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In film and television, characters that have just bathed or showered will often be wrapped in towels to preserve their modesty. Men will wear the towel wrapped around the waist, usually reaching to the knees, while women will wear it from under the arms to the hips * or knees, depending on how long the towel is , covering themselves up even if there is no-one else around.
This is often Truth in Television: those who are accustomed to doing so while others are around will often cover themselves out of habit, even if they are alone — not to mention that if you've just stepped out of a hot shower, the rest of the bathroom's going to seem a bit chilly, not to mention it soaks up extra dampness from the body and hair. A woman will also often wrap a towel around her hair, and effeminate males are sometimes shown to wear towels in the feminine style for comic effect or to establish their effeminacy. Female characters can wear their modesty towels in the masculine way (or a mock-up of that way, which has one towel around the breasts and another wrapped at the waist, baring the midriff), but this isn't done that often and will most likely be used for Fanservice (or to establish a female character as acting like "one of the guys").
Related to the Modesty Bedsheet, but this trope actually occurs in Real Life.
In televised anime, towels are often used to censor scenes like bathing, in which the characters really should be naked. When the anime is censored in the localized dub, it's usually by means of a Digital Bikini.
Also, sometimes they reach for something and the towel almost falls off, or, on rare occasion, does. More common, they can't find the towel.
See also Censor Suds. Contrast Sexy Coat Flashing (which can be used in conjunction with this trope).
Examples
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Advertising
- A Flash cartoon advertisement for a shower gel on French websites has a mother and daughter doing a dance in modesty towels
 ◊. With the last image, the towels fall.◊
- Isaiah Mustafa of the The Man Your Man Could Smell Like Old Spice adverts is known for wearing one. It's all he wears in the personalized Youtube response videos, and even mentions that the only way to do community service is in a towel. Subverted in that whenever he changes the scene, he wears new clothes as the situation demands. But never a shirt.
- Many spoofs of advertisements featuring towel-only clad models have appeared through the years. However, North Scott High School in Eldridge, Iowa, took this a step farther in the spring of 2002 when members of the school newspaper, The Lance, published a "centerfold" featuring students — including several 18-year-old male and female students — dressed minimally, including some girls wrapped only in towels. Related pictures (which also appeared in a "minimal clothing calendar") appeared on the April 25, 2002, issue's back page. The student editor told the Moline Daily Dispatch that his staff had gotten the idea from reading ads for such items as perfume and shaving cream in magazines that circulated at the school's library. The resulting newspaper gained noteriety in the community for several days as several conservative-minded community members expressed their concern about the morality of the feature and, despite the absence of outright nudity and a disclaimer that the students were dressed, the fact that child pornography had inadvertently been published. (All of the students pictured in the issue were seniors, but the worry was that some had yet to turn 18.)
- A woman is painting a naked male model wearing only a towel over certain parts you can't show on TV, and she is even painting the towel on the portrait, but her biggest concern was the problem the model had, a discolored toenail. (This was, of course, an ad for a toenail fungus treatment.) If she wanted not to show that, why didn't she just have him wear a bathing suit or underpants?
Anime & Manga
- Tower of God: The entire bath scene. No, it's just guys. I mean, yeah, all the guys.
- In the Love Hina manga, characters are normally naked when in the hot springs, while in the anime, they are often wrapped in towels. Evidently, even the Barbie-doll bodies of the manga are too risqué for anime.
- Censor Steam aside, this was also quite common in Akamatsu's next work, the anime version of Mahou Sensei Negima!, also done by Xebec. In the manga, however...
- The unusual usage of towels is lampshaded in Hayate the Combat Butler, where the narrator points out that the towels are added due to broadcast regulations and shouldn't be worn in baths because it's unhygienic and disliked by bath attendants.
- Used on Meyrin Hawke in Gundam SEED Destiny, despite the fact that she's still wearing her underwear. A case of Invoked Trope: it's the old trick "can't open the door, I'm naked" women use when they hide someone pursued.
- Late into Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, there is a fight scene in the prison bathroom between Simon and Viral, who are wearing nothing but ridiculously tiny towels.
- In Lagann-hen the trope returns◊, but with an added touch of Magic Skirt. Modesty towel indeed...
- Aeka and Sasami used these at times in versions of Tenchi Muyo! Even in the spring. This would be more of a character decision, though; it's hard to call it censorship when everyone else around them goes without.
- In the Revolutionary Girl Utena manga, when Touga sees Dios's power for the first time and decides to get close to Utena to find out more about it, he joins Utena's household as a "shimobe" (personal servant). The first time Utena hears of this is the next day, when he waltzes out of her shower, clad only in a Modesty Towel.
