Showing Off the New Body

Someone likes her new toy.

Ahh... it's been so long since I've had a body. Eat your hearts out, ladies!

— Amazon Pandora, Kid Icarus: Uprising

The result of combining Grand Theft Me with sex appeal. Any villain who possesses the body of the heroine (or of any woman, really) is contractually required to spend time posing in front of mirrors, wearing scanty clothing, and sometimes even groping herself. This often occurs when the villain in question is herself female and has been without a normal body — or at least an attractive one — for an extended period of time.

Naturally, this is an opportunity for rampant Fanservice.

Compare Man, I Feel Like a Woman. This overlaps with Power Perversion Potential. Contrast Shapeshifting Seducer. Subtrope of Limb-Sensation Fascination and Reveling in the New Form.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Code Geass: Empress Marianne does this when she enters C's World, doing a little posing, spinning, and curtsying. Slightly different from the normal application of this trope, as she wasn't testing out a new body, but getting used to her old one, since she's been using a young girl as a Soul Jar for a long time, and only in C's World can her detached spirit manifest its true form. Did I mention she's very hot and... did this to her son, Lelouch?
• In the last episode of Excel♡Saga, the first thing that Excel does when she finds herself in the body of her partner Hyatt is to feel herself up while naked... And she promptly starts coughing up enormous amounts of blood and shriveling up into a mummy.
• Dante in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) attempts to seduce her ex, Hohenheim, in this manner, after taking over the body of Lyra, her beautiful maid and student. When that doesn't work, she turns to his son Edward — or rather, she tried to preemptively seduce him by making him fall in love with Rose, the girl whose body she was planning on stealing next.
• Dio Brando from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure steals Jonathan Joestar's body in order to "live gorgeously forever". He then proceeds to spend a significant amount of time in said body wearing suggestive outfits (or just hanging around shirtless), feeling himself up, and having a crazy amount of sex.
• When Grace O'Connor downloaded herself into the new body of a combat cyborg in Macross Frontier, fondling her boobs (which were considerably bigger than her previous ones) was first thing she did.
• Played for laughs in One Piece when Bon Clay transforms into Nami and flashes Luffy, Usopp and Chopper. Nami is not amused. It happens again to her when she and Sanji switch bodies. Sanji takes great enjoyment of this.
• In the last Ranma ½ OAV, a vengeful doll spirit swaps bodies with Akane and then tries to seduce/kill Ranma.
  • The manga also featured a mirror spirit who, upon taking Ranma's female form, immediately barges out of the house in a tiny cocktail dress, ready to get it on with the next attractive guy she can find.
  • In a bizarre instance of self-awareness, when female Ranma (posing as "Ranko") is forced to go bra-shopping with Nodoka and Akane, she gives up and tries on a few bras, posing to herself in the mirror and nodding appreciatively. Naturally, this is when the sales attendant at the store chooses to trip and send hot tea flying into Ranma's booth.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who: In "Cradle of the Snake", Tegan gets possessed by the Mara, which then decides to dress in skimpy black and flirt heavily with Nyssa.

Comic Books

• Empowered: Sistah Spooky did this after getting the perfect body from a Deal with the Devil.
• Les Légendaires: Anathos was planning to reincarnate in female, elven protagonist Shimy as a way to come back on Earth. After he fails to this and is forced to reincarnate in Danael instead, he makes a hint toward this trope when burning Shimy's eyes:

  Anathos: Such a waste... I really wanted you to be my new incarnation, you know?

• Spider-Girl: An issue of Spider Girl 2011, complete with mirror.
  Araña: What do you think of my sexy new body, Miguel?
• Wonder Woman (1987): When Mogan la Fey takes possession of Helena Sandsmark's body she's so excited about having an attractive young new form she decides to wear a thong and corset as her outfit.
• Claudine Renko AKA Ms. Sinister does this prematurely in the second arc of X-23's solo series. After capturing X-23, intending to steal her body in hopes that her Healing Factor will prevent Mr. Sinister (whose personality is dormant in her body though periodically surfaces to take control) from permanently asserting himself and taking control of her, Renko expresses satisfaction that she'll be receiving a very attractive new body in return. Fortunately for Laura, Mr. Sinister transfers his consciousness to her body first, but she kicks him out and Renko is badly wounded during the resulting fight.
• In the Justice Society of America series from the early 1990s, the Ultra-Humanite was showing off his new body when he captured them and Wally West (The Flash).

