12th Feb: A new policy is being put in place for TRS threads: Make your case that the name/page is broken in the Opening Post, or the thread will be nuked immediately. See Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names for what "Make your case" means.
5th Feb: Echo Chamber Season 1 blooper reel on Youtube here
Left = Woman dressed for combat in Real Life. Right = Woman dressed for combat in fiction.
Clothing for characters will often be impractically sexy for its chosen application. Especially common in fantastic or exotic settings, where wardrobe rules are made up on the spot.
Spies will dress in a Spy Catsuit, even when the mission explicitly calls for them to notdraw attention to themselves. Female warriors will charge into battle wearing a Chainmail Bikini. Bridge Bunnies on a military starship will be issued go-go boots and hoochie skirts with their uniforms.
Stripperiffic outfits on female characters —at least, young and attractive ones— are common in any genre where straight young men represent the core of the audience. This can be self-fulfilling, as sexually exploitative wardrobe choices can be a turn-off to potential female fans.
This trope can be applied in the opposite direction by inserting 'exceptionally flattering' clothing for male roles, such as policemen, firemen, male gardeners or pool boys, into traditionally female-oriented fare, like soaps and prime-time dramas. But these tend to accentuate a man's musculature and physical strength, whereas women in fantasy are almost always drawn as waiflike supermodels.
Rule of Sexy is the Super Trope.
Compare Theiss Titillation Theory and Go-Go Enslavement. For its Male counterpart see Eating the Eye Candy, Hot Men At Work and Walking Shirtless Scene.
Contrast Stylish Protection Gear, Battle Ballgown, Kicking Ass in All Her Finery.
To quote the 34th rule in The 100 Rules of Anime (not to be confused with the other Rule 34) known as "Law of Probable Attire":
Clothing in anime follows certain predictable guidelines: Female characters wear as little clothing as possible, regardless of whether it is socially or meteorologically appropriate.
History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi does this with nearly every girl. Miu wears a skintight spandex battlesuit that will 'always' get shredded until there is naught but a few tattered remains conveniantly keeping the rating under 18. Renka opts to were skimpier and skimpier chinese dresses for every fight, and most recently the princess of tidat kingdom has fought Kenichi wearing a tight dress that actually has the ass cheecks cut out.
Lotte no Omocha! has the official uniform of most female personnel (rejected by the conservative-styled Zelda) — three styles, all extremely revealing (mostly thongs and tape). It appears to be a throwaway gag, until you see the occasional side character wearing them (for example, Corporal Nina Hildebrand, the royal dragon-rider).
Naruto features a Ninja clan where special full-torso vests are badges of rank and women and men are judged solely on how good a ninja they are. It then dresses most of the female Ninjas in skirts, fishnets and bandage wrappings while almost all the men wear loose jumpsuits.
In a more subtle example, while most of the male genin (junior ninja) wear bulky or covering clothes, the female genin tend to have much more bare skin: Ino and Sakura's arms are uncovered and Sakura wears long bike shorts under her tunic. One of the few genin to escape this trope is Hinata, although she attracts a different crowd. This is justified by the fact that female ninjas would use their sex appeal to throw their opponents off guard in real life.
Bubblegum Crisis for curvy powered armor — with high heels. Though in at least one case, the high heels are justified. The feet of the hardsuits are actually modeled on "ballet boots," meaning that the front of them is almost a straight line down. In the case of Priss' suit, this allows for the proper placement of the explosive caps that go off when she kicks things, since it would be much harder to properly position them with "normal" feet. As to the curves... well, 1) they are supposed to be very lightweight mechsuits, and most of the girls aren't flat-chested, and 2) it's Sylia. The woman owns a lingerie shop. It would almost be silly if her weapons of destruction weren't a little sexy. Even more if we consider the Sylia of 2040 continuity to be a bit of a Chivalrous Pervert towards the other girls.
While those heels were most likely added to make the hardsuits look more feminine, it's actually fairly sound engineering. In any sort of articulated armor, the joints are the weakest spots; simply eliminating one set of joints and teaching the wearer to walk in heels simplifies the design and reduces the weight of the armor.
G Gundam has a giant robot in sailor fuku. However it also inverts it as it has a mostly male cast, and the suits that are needed to connect to the robots are incredibly skin tight. Said robot in a sailor fuku and its female pilot were probably added (and Rain became a temporary pilot a few times) because male fans were getting uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable because during the first seven episodes, the viewers are treated to the detailed view of the Mobile Trace System (that's the skin tight suit needed to interface with the Gundam) going over Domon Kasshu's (nicely-sculpted) rear end.
That things are apparently so tight that a kid that snuck into Domon's Gundam and tried to start the system up (still wearing his regular clothes) that it put enough stress on him to make him pass out. Domon said it could have broken his bones.
Sailor Moon is an entire show based around super-powered women that fight in short skirts and high-heeled shoes/boots. Somewhat mitigated in that the suits are clearly a Leotard of Power (hence the lack of concern when the skirts frequently flip up), and they're actually practical for the agility and magic-based approach they use. Running in heels is still pretty much impossible. Interestingly Naoko Takeuchi is a female mangaka who actually fought her male editor to keep the skirts as short as she could. And if you've see her original◊ ideas◊ for the main characters, they were even more appropriate to this trope (especially Jupiter).
