Or, if you're feeling punny, a Test Tube Babe.
More a staple of movies (especially science fiction), but also appears regularly on TV. When a male protagonist needs to consult with or bring in an expert on some obscure and/or technical subject (poisonous orchids, particle theory, rare diseases, ancient languages, prehistoric sharks, whatever), said expert will turn out to be female, drop dead gorgeous, and, at twentysomething, conspicuously too young to have possibly earned the relevant academic degrees or otherwise accrued such expertise (often this is handwaved by mentioning at some point that she was a Teen Genius). Not all of these are required, but the general gist is good enough.
The reason why this trope is popular is because men want a woman who can tell them about Lagrange points and do a lap-dance. Preferably both at the same time.
If the word "model" appears anywhere on The Other Wiki's entry on their actor, you're definitely dealing with one.
A Hot Scientist is frequently a Hot Librarian as well, and often ends up as a Girl of the Week or Temporary Love Interest. Could be considered an evolution of the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter, combining the scientist and his daughter into one character (although they tend to be sane). She may also be an Action Girl in a Badass Longcoat.
Female protagonists, on the other hand, often get saddled with a Horny Scientist. This trope seems to be increasingly less Always Female, however. In Japanesemedia, especially the genresaimed at a female audience, expect to see pretty boys with PhDs as well.
This, of course, completely ignores the fact that most labs in Real Life have very strict dress codes for the sake of personal safety. For example, most require those with long hair to have it all completely tied back while doing lab work. Also, most of them strictly prohibit shoes that don't adequately cover the feet, such as sandals, flip flops, and heels. Appropriate clothing is also compulsory - shorts and bared midriffs are obviously never allowed. But, of course, safety and practicality are completely trumped by the Rule of Sexy. Male examples tend to follow the dress code more often than not. To Hollywood's credit, at least scientists on TV usually remember to wear their safety goggles...
Compare Hollywood Nerd and Nerds Are Sexy. See also Hospital Hottie, Fair Cop.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
In Tenchi Muyo!,Mad Scientist Washuu is a borderline case; she's cute, but not breathtaking until she takes her adult form, which she does rarely, and in both cases she doesn't look anywhere near her real age, which is whooping 40000 years old, in the current body. Overall she is significantly older than the Universe itself.
In the Sailor Moon anime, the third season villain Kaolinite, while more of an assistant than a scientist, spent a fair bit of time in a cleavage-y lab coat
Maxine in Sin City is your standard Sin City woman with large breasts and is an evil scientist working for an assassin's guild to boot.
Josie Beller, a.k.a. Circuit-Breaker, from Marvel Comics' Generation One Transformers comic, was hired by G.B. Blackrock right out of high school to design what was then the world's most advanced automated deep-sea oil rig. When that was destroyed, and she herself paralyzed, by a Decepticon attack, she designed and built for herself a suit of Stripperiffic cybernetic Power Armor so that she couldfight the Transformers. She was also the primary, and almost the only source of Fanservice in the whole comic.
Films — Live-Action
In Contact, they made Dr. Arroway a massive Teen Genius to justify Jodie Foster playing someone in charge of a project this huge. If Matthew McConaughey was a scientist in this movie, rather than a theologian and philosopher, he'd qualify, too.
In The World Is Not Enough, this concept is stretched to beyond credibility by introducing Dr. Christmas Jones, a twenty-something nuclear physicist with large breasts. Needless to say, she and Bond end up in bed together.
There was also Dr. Holly Goodhead in Moonraker. The film ends with her and Bond becoming the first members of the 100-Mile-High Club.
"No, all us scientists dress in skimpy revealing nightgowns."
"But not all of them look like you do. Ever seen Linus Pauling in his nightgown?"
In the 2007 Transformersmovie, the analyst who helps decode the alien data probably should do some modeling on the side. Though some might not notice her due to the high competition of Mikaela Banes.
Interestingly, Word Of God says she actually DID do modelling work to put herself through college.
The 2008 Iron Man film features Tony Stark himself, who's a brilliant engineer and billionaire playboy.
In the soon-to-be-remade Fantastic Voyage, Raquel Welch plays Cora Peterson, assistant to Dr. Peter Duval. She wears a lab coat for perhaps two minutes before spending the rest of the movie in a skin-tight scuba outfit.
This type of character was a staple of the Attack Of The Killer Whatever "B" movies of the '50s. For example: Joan Weldon's character in the giant-ant classic Them!; the daughter half of a father-daughter entomologist team, the first we see of her is a pair of shapely legs emerging from an airplane hatch.
Literature
Diane Duane deliberately played with this, noting in the blurb for her Star Trek novel The Wounded Sky that the Enterprise crew are assisted by "a pretty alien scientist". What she conspicuously failed to note was that K't'lk, while indeed quite lovely, is also a giant glass spider!
Lampshaded in the episode Two and a Half Deaths. A TV producer who worked with a murdered sitcom actress visits the lab. After seeing several of the team he muses that there might be a market for a show about attractive people working in a high-tech crime lab.
