Male Gaze - Television Tropes & Idioms

There, uh, wasn't enough space for the camera near the front of the mech... yeah

The Male Gaze is a term used to describe the way a (usually male) director/cameraman's interest in women informs his shots, leading to a focus on breasts, asses and other jiggly bits even when the film isn't necessarily supposed to be a T&A-fest.

For example, a sex scene between a man and a woman may show more of her body than it does of his, or focus more on her reactions than his (see Right Through His Pants). Alternatively, it could appear in shows that aren't overtly sexual - for example, scenes of bikini-clad female characters talking that emphasise their bodies rather than showing just their heads.

The term also applies in other mediums, such as video games and comic books. During the Dark Age, comic books were often perfect examples of the male gaze, with scenes being framed to show off a female character's "assets" over everything else. The trend continues at a lower level today.

While this is not always intended as Fan Service, it generally has the effect of being so. Jiggle Physics and Gainaxing are particularly notable forms of this.

This is by no means a new phenomenon - see this picture

of Mary Magdalene, done in the 1500s. The story runs that towards the end of her life, she became a hermit, and grew her hair so long she didn't need clothes. Nevertheless, the painter has decided to paint her without the hair covering everything that it otherwise might, and not as a particularly old woman. From a theoretical perspective, the male gaze refers to how females are depicted as passive subjects of an implicitly male audience, rarely looking back and acknowledging their status as subjects; essentially, voyeurism.

See Female Gaze for its Distaff Counterpart. Not to be confused with Male Gays, which is a different trope altogether.

Examples

Advertising

A recent Coke commercial featured a trio of guys at a party with a trio of girls. Not once to we get to see any of the girl's faces,but no, the camera just focuses in on their tight clothing. It's not even part of a gag, we just happen to not see their faces and it's a bit jarring.