Sailor Mars fights in actual red high heels. Naoko both revels in this, and Lampshades how absurdly impractical it would be in real life. She even introduces herself as "Sailor Mars of the red high heel!" in one chapter of the manga.
Semi-justified in that the pilots are strictly female, with one exception. Turns out that the female-pilots-only bit was part of a lock-out program since males were deemed too violent to use the technology, and the one man that can pilot a robot is actually the alternate reality counterpart to a much more masculine robot.
The earliest example of the Humongous Mecha version is Mazinger Z, in which the female pilot's mecha not only had breasts, it could fire them off as missile weapons. Yes.
Parodied in Excel Saga, in which the men wear the same skintight outfits as the females.
Pretty much the entire point of Naga's outfit from The Slayers - what she can't obtain with a spell, she gets through sheer sex appeal.
Which gets all the more bemusing/amusing when you learn that the outfit belonged to her mother, the queen of Seyruun. Naga found it in her mother's closet after she was assassinated. Somehow, I'm betting that outfit was originally only intended for viewing by Naga's father.
Martina wears a similar-looking outfit, albeit with a different color scheme and added hose.
Most of the main females, including Lina and Amelia, avert this trope, whereas most minor characters, particularly those from the Slayers Special novels, play this trope straight. This still doesn't stop the novels' artist, Rui Araizumi, from subjecting every female to some form of mild fanservice.
Millina from the second novel arc wears a midriff-bearing outfit, but she actually wears a leather breastplate over her (modestly lengthened) shirt. In the Hourglass of Falces manga, however, Her outfit is skimpified, and Amelia herself is given a short skirt in exchange for her pants for Panty Shot purposes.
Ranpha and Forte from Galaxy Angel; Ranpha wears a high-slit cheongsam with a chest hole, and the top of Forte's dress is literally held together by two thin strips of fabric, showing plenty of cleavage. From the second season of the anime on, Executive Meddling ordered a costume alteration for the two to cover up; the games kept them in their original outfits until Galaxy Angel II.
Sumomo Mo Momo Mo's Sanae/Uma Kamen wears such an outfit. It even gets more powerful the less she wears.
Subverted twice in the series itself. Once on the Beach Episode where her swimsuit is actually more modest than her usual attire, and when she spends her time after the Time Skip as "Yomako-sensei" in an exceptionally conservative ensemble that covers her almost entirely.
There was also the one time they entered a village and the people requested she put a cloak on over her regular attire.
She also adds a mini-jacket to the outfit after the Time Skip (not that it makes much difference in terms of exposed skin).
Of course, the two male leads aren't exactly known for their modesty either. Case in point: Simon◊'s haramaki.
Shinkon Gattai Godannar!! has lots of this, coupled with copious Gainaxing. Virtually every female character is ridiculously stacked and wears either a Stripperiffically cut outfit or a Stripperiffic Latex Space Suit. In fact, even the female-based mechs are ridiculously stacked. At some points, it almost seems that Godannar is Fanservice with incidental mecha rather than a mecha series with lots of fanservice.
Fate Testarossa of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Though, to be fair, she dressed up conservatively during the third season. Her Sonic Form is still quite revealing though...
Lampshaded in-universe. Opponents who catch a glimpse of the Sonic Form note how little defense it grants, and that Fate could be killed by a single solid hit. In the end it doesn't change the fact that Fate usually kicks their asses.
Let's not forget Pixy Misa in the Pretty Sammy series, whose outfit gets commented on by other characters as being gaudy.
Midori Sugiura from Mai-HiME. Most schools would kill for a hot teacher who wore a denim jacket and tube top on a daily basis like she does. And in a way they did.
Although she starts putting on some clothes in 2nd Gig, for the majority of the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Motoko Kusanagi wears: sleeveless, strapless, backless leotard, thigh-length boots, belt, leather jacket. It should be noted however, that she has proper uniforms for combat and official business. Even gets a lampshade in an early episode.
Also lampshaded in a different first season episode where a raid goes wrong and the Major gets her work clothes ruined. This forces her to wear a much more revealing, decidedly work-inappropriate outfit to the debriefing. Aramaki asks if she's trying to get his attention, and Batou, who was there and knows what happened, can't stop grinning.
Strike Witches displays this shamelessly, in that none of the females in the show appear to have pants. There are bloomers, and there are skirts, but there are no pants. At all. The in-universe explanation is that the jet engines on their legs are powered by the magical power of the individuals, and that direct skin-to-metal contact is the most efficient way to transfer their energy.
Yet one of the characters is always clad in a pair of pantyhose and doesn't seem to show any difficulty using said magical jet engines.
Alternatively attributable to the power of Zettai Ryouiki, which applies to all the witches when wearing their striker units.
In the opening episode of Madlax, was there a reason for her to change into a slinky red cocktail dress before wiping out an entire military convoy, tank and a helicopter? Sure, it allowed freedom of movement and she looked great, but is this practical for jungle combat?
In Betterman, where the mech pilots wear see-through, short-sleeved/legged bodysuits with black patches covering the genitals and each nipple. However, the male pilots wear them, too.
In Mai-Otome S.ifr, Lena Sayers, after activating her "Artemis" power.
Adette Kistler's outfit as a member of the Siberian Railroad in Overman King Gainer once she defects she wears the same winter coat as everyone else.
Michiko from Michiko To Hatchin usually squeezes herself in the shortest hotpants she can find, which together with her constantly bare tattooed stomach makes for quite a flashy appearance. That's all fine and dandy, but perhaps not when you're trying to lay low from the police.