- Pacifica Casull from Scrapped Princess has an odd habit of bathing with a towel wrapped around her.
- Present on every character during the Hot Springs Episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, though absent... everywhere else.
- In Axis Powers Hetalia, when France goes around in the Christmas Special, he catches Spain in the shower. He pulls the curtain towards himself, but only manages to cover his crotch.
- As an effeminate male, Kazuki did this in the Get Backers anime (as well as Hevn and Natsumi, when the camera cut back to them), but he didn't bother in the manga version. He has a very nice rear...
- In Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu the EXTREMELY effeminate male Hideyoshi wears a towel this way, as seen in episode 6.
- He also suffers frequent Clothing Damage, but that's a different trope altogether.
- While the title character of Ranma ½ really couldn't care less, Akane will wrap her in a towel anyway. Even if there's nobody but girls in the room.
- Akane herself dons the Modesty Towel quite a bit.
- In the Gintama anime, Gintoki and Hijikata got into a fight at a sauna, which consisted mainly of a lot of grabbing each other while wearing ridiculously tiny towels. Needless to say, it was AWESOME!
- One scene of Goku bathing in Dragon Ball Z is censored with the use of a digital towel. They even animate it falling off to the ground as Goku jumps in. That is to say, animated it POORLY.
- Depends on the dub, because in the Latin-American one it went uncensored.
- Used hilariously in one episode of Sailor Moon Stars. When Seiya is hanging out at Usagi's house while her parents are out (it's completely innocent, don't look at me like that...), Chibi-Chibi spills cake all over him, so he uses her shower to clean himself up while his clothes are being washed. Meanwhile, the other girls show up... just in time for him to come out of the shower in what appears to be the tiniest towel on the face of the earth, asking where his clothes are. Then Chibi-Chibi complains that he's using her towel and proceeds to do her best to get it away from him. Hilarity Ensues.
- Used even earlier in the Hot Springs Episode of the first season. Shingo is embarrassed about wearing one, and when Usagi teases him about it, he retaliates by stealing hers and leaving Usagi naked.
- There's a short Super-Deformed Hot Springs Anime Special for Harukanaru Toki No Naka De 3 that features Modesty Towels; and apparently it's entirely possible to swim underwater freely while wrapped in these. Also, considering the nature of the Haruka franchise, had the special not been drawn in the Super-Deformed style, it probably would've been much more valuable in terms of Fanservice...
- One gets applied in the Anime Adaption of Eiken, but Eiken being Eiken, this barely covers the girl's front as opposed to wrap around..
- Katekyo Hitman Reborn! has these for all the guys during the Hot Springs Epic Battle in the OAV. Much to the fangirls' disappointment.
- In Summer Wars, Natsuki emerges from the bathroom to chase down one of her little cousins who had gone running from the bathroom without a stitch, when she runs into Kenji. She quickly darts back in to the bathroom, while Kenji averts his eyes and insists that he saw nothing.
- Pictured above, Kallen of Code Geass does this when she's pulling double duty yet again, storming in on C.C. to complain about how their plan at the beginning of season 2 played out. Turned into a Crowning Moment of Funny when she realizes C.C. is in the middle of a meeting with a few gentlemen from the Chinese Federation. In an oddly-effeminate (if understandable) moment she screams and runs behind a screen, despite the men having gotten a good look already. Angrier than ever, she continues to complain to C.C. and almost has the towel fall off in the process.
- Special edition DVD revealed that the Aomori incident implied Kallen and C.C. fleeing wearing only towels.
- Roughly half of the episodes in Maicchingu Machiko Sensei show the main character in a modesty towel in one scene. In the vast majority of those scenes, the towel ends up being taken away one way or another.
- Subverted in One Piece. See: Happiness Punch.
- After being pulled into the water by Corphish in the episode "Gone Corphishin'", May appears briefly in one while the protagonists' clothes dried.
- Nino wears one while bathing (outdoors) in Arakawa Under The Bridge (much to Ko/Ric's disappointment). She didn't originally, but one time she was getting in just as a police car went by, and it was "a pain".
- Yuri from Mawaru-Penguindrum dones one in episode 15, right before she fights Masako.
- THE iDOLM@STER - Miki enters the men's bath wearing just a towel.
Comics — Books
- One issue of Excalibur has Nightcrawler wearing a Modesty Towel when another character bursts into the bathroom and tries to kill him. Conveniently, the towel remains firmly in place throughout the ensuing struggle.