Anime

When Faye Valentine's top is cut open in the Cowboy Bebop movie, the camera shows nothing above or below her breasts. The TV series also has several lingering shots of Faye's legs and breasts.
Parodied in (you guessed it) Excel Saga: When Misaki first appears, the camera begins to pan up her body. It then does a Jump Cut to her rear before resuming the pan... and stopping at her chest. She then asks why it stopped. When the camera attempts this again later, she grabs the camera and demands that it cease. Cut to a written apology from the director.
When Gohan, Krillen and Bulma land on a strange spaceship in Dragon Ball Z, they want to go explore it. Bulma is apparently so excited to traverse the ship that she forgets to put on pants. She spends the next several episodes in her eponymous underwear for no reason.
- This also seems to happen in reverse in Dragon Ball Z. There are far more long panning shots up spandex-clad male bodies than can possibly be justified by dramatic reasons.
  - Which could help to explain the large female fan following in the US.
- Then there's Maron, Krillin's ex-girlfriend. Might be Playing With A Trope, since the camera leers along with the male characters... an explicitly "male gaze."
In Suzumiya Haruhi, Kyon is the cameraman for the Brigade's movie; with the buxom and beautiful Mikuru the main character of said movie, the camera's view...dips...on occasion. Also note that in chronology, the first thing we see of Haruhi is her chest.
- Also played less subtly for laughs. Itsuki jokes that Kyon and Haruhi are now Adam and Eve. Cut to a still camera shot of Haruhi walking down stairs... with the shot starting around her waist and eventually working up to her head. Less subtle indeed.
In Yu-Gi-Oh, used on Anzu/Tea while she was playing a Dance Dance Revolution-like game. Whether intentionally or not, it gives the impression this is where Yami's gaze is focused. Hmmm...
The OP of Black Lagoon has a few random shots of Revy's butt, which is in line with how she mostly gets depicted the manga.
The almost supernaturally endowed Rangiku Matsumoto on Bleach is constantly subjected to this.
- Interestingly, the similarly well-endowed Orihime is very rarely shown in a fanservicey way - unlike Matsumoto, she never even wears revealing clothes.
  - That's true, but the camera frequently closes up on her Most Common Superpower set. Especially when Kon is talking nearby.
- This whole trope made her choices on the 'fashion show' episode, #128, that much more interesting. With one possible exception - all her outfit choices were surprisingly tasteful and classy. The sixth one, the exception? No more or less revealing than an outfit you might see being worn by say, your average woman wearing a tank top and pants.
In Princess Tutu there's a scene where Autor is walking behind Rue. The camera switches to show her walking from behind, then slowly pans down to gaze at her rear end and legs. The camera then switches to show Autor looking downwards with a blush on his face, then quickly glancing up when Rue turns towards him as if trying to cover up where his attention had gone.
The third episode of Code Geass had a blatant one of these during Karen's shower scene. The shower curtain gets accidentally pulled aside, and we see her standing in the shower with a Sexy Back shot. Then the camera drops about 3 feet, perfectly framing her behind.
- R2 did this constantly, especially during its first half, to just about every attractive female character. Some of the most egregious examples occurred whenever Kallen or C.C. piloted a Knightmare, including very unsubtle ass shots as seen above.
  - Perhaps it has something to do with the title and animators playing around. Code Ge-ASS.
Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex is comparably blatant. The Major wouldn't have it any other way.
- Witness for example the second episode of the first season. The Major is driving a Tachikoma, stops and opens the hatch to get out... and the camera gives us an ''extreme'' close-up butt shot from below.◊ Oh my, yes.
  - Strangely enough, the audience got fewer and fewer of these as her character got defined. She still kept most of them though.
Neon Genesis Evangelion. The object of the gaze is later promoted to Major. Coincidence?!
During Lalamon's evolution sequence to Rosemon in Digimon Savers, the camera makes sure to pan up her behind and directly into a cleavage shot. When the time came for Data Squad, this part of the sequence was cut out.
In Street Fighter Alpha The Movie, the camera has so many random cuts to close ups of Chun Li's and, to a much lesser extent, Sakura's pelvic reason, that it makes make for a rather entertaining drinking game.
Played with in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. In the eighth episode, Thymilph is seen watching the heroes on a Wall Of Monitors. One of them has a close-up of Yoko's breasts. There are also instances of Gainaxing which the camera sometimes gives particular focus to. Simon's or Kamina's gaze does linger on early in the show, and getting a "good look" at the girls is even a plot point during the sixth episode.
Two of these show up in Azumanga Daioh, oddly enough. One is the series's sole Panty Shot, tho done in such closeup that you can't really tell what it is until it's over and others are reacting. Both are primarily due to the subject (Sakaki, sadly) being the focus of the gaze in both cases—the shot is supposed to be that of the staring character. (Only one is an actual male, though.)
Weird example from the Get Backers manga. Ban, Ginji, Kazuki and Juubei are taking a bath in a hot spring. Ban, Ginji, and Juubei generally stay submerged below the shoulders—but Kazuki, who only looks like a girl, gets some very obvious Sexy Back and ass-shots, to the point where Ban is kind enough to cover up his guy-parts at one point for the intended audience and tell us all how hot a girl Kazuki would be.
Mahou Sensei Negima does this on a regular basis. The "camera" occasionally focuses on the girls' butts for no reason in particular, and anytime a girl does anything active, a Panty Shot is inevitable. Even if the girl is wearing something other than a skirt.
Go Nagai. Just... Go Nagai. Not suprising giving that he invented Fanservice in the first place, and he's not very subtle about it.
This shot of Yakumo from School Rumble when she first meets Harima which was left out in the anime.
Strike Witches. For a show about girls who doesn't wear any pants, ever, the camera is often focused on the part of the body that is exposed if the girls aren't wearing any pants.
Training With Hinako, an anime exercise DVD (they make those now) has the audience's trainer, Hinako, doing various parts of her workout with the camera knowing exactly where to aim itself.
In Fullmetal Alchemist, it's not unusual to focus shots on the Homonculi's ouroborus tattoos. Lust's tattoo, of course, is right above her cleavage.
- Maes Hughes lampshades this one for us.
One can't really blame people for remembering the exploding panties in the first season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The first season's Transformation Sequence had a lot of panning shots of the underaged title character's naked body and it was used often. Though they were still present, these were toned down in later seasons.
In Ryuusei no Rockman Tribe, it's pretty hard to keep the drama of Hot Shonen Mom Akane being kidnapped by Phantom Black when the camera keeps framing her behind and chest in the middle of shots.