While the Silver and Bronze Cloths of Saint Seiya can hardly be said to cover a body properly, the few female Cloths have Chainmail Bikinis, cover less, are designed to be sexier and curvier, and often sport stiletto heels.
This is however, averted big time with Saori's clothing, which happens to be the most bulky, protective and unrevealing cloth in the whole story.
Both averted and played straight in the Macross universe. In the original TV series (and hence the Macross part of Robotech), female Zentradi soldiers wore uniforms essentially identical to the male ones, which weren't tight-fitting and covered the entire body except for the head and hands. However, the females' pilot suits for their Powered Armourwere originally skintight, though fairly non-Stripperiffic otherwise... but these were soon redesigned to play up their sexiness and femininity even more. However, in all incarnations the Zentradi female powered armour itself is very bulky and only roughly humanoid.
The non-canon Robotech II: The Sentinels comics briefly depict natural-sized female Zentraedi in redesigned uniforms with miniskirts... when around a bunch of normal-sized humans.
Just about everyone in Queen's Blade. The more obvious examples are Melona and Menace, who may as well not be wearing anything. Couple this with the massive amounts of Clothing Damage that a Panty Fighter series brings...
In a rare male example, Marco's clothes in his final battle against Luchist, in Shaman King, are an opened vest, boots, and a really low-waisted, really short shorts. Hiroyuki Takei clearly wanted to attract the female public with this, and the republication only made it clearer. Maybe a bit too clear...
Parodied in two-episode wonder Assemble Insert: the mad scientist designs a sensible power armor suit, but upon learning that a girl will wear it, he revises the design to expose cleavage, legs, and midriff.
Alcyone and Caldina from Magic Knight Rayearth. The former wears a leather, V-shaped corset — that is, two strips of clothing that cover the bottom half of her breasts, then join at the belly, leaving her back (and most of her front) completely exposed. The latter spends the first season in a sort Playboy Bunny bustier with fishnet stockings and a long red scarf, which she trades for an itty-bitty Scheherazade-inspired Belly Dancer outfit in the second season — which is justified when the rulers of her country, the Arabian Nights-style Chizeta, show up in similar outfits (and shoved Umi into one at the first opportunity.)
In Chrono Crusade, many of the female and maledemons wear outfits that seem rather impractical. Shader (who wears a tiny halter top and a wrap skirt that doesn't even cover her panties) could be excused since she's a technician, and not really expected to fight, but the majority of the other demons we see are warriors. The majority of them wear skin-tight clothing that shows off a lot of skin—Rizel basically wears a strapless leotard with thigh-high boots, and Chrono, Aion and Duke Daffau all have at least one battle outfit that covers everything except their chest. Sure, demons can heal, but why would you want to expose your innards to attacks?
Several of the Character Transformations from Shugo Chara! fall into this category. Amulet Heart's cheerleading outfit includes an absurdly short skirt that flares out like a tutu (though we almost never get a panty flash) with a halter top that bares her midriff and varies in length from fairly conservative to a bit... skimpy. Utau's Character Transformations tend to be a little revealing as well, but aren't too bad. Amu's transformation with Il is down right scary: she gets a pair of bat-like wings for a top that barely cover anything and some skin-tight shorts (emphasis on short) and leaves almost everything else exposed. Ikuto with Yoru is a male example: he gets a very short, tight top and pants that hit very, very low.
They're Edolas Counterparts are even more at least Edo-Lucy in the manga.
Angel and Urtear are villainous examples.
Yuri and Kei from the Dirty Pair. Their original costume was based on WWF female costumes. Not that the later variants where any more modest.
Burst Angel features just about all of the female cast in either bikini with a jacket or clearly visible underboobs. The exception being the loli hacker.
Reign: The Conqueror has a rare male example, where quite a few men seem to go off to battle wearing a fancy jeweled codpiece, thigh high boots, and chest plates that just reach their nipples.
Morgan from Tears To Tiara. She wears a sort of tube top that really shouldn't be able to stay up considering how loose it is, a jacket that doesn't cover anything except her shoulders, and a knee-length loincloth that may or may not have a thong under it. Somewhat justified in that she's from a feudal-based "barbarian" tribe, but all the other women in her tribe wear much more concealing dresses and robes. It becomes bizarre when she starts declaring she wants to go hunting and run around the forest, leaping from tree to tree. You'd think she'd want a little more protection from brambles and wild boars.
Given the general nature of the series, it is worth noting that this is one trope Berserk averts. No female character (at least, not ones given any significant screen time) ever dresses in anything less than sensible, believable-for-the-setting clothes... well, when they're wearing clothes.
In Code Geass, everyone's pilot-suit is skin-tight. Even the scientists' wear them whenever the airship they're on enters battle. Kallen also qualifies.
Especially Kallen, mainly in the beginning of Season 2, when she wears a quite revealing bunny-costume. Season one gave her several naked-scenes, including one where she's shown taking a shower, knowing that Lelouch is standing only a few meters away, looking at her.
In Tiger & Bunny, Blue Rose's superiors designed her costume less for functionality and more for drawing in horny male viewers. Features include Sexy Back, Absolute Cleavage, Zettai Ryouiki, Combat Stilettos, and a Thong of Shielding. The impracticality of such a costume is touched upon — When her boss chews her out for failing to catch a criminal, she helpfully points out that he pointed a machine gun at her and, unlike the other superheros', her suit isn't exactly bulletproof.