Fan Fic

• In Fragments of Chaldea, Servants can absorb weapons and powers belonging to alternate selves by consuming their memory essences, the result of summoning the same Servant in different Classes or incarnations. Altria eventually gets the memory essence of the Lion King, her Lancer-class incarnation, and gains the ability to switch to her older, more developed body in the package. Altria Alter is furious when she sees this, blaming Merlin.
• Heroic Myth has a rare platonic male version. After possessing Bell as a Pseudo-Servant, Argonaut immediately takes off for the Dungeon to see how strong he is now and is delighted to find that he can slaughter monsters with ease even without the help of a Spirit.

Film — Live Action

• 13 Going on 30: A non-evil example. Jenna at one point squeezes her adult body's breasts, calling them "incredible".
• All Cheerleaders Die: When Hanna finds herself in Martha's body, it isn't long before she starts flaunting her form in a way that the conservative Martha never did.
• In Get Out (2017), Chris meets Logan King, the black husband of a much older white woman, and the fact that Logan twirls around to show himself off to a group of friends at a party is taken as an indicator that something is very wrong. In fact, this is the central idea of The Conspiracy - a cult of well-off white people who “appreciate” blackness and want to claim it for themselves by hijacking black bodies and suppressing the true person’s consciousness.
• Ghostbusters (1984): Zuul takes a moment to leer at Dana's body once she’s been kicked out of it.
• In The Hidden, the body possessing space alien villain starts out only possessing the bodies of men. The first time it possesses the body of a female stripper, it spends some time exploring the differences.
• In The Hot Chick, when Rob Schneider and Rachel McAdams' characters switch bodies, one freaks out and panics, the other gets a job as a stripper. Guess which is which.
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: Referenced for laughs when the main characters get trapped inside the Jumanji game world and Bethany, a teenage girl, gets the body of a male character. Offscreen, she's fascinated by the new anatomy:
  Bethany: Oh my God, you guys, there is, like, literally a penis attached to my body right now. Martha, come look at my penis!
  Martha: No thanks!
• A minor example in Lemon Tree Passage. When Maya is possessed by the ghost, the ghost comments on how stupid Maya's name is, but then adds that the body does have nice legs.
• A downplayed and male example in Self/Less: After being put in the body of a younger man, Damien's montage of learning to adjust to the new body is intercut with a scene of him slowly walking to a mirror and admiring his new, youthful appearance.
• There's the not-at-all-gratuitous "alien learns to put on a bra" sequence in Species.
• There's a non-bodyswapping example in Stardust, where the witch Lamia is very happy with her youthified self, and strips off in front of a mirror to get a better look. Her sisters are there too, looking on in envious admiration.

Literature

• In I Will Fear No Evil, Heinlein posits a brain transplant from a 95 year old man to a 23 year old, very pretty girl. At least at first, he (she?) spends time in front of the mirror admiring his new, female body.
• The Vampire Chronicles: In Tale of the Body Thief, after trading bodies with Raglan, Lestat is equal parts disoriented and enchanted to have a living body again, particularly a young, attractive, and hormone-charged one — at least until he has to take a leak for the first time in 200 years.
• Aran'gar, alias Halima, alias Balthamel, from The Wheel of Time, a formerly male Forsaken who was reincarnated into a female body. S/he puts her cleavage to good use.

Live-Action TV

• Altered Carbon: In "Rage In Heaven", Kovacs is treating Ortega's injuries while she's in a copper bathtub, when he realizes that it's actually his sister Reileen wearing Ortega's body as a sleeve. Reileen then makes a point of slowly rising from the water while checking out Ortega's body.
  Reileen: I can see what you like about the sleeve. It's... nice.
• In the Bottom episode "Hole", when faced with imminent death, Eddie has a spontaneous conversion to Buddhism so he can reincarnate:
  Richie: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. You have taken the ancient wisdom of Buddhism and perverted it into a dastardly scheme whereby you take over the brain of a supermodel just so as you can get a quick ogle at her norks?
  Eddie: Yep! That's about the size of it!
  Richie: It's a bloody good plan, isn't it! Yeah, hey, it's got a lot going for it, this Buddhism thing! I think I'll come back as Dannii Minogue. Yeah! Yeah, and I'll get myself a job as a topless go-go dancer in a bar full of mirrors!
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Who Are You?, after body-swapping with Buffy, one of the first things Faith does is take a long bath just to check out her "new home", including groping her leg. Later on, she also acts flirtatious toward any male in sight. (Not that she didn't do similar things in her old body.) In the original script, it's implied she's actually fondling herself underwater.
• Charmed (1998):
  • Occurred in "Coyote Piper", where Piper is possessed by an ancient evil spirit (one of several over the show's run). After modelling in front of the mirror in what's almost a dominatrix outfit, the spirit knocks Piper's husband Leo unconsciousness, then goes to Piper's High School Reunion she was holding at her club, and proceeds to do a sexy table-dance for the all men (and a few of the women) present on top of the bar. Barefoot. For about 5 minutes.
  • In "A Paige from the Past", this happens when Phoebe is possessed by the spirit of a deceased convict named Lulu, who can't help admiring her new body's beauty and starts Shaking Her Hair Loose.
  • And once again to Phoebe in "Freaky Phoebe", when a hideous demon cast a spell to switch bodies with her, who had always envied the attractiveness of others, and vanquish other demons who threaten her livelihood. Immediately after her soul replaces Phoebe's she makes out with her office's appointed shrink, is caught by Piper twirling in front of a mirror and switches into a more revealing and tighter outfit.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "New Earth", Cassandra does it to both Rose, unbuttoning her top to show a little cleavage:
    Cassandra: It's like living inside a bouncy castle!