Comic Books

Comic artists who draw this way will often show a female character facing away from the camera, but twisting her back (sometimes improbably) towards the 'camera' so that the viewer can get a good look at her breasts as well as her behind.
- Rob Liefeld is probably the most infamous artist here; see, for instance, here and here◊.
- Ed Benes has a reputation for this too, though his knowledge of human anatomy at least allows him to make them look human when they do such unlikely poses.
  - For example: Psylocke in this shot.
- Damn near anything by Frank Cho.
All-Star Batman & Robin features an issue in which Vicki Vale spends an entire scene standing around posing in lacy pink underwear for absolutely no reason. The script for the scene (included in the trade paperback) contains a blatant admission from Frank Miller as to what he was doing: "Okay, I'm shameless, let's go with an ASS SHOT."
In The Loners the team debate whether the villainess's getup is a costume or a tattoo.
Three◊ examples◊ of Courier◊ from the Gambit X-Men spinoff. Should I mention that Courier was a male shapeshifter who was Mode Locked in this form by Dr. Sinister?
- That's "Mr." Sinister. He attended sinister medical school, but didn't graduate.
This Italian comic called "The Road to Red Houses". This page just says it all: [1]◊ Without all those arrows I don't think I'd know where to look.

Film

Charlies Angels (and the sequel too, naturally) featured numerous scenes which pointedly and gratuitously framed the lead actresses' rear ends. This is particularly noticeable in the numerous fan-servicey scenes of various female characters dancing (though the scene with Cameron Diaz disco-dancing in the second flick was nice enough to feature her legs as much as her ass), stripping (don't ask) or in the slow-mo action shots where the Angels inexplicably always seem to wear tight pants or bodysuits of some sort, and high heels, regardless of whether or not they'd be convenient or comfortable or even safe to fight in. Considering it was based on a 1970s' jiggle show, though, is anybody really surprised at any of this?
The first Hercules movie from the 1950s featured a scene in which the male characters are captured by a group of Amazons. Despite the obvious threat of the women's weapons, the camera "inexplicably" focuses on a long line of long legs (bare, natch).
- Perhaps this was to balance out the fact that these were beefcake movies where Hercules ran around shirtless flexing his muscles.
Counterexample: The Film Of The Book American Psycho (directed by Mary Harron) is a rare example of Female Gaze, in particular the sex scene that shows far more of Patrick Bateman than of the prostitutes he is having a threesome with.
- This is actually Bateman Gaze, since the entire story is told from his perspective it has more to do with him being much more interested in himself than them. This is exemplified by Patrick is mostly watching himself in the mirror, posing for the camera and even straightening his hair.
This editor recalls that the films The Sentinel and Harsh Times both released around the same time, and both featured Eva Longoria, and both had a shot where the camera focuses on her butt. In both cases it was to emphasise how the men in the scene see her. In both cases the director was also a male.
Toward the end of Alien, there's a long scene where Ripley's in a shirt and panties. During the whole time, the camera's focus is clearly aimed rather lower than her face, and doesn't go back up to its usual height until after she gets some more clothes on.
Batman Forever, and especially Batman and Robin, would provide the audience with loving close-ups of the dynamic duo's chest, crotch and rear every time they suited up. Hard to tell however if this is an example of the Female Gaze or merely a homosexual version of the Male Gaze, considering how Camp the Batman movies had become by this point.
- It's probably the latter, considering that Batman Forever and Batman & Robin were directed by Joel Schumacher.