Let's face it; if we had to list all the female superheroes and villains to whom this trope applied, we'd be here for most of the year. It's probably easier to list aversions and particularly notable examples.
Stephanie Brown/Spoiler. The first iteration of her costume (relatively loose-fitting catsuit, cloak, hood, gloves, and full face mask) had nothing exposed anywhere, not even her hair. Later on she loosened up to the extent of allowing her ponytail and the lower half of her face to be seen. This is more notable in that she was a teenaged girl, and one who spent considerable time in her early appearances trying to catch the attention of a teenaged boy. Apparently she felt that showing skin was for amateurs, and since she did eventually catch him, one can admit she had a point.
Also applied when out of costume, given that her most common outfit was jeans and long-sleeved sweaters.
Even her outfit as Robin averts it. There have been two iterations of her suit; one if pretty much the same as Tim's, only with a miniskirt added over her leggings, and the second, while looking a little different and possibly more unisex, still covers her from neck to toe.
Cassandra Cain/Batgirl II. Her costume is more scary than sexy: head-to-toe black leather, a stitched up mouth opening, and black-tinted eyelenses (this combined with the black suit gives the appearance that she doesn't have eyes). In essence, Batgirl's costume looks more like something you'd expect a male villain to wear.
Barbara Gordon. As the original Batgirl, she wore a sensible costume that covered everything except for the lower part of her face and a cowl that kept her hair out of her face; the high heels weren't present in every version of her costume. As Oracle, she sits behind her computers in a wheelchair and dresses in comfortable, often casual clothes.
Male example: the original Robin costume, with its green panties/short shorts, was for a long time the most stripperiffic costume of the Batfamily.
Huntress' costumes either offer good protection and cover her from the neck down, or has been designed by Jim Lee. Especially jarring since Huntress is a Badass Normal and very much the Combat Pragmatist you can expect a Batfamily member to be, and showing her midriff when she once took four bullets in the stomach seems like a very, very bad idea.
Black Canary: By the way, what's with the new outfit? Huntress: Seven-hundred sit-ups a day. Black Canary: Say no more.
The pre-Crisis Huntress — the Earth-2 Batman's daughter — wore a much better example of this trope, particularly for its time. Essentially a one-piece bathing suit with a very low neck, almost down to her navel sometimes (and when her cape wasn't in the way, no back to speak of), with thigh-high boots, long before such things were anywhere near as common as they are now.
Catwoman wears a Spy Catsuit. The amount of skin showing is very, very little.
Except wheneverthe zipper is pulled far down. Most Adam Hughes covers show this off.
Kate Kane as Batwoman goes on the list too, with a full-body suit that leaves just the lower half of her face uncovered. It looks like her hair is exposed, but that's actually part of the costume - it's a wig that pulls away with minimal effort, perfect for throwing off a villain who tries to grab it.
An odd Lampshade Hanging occurs in the graphic novel Watchmen, in which a character uses it as a warped justification for Attempted Rape. It's also noticeable that the costume was only very Stripperiffic by 1940 standards, as it's basically a very short backless gown with stockings.
Further lampshade hanging when her daughter/successor complains about how ridiculous her own costume was. Unlampshaded when she puts the costume on for her new boyfriend and doesn't stop wearing it for the rest of the series (though there wasn't time to get a new one).
And let's not forget Dr. Manhattan, whose progressively-diminished costume provides a Stripperific clue as to how far back in his personal timeline each of his flashback appearances lies. The fact that he's first seen buck-naked, and is only later seen in skin-tight bodysuits or Speedos, may be a bit of a joke on this trope.
The clothes are also used to show how disconnected from humanity he became over the years. He goes from full body suit, to what looks like a one-piece, then a speedo, then nothing at all. Each change in clothing represents a loss in his sense of humanity, with nudity showing hiw complete isolation.
Tarot's 'armour' in Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose is extremely stripperiffic (her usual outfit is made of floss and hope!), as are most of the clothes that the other (equally well-endowed — very well) women wear in that book. When they're actually wearing clothes, that is.
Unlike most of the women in Y: The Last Man, the supermodel Yorrick meets is wearing a halter top, not really practical for her new job: disposing of bodies left by the Gendercide. Much later, she wears the same thing while walking though a sewer.
Though in the Superhuman Hospital, Ninjette and Empowered initially take note of the nurse's Stripperiffic outfit, then not long afterward a male nurse comes in and it turns out the male outfit is almost the same.
One of the few genuinely Stripperiffic male outfits in comics is the costume Cosmic Boy wore in the Legion of Super-Heroes back in the '70s. His costume was actually held on by his magnetic powers. There are reasons that period of the comic is referred to as the Naked Legion.
Yet another rare male example is Frank Miller's 300. In the comic, the Spartan warriors are as often as not buck naked, except for helmet, greaves, shield, and long red cape. This does highlight, however, how Stripperiffic outfits are actually Older Than Feudalism: Miller is imitating the "heroic nude" of classical Greek art, where warriors, heroes, and gods are commonly shown parading around (and even fighting) largely naked. The film version gives all of the Spartans little leather panties, which only amplifies the Stripperiffic and homoerotic nature of the costume.
In actuality, the Spartans wore practical armor and helmets in battle, though their armor was shaped like a perfectly chiseled torso (with nipples).