- Donald Duck wears a Modesty Towel after taking a shower. Given that he doesn't wear pants, presumably it's done because it's funny.
- a strip in Pondus doing the period where Jokke lives together with Tammy-Sue, sees him sitting and watching TV, bemoaning that there is nothing interesting while Tammy-Sue pass behind him, wearing only a Towel, which gets stuck halfway through the scene dropping the Towel, without Jokke noticing
Fan Works
Films — Live-Action
Literature
Live-Action TV
Pro Wrestling
- Subverted on WWE No Mercy of 2006: William Regal was wearing a towel during a segment with Vito. While Regal was moving around, his penis was exposed.
- The WWE's Val Venus (Sean Morley), as part of his "porn star" gimmick, wore a modesty towel around his waist during his standard ring entrance during the late 1990s. (Yes, a pair of wrestling trunks was underneath).
- At the WWF's 1987 "Slammy Awards," "Ravishing" Rick Rude, playing up his character as a sexy ladies'-man chippendale, did a strip-tease act when he came onstage to accept the "Jesse 'the Body'" award for best-looking male wrestler. At the height of his act, Rude began taking off his pants when "Mean" Gene Okerlund ran out and began wrapping a towel around an annoyed Rude's waist (Rude, of course, was wearing a thong). After his acceptance speech, he took one of the showgirls backstage and threw a towel on-stage, giving the impression that Rude was completely in the buff (off-stage).
- A week after the Terrell Owens-Nicolette Sheridan Monday Night Football "towel skit" aired and gained negative criticism by conservative critics and women's groups, a parody skit aired on Monday Night Raw. Shelton Benjamin was initially in the Owens role, while — despite wearing a nose brace due to a legit injury suffered a week earlier — babelicious blonde diva Trish Stratus was the towel-clad Edie Britt (Sheridan's Desperate Housewives character), this time with Benjamin trying to prepare for a match and Trish doing her best to turn on her sexual charms. WWE owner Vince McMahon entered the locker room to express (mock) outrage, claiming the swift downfall of society would result by solely said actions being aired on TV. Benjamin walked off disgusted, and after he left McMahon immediately focused entirely on Trish ... who took it all off. Cue the Monday Night Football theme as an orgasmic McMahon gleefully said, "Are you ready for some wrestlin'?"
Video Games
- In Persona 3, the girls are all wearing these during their visit to the hot springs in the Kyoto trip.
- Also, during the July Full Moon operation, Yukari comes out of the shower, dressed only in a towel, to greet the Main Character (and presumably do more than that)—she's under the influence of the Shadow of the Lovers Arcana. She comes out of the Lovers Shadow's trance immediately upon seeing him and slaps him for seeing her in that state.
- Fair being fair, in the female-MC campaign that comes with the portable version, Yukari's role in this scene is taken over by either Akihiko or Junpei, depending on the construction of your team. Only without any slapping involved.
- Mitsuru also comes out of her private shower (the only one in the dorm, at that) and lounges around in a towel while musing about her friends and fashion. She only doffs it when she walks out of frame again... which is lucky, since she was being recorded by a surveillance camera and was none the wiser.
- Persona 4 uses this for its hot spring scene as well.
- Kira's entrance in Arcana Heart starts with her wearing one that she dramatically flings away at the same time that she puts on her swimsuit.
- MapleStory has these as an equip. Oddly enough, it's one of the best items a pure can have/make, as it's one of the few relatively cheap pieces of overall armor that can be scrolled numerous times for a specific stat.
- One of the people you must possess in Geist is a woman taking a shower. After you scare her out of the shower, she wraps a towel around herself. After scaring her a bit more and possessing her, you have to go get dressed before she'll leave the locker room.
- In The Sims 3, if a character has their clothes stolen while skinny dipping, they immediately cover up in one of these on emerging from the pool.
- In Secret Agent Clank, Ratchet and the more humanoid enemies wear these in the showers (and lose them upon taking damage, leaving them with Censor Boxes).
- Ar tonelico features Modesty Towel as a battle costume for Aurica. Somehow, it gives away most stats of all her clothes selection.
- Elh wears one during the two Shower of Awkward scenes in Solatorobo. It's perhaps implied that Red tried to steal it the first time.
- In Tales of Vesperia, Karol reluctantly wears one as his employee "uniform" (They ran out of proper ones) while working part time at a hot spring with the rest of the party. He gets to keep it as a costume once the job is done and is rather displeased by it. He'll also complain in a skit about having to wear it again if you equip it on him afterward.