- The same close-ups were provided for Batgirl in Batman and Robin. Make of this what you will.
Spoofed hilariously in Scary Movie, which is pertinent since horror movies are perhaps the most guilty of this trope (often in squicky ways as a woman contorts her body sensually and moans orgasmically as she is dying). The movie opens with a woman (played by Carmen Electra, if memory serves) running from a psycho killer, her clothes getting ripped off by anything she runs by, and stopping to pose and flick her hair as she runs (in Slo Mo, no less) through a sprinkler.
A film of 1984 had a scene with Julia and Winston in the room on top of the antique shop. For some reason she gets up and walks around in the room for minutes completely naked and the camera shows her entire body. Every shot at Winston, though, shows only his head, or at best his upper body. That's not fanservice.
- It's there for a reason. Julia and Winston's relationship was completely sexual in the book. So a scene like this isn't that unusual. Then again...
Parodied in The Naked Gun 33 1/3 when Leslie Nielsen's character first sees Anna Nicole Smith. Watch as the camera goes slowly up the legs... and up the legs... and past the knees... and up the legs... and up the legs... and up the legs... and past the knees again...
The James Bond movies have this from time to time with the Bond Girls, prominently when anyone's getting out of the water with a bathing suit- ostensibly as a tribute to Bond girl Honey Ryder. Casino Royale manages to make it both Darker And Edgier and Stupid Sexy Flanders. Daniel Craig looks very nice in blue... (To quote a livejournal icon, 'IM IN UR MUVIE APPROPRIATIN UR MALE GAZE'.)
Austin Powers International Man of Mystery. We first see Vanessa Kensington via a slow pan up her entire body.
When Sue from is bending over in her (very) string'd bath suit, Mick "Crocodile" Dundee is watching her from behind the bushes.
Sue Charlton: That croc was going to eat me alive.
Michael J. "Crocodile" Dundee: Well, I wouldn't hold that against him. Same thought crossed my mind once or twice.
In Pitch Black, when Fry is crawling into the cavern with the first sighting of monsters. On the commentary the director even says "Young boys everywhere, you're welcome." :)
In Serenity, right after one of River's hallucinations, the camera cuts to showing her lying facedown on the deck grating, and the camera angle is conspiciously positioned to give the viewer a perfect shot straight down her cleavage.
- And, of course, we can' forget the countless shots of River's feet.
High School Musical 3, if this troper remembers correctly, had a shot of Sharpay's butt that filled pretty much the entire screen.
The Courtship of Eddie's Father is about a widowed father and his son sizing up various candidates for second wife/stepmother.
The recent final poster of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra features all of the main characters, including The Baroness...but she is the only one facing the viewer, along with her body twisted in a Rob Liefield-style pose so her ass is as well.
Anyone who has seen the second Transformers movie will realise from Megan Fox's very first scene that director Michael Bay has, for which this troper is very grateful, gone out of his way to not do anything to discourage this trope.
- In fact, pretty much any scene with Megan Fox in it will have her wearing ridiculously skimpy clothing. This troper finds it kinda creepy.
In Die Hard, the camera pans down just slightly but very noticeably to show that Bonnie Bedelia's jacket/blouse thing had opened up a bit, showing her slip.

Literature

In The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, when Esmeralda is being taken to the gallows, Victor Hugo spends an inordinate amount of page space describing her "long black hair ... more lustrous than the raven's wing", her "half-naked shoulders" and "bare legs", and her desperate attempts to hold her garment closed with her teeth.