Channon Yarrow often wore very Stripperiffic outfits throughout Transmetropolitan's run, both in casual and professional situations. Then again, she was introduced as a stripper working her way through journalism school.
It was also made more and more apparent how progressive The City was. Keep in mind, there were people having sex on the street, in broad daylight, in the background every now and then.
There is one example of a (parody) female superhero from Marvel's setup that doesn't go for the skimpy outfits while on the job, despite her day job being a supermodel: Ashley Crawford of the Great Lakes Avengers. Then again, as a hero she's Big Bertha. Seeing her in the skimpier Emma Frost uniform (see the final splash panel in the "Misassembled" 4-parter) is likely not what the average comic fan is looking for. (Deadpool, on the other hand, probably has that image blown up on his wall.) Of the remaining girls on the team, Squirrel Girl has a more modest costume setup (she's still a minor), while Tippy-Toe wears just a ribbon. And is a true squirrel, so it doesn't count.
Power Girl's infamous "boob window" was actually deconstructed (or Hand Waved) once; she wanted to put a symbol there, like Superman, but could never figure out what to add. This effectively turns fanservice into a heartwarming moment.
By contrast, the rest of her team wears far more than the average super-heroine. Liberty Belle has "Mountie pants" on, Stargirl just has a bare midriff and knees, and Cyclone has an outfit that blocks the view to her breasts (though still features a bit of Zettai Ryouiki).
Nobody, male or female, wears much in the way of clothing in The Warlord. Somewhat justified given the tropical climate of most of Skartaris but, even so, you'd think the warriors would go for something a little more protective. Particular mention must be made of Mariah whose outfit, my female friends assure me, could only work if it was glued on.
The main female character in The Maxx wears buttock-baring denim cutoffs to her job as a social worker. Really.
She's trying to make a statement that women show be able to wear skimpy outfits without it being assumed they're pursuing sex (that is, a stand against the "You wouldn't have dressed like that unless you wanted it" defense).
Starfire of Teen Titans is sort of justified by the fact she thinks clothing is pointless and would be just fine without it, and that's sort of justified by being an alien who can survive the extremes of space. Her skimpy Chainmail Bikini "uniform" is apparently Tamaranian ceremonial armor, not intended for real protection.
As the "SF chainmail strapini" first appears when she is breaking rocks as a slave, and her native people seem to wear robes and jewels when they wear anything, perhaps she is "superheroing" wearing clothes that mark her a slave. After thirty (or seven) years free. Turning the insult into a badge of honor, maybe?
It's also worth noting that she has orange skin. Strangely-colored skin can be a striking visual element in comics, so many costumes, even on male characters, show it off (see Martian Manhunter, the Hulk, Blue Devil, etc.).
She-Hulk sometimes plays with this in her comics, especially the series where she spends more time on the Fourth Wall. In one memorable scene Venom randomly breaks in to the courtroom (she's a lawyer) and webs her up, and in ripping the webbing, she rips her suit. Someone notes the readers have just gotten more interested, wondering if it's a popular villain or the ripped clothing that excited them.
Lampshaded and subverted in the beginning of her second series, where she discovers that while her clothes may rip, her underwear is indestructible because it's "protected by the comics code".
Apparently this protection wore off when the Comics Code ended; a recent issue saw her lose her pants during a battle with an alien. Including her undies. Of course, the reader still didn't see anything.
Despite constantly fighting superpowerful and psychotic undead monsters Badass Normal (and goth-styled) Cassie Hack of Hack/Slash only ever seems to wear tank tops, Badass Longcoats, miniskirts, stockings (or fishnets) and occasionally other things, like really long leather gloves and boots. Lampshaded at one point in a one-shot set in a Comic Con where a character thinks she's wearing some kind of costume.
Zatanna's and Black Canary's costumes both consist of fishnets and something with all the covering of a swimsuit (generally with a jacket on top). Zatanna is, admittedly, a Squishy Wizard (with more squish than average) so it doesn't much matter what she puts on, but Black Canary is a martial artist.
Black Canary also frequently rides a motorcycle. I would NOT want to get into a motorcycle accident wearing that outfit.
Brazilian Animesque comic Holy Avenger is stacked with these. The most stackering example is Niele, that wears a clothing composed of... leather strips.
Lady Rawhide from Topps Zorro comic series. Especially blatant as the series takes place in Colonial Spanish California. Lampshaded as various characters wonder how she can leap about in that outfit without anything popping out. (And, eventually, something did [for a single panel]).
Phantom Lady as drawn by Matt Baker in the late 1940s wore an outfit that barely covered her impressive assets and looked like it would come off in a strong wind. One famous cover was featured in "Seduction of the Innocent" (the even more famous book by Fredric Wertham condemning comic books) as an example of "headlights".
TBF, Conan doesn't wear much either. Say what you will about the Chainmail Bikini, at least Sonja has something on her chest.
Somewhat averted in that Sonja herself has pointed out that it is much easier to kill a man who is staring at you than one who is paying attention to fighting.
A more subtle form of Stripperifficness can be seen in female cape choices. Look at superheroes who wear capes, vs superheroines who wear capes. The heroines have a marked tendency to have capes that end about at the waist, as opposed to heroes who usually wear it to the knee or ankle. While this is more practical, it can't be ignored that it also makes it much easier to show off the legs and butt.
Even Superwoman, the female version of Superman from the gender-reversed Earth-11, has a short cape, despite her costume being exactly like Superman's otherwise. Batwoman from the same universe gets a long cape though.