Subverted in an episode of Hustle in which the already-lovely Stacie, when impersonating a professor's research assistant, uses false teeth to give herself an unattractive overbite.
Her successor the following year, Liz Shaw, wears knee-length boots and very short skirts, and also has doctorates in biochemistry and astronomy.
The Doctor's companion Romana, despite technically being a psychologist and/or historian, fits this trope reasonably well, and her attractiveness is confirmed by K9 and later by the Doctor himself.
Also, Peri is a botany student. But probably not a very good student as she's dumber than a box of sonic screwdrivers. Only once during her tenure was she shown practicing her craft (1985's The Mark of the Rani) and that was after three and half episodes of excruciating whining and crying. Admittedly, she looked good doing it, but nobody is going to claim she's a genius.
River Song is no slouch in the sciences (she understands the TARDIS' physics) or the looks (she could fell an ox with that cleavage) departments.
Jadzia Dax, though her talents seem to run towards the practical sciences, is nonetheless science-division teal (rather than engineering yellow) in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She fully embodies the trope, being both physically attractive and (when she wants to be) sexually adventurous, that last being a gift from her (male) predecessor Curzon, who actually went Out with a Bang.
While she's not an accredited scientist, her big brain allows Seven Of Nine to function as Voyager's resident theoretical and applied physicist. Her big...tracts of land, on the other hand, allow her to function as eye candy.
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan in Bones seems improbably young to be both an internationally known expert and a best-selling author of multiple novels. Bonus: She is also an expert in Spock Speak.
In the original novels, Temperence "Tempe" Brennan is somewhat older and only busts out the Spock Speak when she actually needs it. Still hot, though. Judging from the author's photo on the dust jacket, this may be Truth in Television.
Lampshaded once:
Brennan: I don't want to be the "sexy scientist"!
Abby Sciuto from NCIS is one badass Perky Goth and hot lady who does not do dress codes. She is called into the lab one night dressed as Marilyn Monroe, straight from a costume party... now that is even hotter.
It should also be pointed out that there is a dress code and she is expected to follow it. The director actually enforced it in one episode, then Abby complained to Gibbs about said enforcement, the dress code issue was never enforced on her again. Not from within, anyway.
In the second season The Man From UNCLE episode "The Nowhere Affair", a THRUSH computer picks an ugly ducklingsexy THRUSH scientist to seduce Napoleon Solo, in the hopes of reversing the Easy Amnesia that was induced when Solo took "Capsule B" before his capture by THRUSH.
On Quantum Leap, the most we hear of Project QL staffer Tina is Al talking about his latest sexual escapade with her. Indeed, when we first see her on screen, she looks and sounds like a typical bimbo. But she's no secretary; she's a Pulse Communications Specialist (whatever that is), and she definitely wouldn't be working there if she was a dummy. And let's not forget Dr. Sam Beckett himself. . .
MAD had a parody of the '60s I Spy show where the agents went to rescue a bikini-girl nuclear physicist from the Red Chinese. When they're informed by the bad guys that the girl they were after wasn't the real physicist, they reply that they knew it all along, because she wasn't sexy enough to be a nuclear physicist on a tv show.
Mocked on 30 Rock, when Tracy tried to cheer Pete up (and possibly tempt him into adultery) by having a party in the office with a number of very attractive women. Upon hearing that he is a TV producer, one of the ladies begins flirting with him and says, "Really? I'm an actress. Did you ever see the movie Secret Touchings? I was a scientist in that."
Cosmological physicist, Doctor Plimpton(Judy Greer), from The Big Bang Theory easily seduces three of the main characters and tries to start a four-way with them.
There's also the male scientist, David Underhill, who works in the same department as and Leonard briefly dates Penny.
Bernadette who wears normal clothes to work, but in recent episodes wears a lot of fanservicey clothes at home.
Several valuable CONTROL-affiliated scientists on Get Smart (the first we see is the chemist Dr. Steele). This is explained by their cover - they're employed full time as showgirls, and do their real work in a secret lab accessible through the backstage area of a theatre - often while rehearsals or shows are going on that they're in. (The sheer Refuge in Audacity does work: that may be the least-broken cover CONTROL employees ever have in the series.)
Samantha Carter of Stargate SG-1 in "Moebius, Part 2". Jack O'Neill (well, an alternate Jack, anyway) commented that he was definitely not used to such sciencey talk coming out of someone so hot. And she was in battle dress at the time! The "real" Carter didn't qualify nearly as often, since she was also a military officer and therefore spent a lot of time bloody and bruised, but when she did? Yowza!
Public Service Announcements
In July 2012 the European Commission as part of a series of films attempting to encourage more women to consider careers in science published Science: It's A Girl Thing which has three sexy actresses flouncing about a laboratory writing equations and playing with the balls from ball-and-stick molecular models coyly, juxtaposed with images of high heels and make-up. It quickly garnered a negative response on Youtube and amongst actual scientists on Twitter and was soon removed.