Live Action TV

The majority of Charmed consisted of butt and cleavage-shots.
The Star Trek:Deep Space Nine episode "Let He Who Is Without Sin" featured a pointless close-up of Vanessa Williams' rear as she walked past the camera.
- Pointless? It got plenty of ratings points.
Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (the second, inferior one) gives the camera a definite fixation on then Pink Ranger Kat, most notably a very blatant ass shot during a jungle scene. Tanya, the then Yellow, seems to escape this, which is strange because Carranger, the Super Sentai series it was based off of is one of the few to have a female Yellow Ranger.
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon also featured a blatant ass shot as Rei, dressed as a pop star for a psuedo concert, walked towards her dressing room. Of note is the fact that this show was a live-action one about five Magical Girls in schoolgirl outfits; a large portion of the show featured significant Male Gaze on general principle.
The Painkiller Jane TV series used this a couple of times in the assassination plot/time loop episode: we get to see Jane put her pants on over that nice black pair of panties (from the front, showing off her nice legs), and see the barely-clad ass of the girl Connor was having sex with...
On Seacht, kisses between Lipstick Lesbian couples far outnumber any others.
Supernatural seem to go out of their way to try and balance it out. To make up for the cleavage shots, we get a Sammy-In-A-Towel coming out of the shower. To make up for the demon sluttiness, we get two women in "The Kids Are Alright" ogling Dean's arse and obviously thinking that they would love to have him as a sex toy. And while they certainly have a hot woman every episode, they pay just as much loving attention to the male leads' attributes - even going as far to pan up a sleeping Dean's naked legs in an early Season One episode.
And how about the slow, slow pan up from 80's-hookerwear-clad Alex Drake's feet in the Ashes To Ashes pilot? (Not to mention that she went for a really unlikely length of time without changing clothes.)
Doctor Who- Romana I is introduced via a pan up her entire body, "The Girl in the Fireplace" has a pan across Billie Piper's tight T-shirt and jeans-clad body, and despite the fact that she is generally considered asexual, Catherine Tate's cleavage has a special place in Who fandom. Much like Supernatural, they do attempt to balance this - Naked Jack, anybody?
- Peri was introduced with a pan up her bikini-clad body. In one of the few episodes directed by a woman, oddly. Since the producer insisted on Peri revealing as much flesh as possible, the director may not have had a say in the matter.
The X-Files episode directed by Gillian Anderson starts with the Male Gaze (camera just below armpit level, directed past Scully's bosom) and turns to Female Gaze (Mulder asleep in bed).
Slings And Arrows does an appropriately meta version of this: the husband of the Minister of Culture comes to several performances, and brings binoculars. There's always a brief shot through the binoculars, in which we see that he's focusing on the lead actress's cleavage.
Baywatch.
Every episode of the 2008 Knight Rider series has one of the lead females run around in a bikini or underwear for some obscure reason.
Happens from time to time on The Sarah Connor Chronicles, with long, slow tracking shots of Cameron's well-formed behind as she slowly, deliberately walks along.
Smallville: Camera focusing mostly on Lana Lang's body (her body-double's, actually) doing cartwheels in a tiny red bathing suit in episode "Nicodemus". Pretty much half of the episode "Exposed", which features plenty of gorgeous, mostly naked strippers, including Lois Lane. Half of the scenes with Lois Lane in general, e.g. "Aqua": Lois getting out of the water, wearing the tiniest bikini that could be found while the camera crawls lovingly over her body in (what else) slow motion.
Kelly Hu spent a fair proportion of the pilot episode of Martial Law hanging around in bikini.
In an episode of NCIS, Tony decides to snap a picture of Ziva's tightly-clad backside when she bends over at a crime scene. Result- Insta Gibbs.
Burn Notice, an otherwise excellent show, adores this trope. Their idea of an "establishing shot" seems to be an aerial view of Miami, and then a rather longer shot of random bikini-clad T&A jiggling by. Faces are optional. They also use these shots as the occasional bumper between scenes.
- A natural result of Shoot The Money.
Spoofed in Cybill, when the title character starred in an X-Files rip-off called Lifeforms. The pilot episode featured countless shots of her legs and cleavage and very few of her face. This annoys her at first, but Cybill soon uses the fact that her legs are the most popular thing in the show to bully the male star and showrunner into rehiring the original creator.