Space Suits with Show Some Leg feature! Try to top this. On the second thought, better don't.
To be fair, the man is wearing the same outfit.
While most of the female X-Men fall victim here (even Jean Grey bares her midriff in the X-Men Legends games), Rogue averts this out of necessity. Which somehow doesn't stop her from dressing like Daisy Duke when she's out of uniform.
Even Jean Grey? Some fans put various instances of the character's dress and behavior, on and off the clock, over the years together years ago, and concluded that a reasonable case can be made that Jean Grey has an exhibitionistic element to her personality, even beyond the way most superheroines dress.
And let's not forget what she wore while de-powered in the Savage Land. Yow-zah.
While many X Women aren't exactly modest, special mentions go to Psylocke, whose costume was basically dubbed "a ninja thong", and Emma Frost.
Darth Talon from Star Wars Legacy wears little more than a few strategically-placed strips of leather. Not unexpected, considering that most females of her race seem to be dancers or slave girls.
Considering that she's gone through well over a hundred costumes since she was created, Wasp has surprisingly few of these, sticking mostly to bodysuits (albeit usually very form-fitting ones) that cover most of her from the neck down. The low-neckline ones or sleeveless ones are actually notable.
Ravager of the Teen Titans is an inversion; she dresses like total jailbait as Rose Wilson, but her Ravager costume is neck-to-ankles chainmail.
In the short-lived Beatrix comic, the eponymous heroine is given an armless, strapless, backless super suit in order to make her invulnerable — even to things like fatigue, hunger, strong flavors, and more than small amounts of friction. Of course, the trope is mooted a bit in that the suit cannot be removed, since if that were possible, it would defeat the purpose of being invulnerable.
Considering her stature (in both the comic book and real worlds), it can be a little jarring to really look at Wonder Woman and realize that her costume uses less actual cloth than practically every other superheroine's out there.
And way more than that of many male heroes, though.
The new writer has had Wonder Woman redesigned to avert this... to massive fan outcry. This resulted a certain amount of Unpleasable Fanbase, since the stripperiffic nature of Wonder Woman's costume had long been a bone of contention with some of these fans.
Entirely averted in The 99, a comic book for Muslim audiences. The heroes channel power from the 99 Names of Allah; their female contingent are likewise practicing Muslims, and would rather be caught dead than in a Stripperiffic outfit. Covering is full-body and often includes anything from a head scarf to a full-face veil.
One of the running complaints about the Star Sapphire Corps. Okay, so their origins lie in a race of warrior women and their place on the emotional spectrum is "love". But does nearly everyone have to have a bare midriff and their tits out?
Edaniel of Bizenghast often wears some very low waist-ed pants.
Whiplash/Blacklash from Iron Man. His Blacklash costume frankly makes him look like a prostitute, being an entirely leather ensemble featuring lots of studs and a gimp mask! In all probability, the character himself didn't realize what that look implied, but his successors, a husband and wife who took on both the Whiplash and Blacklash identities, revelled in it.
Harley Quinn of Batman is an inversion of this as her costume covers her entire body to the point that her pigtails, hands, and feet are covered. This arguably can make her much sexier, however.
Her reboot costume, however, makes people wonder if she's still going to be a gymnast since it involves an extremely miniture mini-skirt and a halter/bandeau top. Plus her hair is now longer and dyed like her hat, so it might get in her face if she does too many flips.
Parodied, as with all things, in Young Justice on a few occasions. First was when Arrowette lamented that she'd have to become a super-villain (long story) and would have to start showing off her cleavage... then whining that she'd have to get cleavage (In a much later issue showcasing an alternate universe, semi-evil YJ, she is, indeed, wearing a cleavage-revealing outfit). Note that her costume was already kinda stripperific to begin with, combining Bare Your Midriff and Zettai Ryouiki. Which itself was parodied when she complained about ANOTHER archer in a similar outfit, wondering how that other archer was supposed to be taken seriously in such a get-up. She realized the hypocrisy and grumbled.
Wu Wang, the wife of Deathfist in Judge Dredd, wears what looks like a swimsuit with no back or sides, and a neckline literally below her belly button. At one point, PJ Maybe had a girlfriend with similar fashion sense.
Most wielders of the Witchblade are quite stripperiffic, at least until they gain enough experience to control it. Justified in that the eponymous witchblade is sentient, male, and a perv, so it shreds its hosts clothing for jollies when it activates; when the wielder is skilled enough, they can override this tendency.
Most of the female characters in Sin City... including the stripper.
Taken to its natural conclusion in Secret Six, which has an actual strip club where the dancers dress up as scantily-clad versions of DC superheroes and supervillains. In what may be a subtle lampshading of the trope, several of them aren't actually that different to the costumes they were originally based on.
Fan Works
Applies to just about every Mary Sue depicted in fan art. Regardless of occupation, circumstances, whether or not she's part of an organization that requires a uniform or whether or not such attire even exists in a particular fandom, Mary Sue will be wearing something stripperiffic—and usually Hot Topic Goth—due to Author Appeal.
Justfied in the Neon Genesis Evangelion/Wonder Woman crossover Amazing Amazon, in which it is explained that the Wonder Woman outfit looks like that because Hephaestus' wife (Aphrodite) prefers the company of Ares, so he's a little... lonely, which tends to show when he makes something relating to women.