Web Animation
- Subverted in Homestar Runner. While Coach Z is talking to Homestar about girls, an alien is shown in the background showering, while wearing a modesty towel... and then the towel falls down to reveal the alien's butt.
Webcomics
Web Original
- Done by Kate in the KateModern episode "Tariq Attack" and by Gavin in the episode "A Close Shave".
Western Animation
- Futurama
- A joke similar to Hot Dog!: The Movie was used with Zapp Branningan stepping out of the shower in the episode "War Is the H-Word".
Richard Nixon: Damn it, Brannigan, I didn't live for thousands of years and travel millions of miles to look at another man's gizmo!
- Subverted seconds before also: Pte. Lee Lemon suggests that
his her Captain puts on a towel after exiting the shower. He obliges by putting a towel on his head. Considering in the world of Futurama there's no nudity taboo, it leads you to think what's wrong with Zapp's anatomy. Or, more likely, the sight of him brought shameful memories to mind.
- Leela herself wears her towel wrapped around her entire torso in the same scene, but nobody notices that she's a Sweet Polly Oliver.
- Code Lyoko
- Yumi Ishiyama is seen in a Modesty Towel in at least two episodes, most notably the first. To be fair, the boys are seen wearing one even more often over the run of the series.
- One particular scene (which became Fanservice fuel to nearly all the girls watching it) near the end of the episode "Bragging Rights" had Odd dancing around for "breaking the record of fastest shower", while wearing only a Modesty Towel. For some reason, many fangirls wanted that towel to fall off.
- After soaking in his bathtub in a previous scene of Beast Wars, Megatron comes out with a towel wrapped around his waist. Considering that he is a robot and thus always naked just like everyone else, it's not clear why he's done this.
- This is the villain who has a rubber ducky in his bathtub. Beast Wars sometimes does invoke the Rule of Funny.
- In the Veggie Tales song about Larry's hairbrush, Larry is shown in a Modesty Towel (even though he doesn't wear anything other than the occasional period-appropriate headdress in the regular animated stories or on one occasion, in a corporate setting, a tie when his character was promoted) coming out of the shower, and everyone who walks into him still recoils in embarrassment. At the end, the Peach shows up and is also wrapped in a towel. The two are embarrassed by each other.
- Phineas and Ferb's "Gaming the System" has Candace fighting off video game villains in one that stays put. Technically, she even went on her date wearing it under her dress. That must have been kind of uncomfortable to dance in. (Well, that or she went on the date with nothing underneath.)
- Helia is seen in one during episode 21 of the third season of Winx Club. Perhaps it was a little Fanservice, since we hadn't seen him much in that season.
- In episode 4 of Wakfu, almost the whole cast wears one, though not just to keep modesty but also to hide the "ugly princesses" disguises. Unfortunately, the only one to have the towel fall off is Ruel.
- Krang in the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon wears one in his robotic body after Shredder contacts him on his communicator and "interrupts his shower" in one episode.
- Bugs Bunny, who is always naked except for his gloves, wears one in the short The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, during a scene in which he's coming out of the shower.
- The Simpsons episode "Bart Gets Famous": When Homer comes out of the shower at the nuclear plant to answer the phone: "You'll have to speak up. I'm wearing a towel."
- Played for Laughs with Jimmy Five during the first half of a Monica's Gang cartoon named "Quero Entrar" ("Let Me In").
- Animaniacs, "Moon Over Minerva". Then again, this trope was applied to Ms. Mink every chance the writers got in the comics.
- In one episode of Justice League, Green Lantern visits an old friend of his and is introduced to his pretty fiancée, who had stepped out from the showers with nothing but a towel.
- Used by Judy Funnie in Doug when she's waiting for Doug to get out of the bathroom so she can take a shower.
- Dr. Vic on the Toonsylvania episode "Love Potion Number Nein!" was wearing a towel the feminine way (covering from under the armpits to around the knees) and had another one wrapped around his hair when he came out of the bathroom to find Igor being chased by the ghost woman Natalie Nightshade.
- Subverted on Drawn Together, when Princess Clara discovers Captain Hero sleeping with her cousin Bleh. She gives her a towel and instructs her to "...cover your shame!" Bleh takes the towel and wraps it around her head before skipping back to her room entirely naked.
- Used on Archer, when Mallory hires a black Jewish man to fulfill minority hiring requirements, and Archer confronts him in the locker room. When they end up nearly fighting, both towels fall off.
Archer: He's uncircumcised.
Lana: Okay, glossing over how you know that...
Archer: We touched penises.
Lana: Glossing over!
- Heather from Total Drama is often seen wearing one during the first season.
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