Professional Wrestling

Turn on any WWE show ever. Chances are, if a woman is onscreen, her name isn't Linda McMahon, and she's wrestling, the camera is focusing on her breasts falling out of her top, jiggling as she moves, or competing for who can get the most ass shots.
"Extreme Expose": The segment being the part in the show where three scantily clad women - one just barely over the age of 18 - dance to club music in the ring. It started as the 18-year-old's way to show off how much of an "exhibitionist" she was.

Videogames

Many Dating Sim games (especially eroge) in which the player is male and the haremettes are female go as far as to obscure the male Player Character in every CG, usually not even drawing his face. In this instance, however, the effect is largely to help the player step into the shoes of the player character and so is more akin to Heroic Mime.
- Some sex scenes even go so far as to make the player character invisible, leading to unintended squick... not that this troper would know from having seen them.
Metal Gear Solid: after the scene where Solid Snake first meets Meryl, there is an extended shot (in slow motion) of her buttocks as she is leaving. It was intended to draw attention to her unique walk so she could be identified in disguise, but it was so pronounced and out of place that even lovers of Fan Service found it creepy.
- The third game had a first person 'Snake Cam' at certain points during cutscenes, and when the female character EVA was around pressing the button would often greet the viewer with an extended shot focused on her breasts, either intentionally (Snake looking) or unintentionally (EVA showing him).
- The director even went so far as to include some bonus 'Peep Show' segments on the Director's Cut edition, which involved the scenes with EVA recut in various interesting ways, with her dressed in an interesting alternate outfit.
- He also did a recut scene of a segment where Snake undressed an attractive male, which raises some awkward questions about the director. Especially when it's taken into account the way the games are notorious for dressing men in Spy Catsuits and having long, lingering shots on their buttocks too, and also that the lead character always ends up shirtless at some point in his adventure. Hell, Metal Gear Solid's penultimate battle is a shirtless fistfight on top of a Humongous Mecha.
  - Shirtless? Hell, MGS 2's Raiden had a segment where he ran around stark staring naked, hands over his junk. (During this segment, he could run and dodge, but could not do anything that would require his hands to be elsewhere than covering himself up.)
- Outside of the recut sections, notice too that holding the button around Bishonen Raikov reveals Snake's eyes to be permanently fixed on Raikov's junk.
- This editor is convinced that a good deal of Metal Gear Solid is geared towards the Female Gaze, given how taut and firm Snake's ass is.
- In Metal Gear Solid 4, the cutscenes before each Beauty boss fight spend a lot of time behind the ladies as they are on all fours. Snake gets quite a bit of this treatment in cutscenes involving him as well.
- Parodied in Metal Gear Solid 4, when Otacon and Naomi are using the computer together. His webcam feed is displayed on his laptop, as they work, and while Otacon isn't looking at the video, he's clearly angled it specifically to video Naomi's cleavage. When Naomi tries to look at what's on the screen, he panics and tries to point the camera away so that she doesn't notice. She does, but she actually seems quite pleased.
  - And then, later, he's spying on her and her comrades by positioning a tiny invisible robot between her legs. The target displaying what Otacon is most focused on at any one time flips back and forth from whoever's talking to Naomi's feet, buttocks, or thighs. He does go in for a Panty Shot, but she notices the robot a fraction of a second beforehand and one of her coworkers destroys it.
In First Person Shooter SiN Episodes (i.e. a game in which the camera angles are almost entirely up to the player), the character of Jessica Cannon wears a Spy Catsuit that, when viewed from behind, is apparently designed to draw attention to her rear end.
- And the opening sequence, with the player waking up, features the tremendously endowed villain Alexis Sinclair standing beside his stretcher and leaning over.
Lulu's victory pose in Final Fantasy X.
- Played with in an early scene in the same game where Tidus snatches a person's binoculars and looks around with them, lingering at one point over Lulu's breasts. A similar joke occurs in Final Fantasy X 2, in which Logos is supposed to be showing a sphere of the events they just encountered in Bevelle but the video opens with a long shot of the camera pointed at Yuna's butt. He attempts to pawn off the blame on Ormi, which is quickly deflected when Ormi appears in the same shot.
- And Tifa's in VII.