In Tokyo Mew Mew No Hope Left, the main character walks around dressed like a hooker. Nobody seems to notice.
There do seem to be a few... subtle differences in what's enhanced in Edna Mode's work on The Incredibles... Of course, Edna is a fashion designer.
Oh boy, the Disney princesses. Jasmine, we're looking at you. Her normal outfit is even more alarming when you consider she's meant to be a princess in a Muslim kingdom. Then there's that slave girl outfit Jafar dresses her up in. However, she wore a dress during both her engagement with Aladdin, and eventually, her wedding.
A case can be made that Aladdin (in the cartoon/movies) is set in pre-Islamic times.
Jasmine's outfit is probably drawn from Turkish belly-dance costume. It's improbable that a princess would ever wear this, but then, we mostly see Jasmine confined within the palace- and it's normal for Muslim women not to wear hijab in their own homes. When she goes out in public, she covers up appropriately (albeit she's incognito, but still.) And as Jafar is implied to be treating her as a concubine, it's entirely appropriate, at least within the palace, for her to wear hareem dress. (Anyway, the setting of Aladdin looks pretty much like pre-Muslim Arabia anyway.)
Kida from Atlantis: The Lost Empire is another example. She wears what amounts to a bra and sarong for the whole movie and she even removes the sarong to go for a brief swim. And yes, she also ended up wearing a long dress at the end of her film.
Pocahontas to an extent though it is pretty warm where she is in 17th century Virginia. In the sequel, however, she wore a long dress as well.
Esmeralda from The Hunchbackof Notre Dame, especially during the "Topsy Turvy" number where she is shown poledancing in front of the public. Averted with both her default outfit and the white dress she wore at the end of the film, however.
Heck, even Caucasian Disney princesses can become stripperic as well. Jane Porter, from Tarzan actually starts dressing like this toward the end of her film.
But the skimpiest Disney Princess outfit of all actually belongs to Ariel, the heroine of The Little Mermaid. Her main outfit merely composes of a Seashell Bra, and that's it (she doesn't wear anything from the waist down due to her having a fish tail). She too however, actually starts to wear long dresses upon becoming a human.
Averted with both Mulan and Tiana (the only non-Caucasian heroines that do not wear revealing outfits), as well as a majority of the Caucasian heroines, however.
In the climax of Rock and Rule, Angel is chained up and made to summon an evil demon with her singing. She wears a dress — can I even call it that? — which is basically a long strip of material with a halter neck and no back, gathered at the waist with a belt, that is only wide enough to cover her nipples and cleavage, and wide/long enough to cover her nether regions. A good portion of her breasts and all of her legs are uncovered. And it gets visibly torn up during the finale. At one point, we see her from behind, with wind whipping at her hair and outfit, and the material blows up, exposing most of her rear end; she doesn't even seem to be wearing any kind of underwear. Don't forget that this movie is rated PG (to be fair, this was before PG-13).
Heavy Metal's Taarna, pictured above. Can't get a lot more Stripperiffic than that (although they tried in Heavy Metal 2 — but the less we mention that, the better...).
This◊ is the outfit worn by Elinore from the film Wizards. Yup.
Films — Live-Action
Alicia Silverstone as "Batgirl" in Batman & Robin. Uncle Alfred was a lecherous old man to have had a suit made for her that had her exact cup size built in. For shame, Uncle Alfred, for shame. The gratuitous ass shot didn't hurt, either.
The male costumes in that film were no better, and for many viewers worse. George Clooney even got a lingering closeup of his zippered Bat-Ass during the suiting up sequence.
The male costumes are worse, with their infamous Bat-nipples.
The female ninjas in the movie Lady Ninja: Reflections in Darkness dress in highly abbreviated ninja outfits (when they're wearing anything at all).
Jane's jungle outfit in the second Weismuller Tarzan film (Man and His Mate) is unlike any that came later, split to the hip, and sometimes absent.
Star Wars: Female Twi'leks are almost all slender and attractive... and given to wearing next to nothing when out in the galaxy even though they're from a world that's hotter than Tatooine. Even the ones who aren'tslave girls.
To be fair they are said to be one of the most attractive races in the galaxy so having most of them be obviously good looking is likely intentional. In fact the reason they make popular slaves and dancers is pretty much because they're so beautiful as a whole.
A more subtle example in Beyond Re-Animator are the outfits Laura Olney and Nurse Vanessa wear. While they would be only moderately sexy in normal circumstances, both characters wear the outfits while visiting/working at a high-security mens' prison. Generally, women are not allowed into a prison if they are wearing an outfit that is even slightly provocative, because it is feared that it might give the inmates increased motivation to assault them.
Played with in the sense of all the heroine's costumes in Sucker Punch once the dream sequences star, Not to an over the top semi naked extent but not too covered. A little bit of skin, but mostly everything is covered.
Battle Beyond the Stars. Saint-Exmin of the Valkyrie. It doesn't help that her space bra looks like it's clutching her impressive breasts.
Literature
Domi in James Axler's Outlanders series. Her outfit is continually described as "A pair of red high heels, and nothing else." Brigid Baptiste's clothing on the covers falls under this, as well.
Any Barsoomian (Martian) or Amtorian (Venusian) in Edgar Rice Burrough's novels of same, male or female, will wear a belt and weapons harness (male), jewelry (female) and that's pretty much it. Even when they're going into battle.