Video Games
Joining the ranks of Hot Computer Scientists is Kamui from the .hack series, although she does more exterminating than research... and all we usually ever see is her online avatar, though, in volume 3 of the .hack//Legend of the Twilight manga, there is a pin-up poster,.hack//Unplugged, showing her and all of the other main characters in real life.
In Mass Effect, we have Dr. Liara T'Soni, who becomes the Normandy's resident Prothean and archaeology expert and a potential love interest for Shepard. She's of the Asari race, who are considered the most beautiful race in the galaxy.
In the second game, Dr. Mordin Solus is apparently considered one in-universe. As a Salarian, he has a very low sex-drive, but is nonetheless flattered that multiple species have frequently attempted to hit on him.
Shalua Rui from Dirge of Cerebus: Final Fantasy VII takes this trope to the point where she looks like a hooker in a white lab coat. In the freezeing rain, no less.
Doctor Kleeya from Star Trek Elite Force 2. Even the NPC guarding her door admits that he can't concentrate because of her.
Maybe because she is a homage to the TOS babes (with normal skin though) Kirk used to get involved with. She also wears a specific designed outfit.
Wild ARMs 1 has Emma Hetfield. Although fashionable since the original game's artbooks, she got a serious upgrade for Alter Code F; the clothes got tighter and briefer, and the game camera decided to show her off to best advantage. She subverts the Improbable Age part, being canonically 39 years old, as well as living in a world where academics and engineering are passed down by apprenticeship.
Custom Robo has Linda, who wears a short dress and fishnet stockings.
Shin Super Robot Wars: Eri Anzai is the world's foremost expert in ancient relics, and is especially famous for advancing the unique notion that the Mu and Atlantean cultures were in fact founded by aliens. When rescued by the protagonists, they see that Anzai is a stunning beauty even Daimoji is drooling. It's clear enough she's better off in your capable hands than in the clutches of the aliens who pilfered her from Osaka.
Web Comics
Kiyohara Takako from Heliothaumic is a curvaceous Asian with the tongue of a sailor who teaches A.I. as a Professor at Baisotei University.
Parodied in the 'Kitten' Story Arc of Sluggy Freelance, where the Hot Scientist character Dr. Haute-Sheik was constantly annoyed by people pronouncing her last name as 'Hot-Chick'.
The Whateley Universe has plenty, due to the Exemplar mutant power. In the Whateley Academy workshop there's Delta Spike and Bugs, both of whom are geniuses who happen to be among the hottest girls in a school full of superheroines.
Western Animation
As shown in the page image, April O' Neil from the 2003 series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of these; being the first media adaptation to harken back to her original portrayal in the Mirage comics (worked with Baxter Stockman right before he went openly evil), rather than a TV news reporter like everyother adaptation until that point.
Scientist, Dr Vivian Porter from Kim Possible is both blond, highly attractive, and very competent. And used as the aesop.
Lampshaded in the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Greatest Story Never Told": Booster Gold saves the world with the aid of a hot scientist. He immediately states that this is the best possible outcome: the League is currently battling with an evil magician, so he is the only one who'll save the day and get the girl.
Spider-Man The Animated Series had Alistair Smythe, a wheelchair-bound roboticist. Just before he was turned into an incredibly buff mutant monster, it was revealed that he was an incredibly buff scientist when he was shown strapped naked to a mutant-creating machine against his will. He had a six-pack and surprisingly well-developed legs.
Eek! The Cat parodied it in its Sci Fi parody, with Elmo having to choose between the plan of an Einstein-looking super-genius, or the plan of the Bambi twins, who had gotten a B+ in physics.
Which turned out to be the best course, as the Bambi Twins actually turned out to be incredibly intelligent and came up with a competent plan to save the day.
_2.PNG)
and do a lap-dance. Preferably both at the same time.
If the word "model" appears anywhere on The Other Wiki's entry on their actor, you're definitely dealing with one.
A Hot Scientist is frequently a Hot Librarian as well, and often ends up as a Girl of the Week or Temporary Love Interest. Could be considered an evolution of the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter, combining the scientist and his daughter into one character (although they tend to be sane). She may also be an Action Girl in a Badass Longcoat.
Female protagonists, on the other hand, often get saddled with a Horny Scientist. This trope seems to be increasingly less Always Female, however. In Japanese media, especially the genres aimed at a female audience, expect to see pretty boys with PhDs as well.
This, of course, completely ignores the fact that most labs in Real Life have very strict dress codes for the sake of personal safety. For example, most require those with long hair to have it all completely tied back while doing lab work. Also, most of them strictly prohibit shoes that don't adequately cover the feet, such as sandals, flip flops, and heels. Appropriate clothing is also compulsory - shorts and bared midriffs are obviously never allowed. But, of course, safety and practicality are completely trumped by the Rule of Sexy. Male examples tend to follow the dress code more often than not. To Hollywood's credit, at least scientists on TV usually remember to wear their safety goggles...
Compare Hollywood Nerd and Nerds Are Sexy. See also Hospital Hottie, Fair Cop.