- There's a scene early on in Final Fantasy XII where Penelo is trying to talk Vaan out of doing the heist he's about to attempt, and one shot inexplicably centers around her torso. Her chest and crotch are in the shot. Her face isn't.
Lara Croft suffers from this in many ways in the Tomb Raider games; not only does she possess somewhat... exaggerated attributes in the bosom and rear end departments, but the clothes she wears (particularly in the earlier games) are designed to enhance them even further. Coupled with this is the fact that she is mostly viewed from behind during the game (partly as a necessity of the game mechanics), and it's not hard to imagine what many gamers of the male persuasion would be thinking about when playing the game.
- A very, VERY common mod for the early Tomb Raider PC games was called Nude Raider, which made a very... subtle... change to Lara's outfit. (It removed it, and in some versions of the mod, changed her player model to give more detail to her anatomy). There was a print advertisement for a video game cheat device (Gameshark) based on this mod. In it, a (insinuated to be) nude Lara is seen walking off "screen", a bikini flying away from her, with the caption "Want the code?"
- This got even worse in Tomb Raider Anniversary, where the updated graphics and animation allowed the developer to do the same game except with more fanservice—as Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw notes in his review, when she comes out of the water she's realistically wet and glistening, and if you leave the game idle for a while she does these shamelessly erotic stretches.
- Any leftover modesty leaves in Underworld, where Lara dons a swimsuit-thong for significant portions of the game.
Zero Suit Samus is introduced in The Subspace Emissary, the Adventure Mode of Super Smash Bros Brawl, with her dropping to the ground from an air vent followed by a slow pan from her legs to her face, with particular attention paid to her rear. Clad in a Spy Catsuit as she is, this is hardly surprising.
- The Smash Bros Brawl website plays Equal Opportunity with this, related to Metal Gear above. When describing Snake's Final Smash, one of the stills is of Snake (also in a Spy Catsuit, of course) as he's climbing down the ladder, and his ass pretty much fills the screen.
Mass Effect introduces Sha'ira, the Asari Consort, with a lingering shot of her behind as she walks upstairs.
Used in Dragon Quest VIII when Angelo introduces himself to Jessica.
- And again when Prince Charmles's father tries to convince him that marrying a princess isn't so bad... by using Jessica as a visual illustration of "Va-va-VOOM".
Lampshaded in Shadow Hearts 3, where the end of the scene where Johnny and Shania meet has an actual, on-screen arrow pointing from Johnny's eyes to Shania's chest. Also the Transformation Sequence. Dear God, the Transformation Sequence.
As always, trailers are often the worst offenders. Anyone catch that new Final Fantasy trailer?
In Devil May Cry 4: As Nero approaches the drawbridge, he witnesses disguised Trish as she engages several mooks in badass combat. During the fight, she spams split-related attacks, and the camera never misses an opportunity to pan across the area between her legs.
In Halo, whenever Cortana's visible, the camera does it's best to show off her translucent assets. Taken to the max during Halo 3's campaign, when occasionally Cortana would flash up on screen, say something cryptic, and then disappear.
Sheva's introduction in Resident Evil 5 starts with a long closeup of her buttocks.
Rumble Roses has lots but the one that really stands out is when a character is ready to be finished off with a "humiliation move".
In the ps2 surrival horror game Michigan : Report From Hell ( which in this troper's opinion did not get the exposure it deserved ) , you are a cameraman whose job is to keep the camera rolling and keep on shooting a number of various sexy female reporters ( when one dies , because you failed to help them or because you made them go in a dangerous area where they got killed , another replaces them , though there is a set number ) delivering their newsreports even as Michigan City goes to hell literally ( long story short , imagine this as the Blair Witch Project meets The Mist ) . You can take pictures of literally anything , for which you score points , with " erotic " shots getting " erotic " points . If you score enough " erotic " points , you get the Best Ending where whatever sexy female reporter with enough points ( you can get more than one , but not all , each time around , talk about Replay Value ) will pose , parade , and poledance for you in sexy lingerie ( all in glorious 3d )whether she actually lived or died by the game end . As icing on the cake for this troper , luckily all the girls had relatively distinct appearances and personalities so they could be told apart from each other .