  ... and, in a rare example with a male body (but no unbuttoning of anything), the Doctor. Which leads to the following memorable line.

  Cassandra: Goodness me, I'm a man. Yum. So many parts... and hardly used.

  • "Let's Kill Hitler": After regenerating, River Song immediately rushes out of the room to find a mirror. On discovering that she's got a great ass, River is delighted, declaring that she's going to wear lots of jodhpurs from now on.
• Dollhouse: A non-villainous example occurs in "Haunted", when Margaret (a middle-aged woman) is uploaded into Echo's younger body. She briefly feels her own breasts and jokes to Adelle about how they're now "pointing at the sky".
• Quite an entertaining scene in a Farscape episode "Out Of Their Minds", in which all the main characters switch bodies, and John in Aeryn's body starts examining it rather closely. Of course, Aeryn in someone else's body walks in. He tries to excuse himself by saying "I'm a guy!", and Aeryn threatens to break his legs (never mind that they're hers) if he checks out anything else. The really funny part comes at the end of the episode where, when John apologizes, Aeryn implies she, too, experimented. In a rather hands-on manner.
• In one episode of Freddy's Nightmares, a con-artist medium gets trapped in a trance by Freddy during one of her schemes and he takes control of her body. He immediately strips her body down to her underwear, taunts her about it, and then spends the rest of the episode strutting around like that. He uses the partial nudity to distract a skeptic and a young model who came to speak to the con-artist and kills them both.
• In Grimm, this happens when Frau Pech transforms into Adalind. The first thing she does upon transformation is to drop her robe and look at her naked body in the mirror.
• Quantum Leap has a few more male versions. The "Evil Leaper" does this at one point; also, Sam looks appreciatively in a mirror when he is handsome hitman Frankie. Parodied in the MAD satire "Quandary Heap," when "Dam" can't see who he has leaped into and he asks the Al parody, who asks him how he feels about a big muscular guy with a tattoo and rugged beard, "Dam" likes it... but that describes who the woman who's he's leaped into is going to marry.
• Smallville:
  • A rare male version happens in "Transference", when Lionel Luthor switches bodies with Clark, Lionel!Clark poses in front of a mirror shirtless while flexing his muscles.
  • A more traditional example occurs in Spell when a gang of ancient evil witches possess the three lead females. The witch who gets Lois is very happy about her buxom figure.
  Lois!Brianna: I'm gorgeous, look at these!
  [Lois!Brianna fondles her own breasts]
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A variation when Sisko checks out Dax's new body, her symbiote having Body Surfed from Sisko's mentor, the "Old Man" Curzon, to Jadzia who is played by Head-Turning Beauty Terry Farrell. A couple of episodes later, Jadzia is shown strolling the Promenade and enjoying the admiration of passing males, saying she's forgotten how different being a woman was.
• This tends to happen to Sam a lot in Supernatural. Meg's reaction to being in his body is to dramatically flex her muscles; she then spends the entire episode enjoying her handsome new body, "fine packaging" and all. It then happens to Sam two more times in season five, once with a teenager who wanted Sam's life, and once with Lucifer
• In First Wave, this happens when Mabus possesses Jordan's body. Given that she's played by Traci Lords, you can imagine his reaction. He not only enjoys his new vessel, but also has sex with Cade in order to get Jordan's body pregnant and make himself a new host.
• A male version of this is played indulgently in the episode "King's Crown", from the anthology Show Metal Hurlant Chronicles, which is adapted from a story from Heavy Metal Comics: in a certain land, a tournament is held every so often to choose the strongest man to be the new king. Entrants must be vital and free of diseases. Every winner becomes a cruel tyrant, but the hero of the story (called weak and frail all his life) wants to become ruler and end the reign of evil. He wins and is carried to the castle. He needlessly gets shirtless for his coronation, showing off his extremely muscular body. The moment he sits the throne he's bound, his skull is cut open by robot surgeons, his brain is crudely removed over his screaming protests, and the brain of the previous king is transplanted from his freshly-dead, used up, obese corpse. The previous king wakes up in the new body and is immediately satisfied with it, saying it is a “good fit” and hopes it’s going to have “more mileage” while feeling up the muscular chest and the six pack abs and flexing his muscles. A few young slave girls are then brought to him and he walks to them saying it’s time to “put his new body to the test”, obviously intent on having a lot of sex.

