile portrait in Tekken 6.
- Ashley Riot does something similar on the cover of Vagrant Story, though it's a bit more spine-breaking◊ than normal.
- Ashley is the man in the ass-less shorts to the left, by the way. Not that Callo Merlose looks like she'll escape without spinal injuries after that image either.
- Triss Merigold of The Witcher in this image◊. Triss was also the cover girl and did a CG spread in the Polish version of Playboy.
- Almost every female character, playable and non-playable, has this particular pose as one of their "mood"s in Project X Zone. Even if they're flatchested like Tron or Devilotte.
- Shin Megami Tensei's Ghoul.
- The concept art for Xenoblade's Fiora's robot form◊.
- Even though the character designers of League of Legends are often blamed for going over the top with the Fanservice, they are actually pretty good averting this trope. Of the over one hundred champions (of which every single one has at least one but often more skins with their own splash art) only a handful adopt this pose: Frostblade Irelia◊, Battle Bunny Riven◊, Road Warrior Miss Fortune◊, Candy Cane Miss Fortune◊ and Mercenary Katarina◊. There are also a couple instances where the pose is adopted but isn't really played for the full Fanservice potential, like Death Blossom Elise◊ and Bladecraft Orianna◊. However, it should be noted that many of the other poses of the female characters are every bit as awkward as the Boobs and Butt Pose, even though they don't quite fit the criteria.
- Many of the female designs in Dragons Crown use this pose, with The Sorceress◊ being the most apparent example.
- Or this spine-snaping pose by the amazon. [1]◊
Web Original
- In this clip, the English version of Caramel Dansen, one of the dancers must have a spine made of rubber to do some of the moves on the video.
- "This needs to stop... and let me tell you why!" — an article by a martial artist and a contortionist from childhood, has examples of these and attempts to repeat. Next to some a pair of photographed poses he can do.
- Escher Girls is a tumblr dedicated to warped female anatomy in comic books, and this pose is a common one there. Even the blog's favicon depicts a girl (Amy Rose?) twisted like this.
- Kevin Bolk (Trigger Star and I'm My Own Mascot) brings us the ultimate in Comic Book Chicks (and cites Escher Girls).
- Also by Kevin, a triple-dog-dare results in Master Chief doing the pose in his version of the Zero Suit.
- The Hawkeye Intiative is a tumblr replace the female Escher character with Hawkeye doing the same thing. The idea behind it is that the Escher pose (and other contorted variations) has become so commonly seen in strong female characters it is not even questioned anymore. But if we make Hawkeye do all of them instead, the absurdity become painfully clear.
Webcomics
Western Animation
Real Life
- Betty Grable◊ was famous for this pose. It was the favorite of American soldiers in World War II.
- Lena/Lenna, the most common face photograph used in image analysis and computer vision, is the top part of this pose from the centerfold of November 1972 Playboy.
- A recent photo project involved pictures of men in masculine clothes, but posed like female pin-up models, complete with several in over-the-shoulder poses and some with coy, dippy smiles. As should surprise no one, they looked entirely silly.
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