Webcomics

Discussed in the context of Satan playing video games in this strip of Dinosaur Comics.
Shown in this Loserz strip.

Web Original

Controversial lonelygirl15 episode "Girl Tied Up" features a pan over Emma as she lies tied up on a bed. Suspiciously, the thumbnail for this video on YouTube is of the moment where it passes her cleavage; consequently this is the most watched LG15 video on that site, but one of the lowest rated. Particularly disturbing since the film is supposed to be being shot by the adult Dr. Hart, and Emma is 15.
- Surprisingly enough, the Creator responsible for this video was Amanda Goodfried. When fans asked her about the episode, she simply replied, "I know what sells."
Parodied in the KateModern episodes "Birdwatching" and "Much, Much Worse". In both cases it is implied that the cameramen - Gavin and Toe respectively - are perhaps enjoying their camerawork a little too much.

Western Animation

Constantly spoofed and played straight with Foxxy on Drawn Together, especially when she's been soaked with liquid.
Used on the various Stripperiffic female villainesses and superheroines in Justice League. When the The Royal Flush members were being introduced one by one, Joker gave a "Hmm..." when the camera panned to Queen's legs before rising to display her face.
Spoofed in Power Puff Girls - we never see Ms. Bellum's face, so when she speaks, the camera cuts to her chest.
Loonatics Unleashed - we come back from a commercial to a shot of Lexi Bunny's tail and her backside as she Sexy Walks away from the camera toward Ace.
A.T.O.M - The Suiting Up shots of the team show the guys putting on helmets and gloves, buckling seatbelts. Lioness? We get a worm's eye view shot from behind of her straddling her motorcycle, or a close shot of her zipping her battle outfit over her breasts.
An episode of the early '90s X Men animated series, in which Rogue is blasted by Apocalypse so hard her normally-indestructible bomber jacket is burned away (though her even-more-indestructible tights, hair, and flesh are not), she collapses to the ground, the camera positioned behind her...and you are suddenly very aware that she is wearing indestructible spandex.
An episode of Animaniacs the Warner siblings annoy an airline passenger who calls for the stewardess, the original HelloNurse, to escort them away. She bends over to talk to Yakko and Wakko, who howl and drool over her. Their eyes are obviously focused on her breasts, even though this is (arguably) a kid's cartoon.
In Totally Spies about half the camera shots are focused on the girl's breasts as they are about to speak or when they crash into each other the camera is often focused their butts as they are lying on the floor.
Kim Possible has her fair amount of close up butt shots.
In one episode of Winx Club, one scene cuts from a close up of a supporting character to a shot of Stella's rear as she is trying out a skirt.
In an episode of Inspector Gadget Gadget meets his favorite actress Lana Lamore he begins to examine her with gadget goggles he noticeably stops on her breasts at one point and shouts his catchphrase "Wowzers!", even though this was a kid's show.

Other

A New York magazine article discussing flash mobs and other public pranks showed a picture of one of them, where a group of people all simultaneously took the Subway wearing no pants. Despite the fact that there are at least a half-dozen men in the picture, the camera is looking up the subway stairs at the one woman in lacy lingerie, naturally centered and in-focus.
Taken to the extreme in this music video.
Professional women's beach volleyball. Giggity.

London England Syndrome

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