Theatre

• Variation in Into the Woods. The witch had been transformed into an old crone body for a while, and after that curse is broken, she has a whole song in which she shows off her actual appearance, which is youthful and good looking.

Video Games

• In Fate/Grand Order, the goddess Ishtar possesses Rin Tohsaka in order to be summoned as a Servant, though according to her it's more like she's 70% Ishtar and 30% Rin. Ishtar says besides Rin's small breasts, she's gorgeous, and shows off by wearing a skimpy outfit.
  Ishtar: My original self was more glamorous, but this body is also not bad.
• Pandora does this in Kid Icarus: Uprising after she becomes Amazon Pandora, although in her case it's more like "Showing Off the Old Body" because this is what she used to look like before an accident in her backstory cost her it. Sufficient to say, she's very happy to have it back.
• There's a G-rated version in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice when Tahrust Inmee is channeled by Maya; the bald Tahrust clearly enjoys playing with Maya's long hair. Since a spirit channeler's body temporarily changes to mostly match that of the deceased's and he's only been summoned to testify, nothing much else happens.
• Mettaton from Undertale (minus the Grand Theft Me part) when he turned into the flamboyant Mettaton EX after an upgrade, just in time for the premiere of his new TV show. During the fight against him, he constantly dances and poses Jojo-style, even when he loses his limbs.
  • There's also an inversion from Alphys, the creator of his EX body, when she mentions in her diary that she kept "[getting] really sweaty" for some reason when she was building it.

Webcomics

• In Eerie Cuties, this is Nina's first action after borrowing Layla's body.
• Girl Genius has the Other doing this to Agatha, starting around here and continuing intermittently through the end of Volume 6. (Consider that this is a mother *ahem* appreciating her daughter's body and wince. Judging from his expression, Tarvek agrees.)
• When Torg and Zoe switch bodies in a Sluggy Freelance filler arc, Torg shows off Zoe's body to the entire Internet via webcam. Zoe, upon getting her own body back and looking in her closet: "Care to explain why none of my clothes have been worn?" This filler arc was also done by Phil Foglio.
• The "Be Somebody" storyline in Times Like This has Matt controlling a female robotic body and Bethany a male robot. Matt's thrilled about his newfound womanhood... Bethany, not so much.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • A non-villainous example is discussed in this strip. Since Magic doesn't understand why Elliot hates his Sex Shifter spells, Grace suggests that he turn into a girl and pose in a mirror so he can move past that obstacle and start getting different types of spells again. When Elliot actually goes through with it however, he's too much of a goody-two-shoes to actually enjoy it and just ends up feeling guilty.
  • A similar situation happens when he and his girlfriend Ashley switch bodies (kind of, it's a long story). Ashley starts freaking out and the only way she can calm down is by pretending she's in a hackneyed transformation story, so Elliot poses in the mirror for her. Like before though, his heart just isn't in it.

Western Animation

• In Gargoyles, after being placed under a spell that causes her to turn human (rather than to stone) during the day, Demona takes a moment to preen outrageously when revealing this fact to Elisa. Considering how much Demona despises humans (and her reaction to having the spell placed on her in an earlier episode was initially one of rage and horror) this mostly seems to have been a way to mock Elisa rather than taking genuine pleasure in her new body, however attractive it may be.
• In a "Freaky Friday" Flip episode of TaleSpin, Rebecca and Don Karnage end up swapping bodies after encountering an idol. After the swap, Karnage notes that he looks fabulous.
• Totally Spies!:
  • In one episode, the Villain of the Week's contraption is something that allowed people to change their physical attributes by switching their own with someone else's. A really hideous older lady tries it out with Alex, and then walks away, checking out her new reflection in a mirror.
  • In another, the Villain of the Week runs an agency that kidnaps supermodels and uses a contraption that switches her body parts with other women's. First we see Clover's long, slender legs replaced with stout, muscular legs complete with wide-childbearing hips; then the brace-faced owner of the large legs gets her freckled complexion and frizzy red hair switched with Alex's sleek, raven bob and Sam's peaches-and-cream complexion and smile. Guess who walks off with a smug smile?

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