Live-Action TV
Super Sentai has several, and all of them are villains.
Zonnette costume show a lot of cleavage.
Shibolena though lesser, has many panty shots!
Steerwoman Shelinda has both cleavage and midriff bearing. And pantyshots.
Subverted with Denus, as it dosen't show any cleavage! Though it does Bare A Midrift.
Wendinu has an outfit that invokes this trope. Furabijo subvert it.
Power Rangers Lost Galaxy's Karone wears tight leather trousers and a leather corset-style top, with her midriff bared. In the same series Maya wears what equates to a yellow bikini-style top half and a short skirt. Both fight in said outfits and Maya climbs trees.
Doctor Who: Leela. Who turns up to support Tom Baker's Doctor dressed in one-and-a-half chamois leathers held together with a bootlace. The Barbarian Heroine made flesh.
Peri who provides fanserive first in a bikini and thene leaning over the Doctor, in a low-cut-top, as he does something or other I can't recollect...ah yes, apparently while Peris is leaning over him grieving in that low cut top, the doctor Changes.
Subverted or justified or something in the new version with Amy Pond, who makes her debut (as an adult) wearing a policewoman outfit with a tiny skirt. She's actually a kissogram.
Star Trek: Voyager's Seven of Nine. Handwaved as a "dermaplastic bodysuit" to cover and heal the injuries from her Borgification. Must have taken her skin a long time to heal, as she never stopped wearing it, though she did occasionally get ones in different colors. It was noted by Voyager costume designers and makeup specialists that Seven's costume is as much a piece of engineering magic in reality as it was in Trek continuity, as the female form simply doesn't fill out clothing that way naturally.
Seven of Nine actress Jeri Ryan reportedly hated the costume due to how tight and uncomfortable it was. When the series ended she was asked in an interview what ever happened to her costume. Her answer was something to the effect of "I'm hoping for a bonfire".
And Seven Lite, T'Pol of Star Trek Entreprise, who wears tights even though all other Vulcan characters wear robes. Not to mention the blatant Fanservice "decontamination" scenes with braless tank tops that show the Borg are not the only ones with implants.
The women's uniforms in Star Trek TOS were distinctly skimpy. This was lampshaded in TNG season 1, where both male and female extras were seen in miniskirt uniforms.
Lampshaded, too, in Jadzia Dax's famous "And women wore less" comment in "Trials and Tribblations".
In the commentary for the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "In A Mirror, Darkly" it's mentioned that they had to keep telling the actress playing a dead Original Series yeoman: "Yes, the skirt really IS supposed to be that short."
And again from ST:TOS... The Elaan of Troyius.
In Mortal Kombat: Conquest, pretty much every evil female (and a few good or neutral ones) wears clothing so negligent that you wonder how they fight in it without falling out. Given some crowd scenes, it makes you wonder if the laws of permissible visible flesh for each gender are somehow inverted.
The CSI Verse has female characters investigating crime scenes in low-cut tops, high heels and tight trousers. All at the same time on some occasions. (And leather trenchcoats in midday Vegas heat, but that's another trope.)
She could just be particularly vain. Most of the Tok'ra seem to have some sort of overriding personality flaw.
According to one fanfic writer Freya, Anise's host, likes to let her skin breathe. She also likes the tactility of pen and paper and has an eye for Colonel O'Neill. Anise prefers Daniel. Now that would be a memorable double date!
Given Anise's rather poor social skills, she likes doing experiments on humans without fully disclosing risks, Freya's fashion choice may be something of a survival reflex hoping that people will be less mad at her/them if she/they look good.
Averted by Lt. James, despite her role as Ms. Fanservice when off-duty. When going on missions, she wears as much combat gear as anyone else.
This◊ is a show-accurate action figure of one of the male The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nóg. This◊ is the action figure (again, show accurate) of the Token Female. How exactly is that armour helpful? (For the record, it leaves her arms, legs, and neck open to attack, not to mention under the skirt, which is armour, too, but tends to fly every which way.)
Charmed took this to the extreme. Prue works at an auction house and one episode has her at work wearing a see-through blouse with a black bra visible. And one season 3 episode had her wearing a top without a back to it (later in the episode she even comments that it's cold outside). Phoebe and Paige in the sixth and seventh seasons. Phoebe is almost Fetish Retardant in the sixth though.
Several episodes had the sisters turned into various magical creatures that required a skimpy outfit such as Valkyries in the sixth season premiere. Phoebe was the worst offender getting turned into a genie, an Egyptian bellydancer, a mermaid (the episode in question featured another mermaid who was reasonably covered up while Phoebe only had her nipples covered barely) and one infamous example where Cole got a demon to impersonate Phoebe and give him a lapdance. Paige also got turned into a wood nymph.
Mostly averted with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy prefers to go into battle wearing long pants and a leather jacket. She does wear platform heels a lot though. Now if she could keep her balance, spike heels would be understandable and almost-practical combat gear, but platforms? (This might in fact be a side effect of how teeny-tiny Sarah Michelle Gellar is: they need to get her into the shot, but she also has to kick during the fight scenes, so you can't help but notice the platforms.) Maybe it's because platorms have a thick, clunky soul that would probably hurt if it was flying at your head.
The one time she wore an inappropriate outfit into battle, it was an evening gown — and not even a strapless or backless one. To boot, just about everyone (even the villain) thought it was beautiful.
Other Slayers (e.g. Kendra and Faith) wear more revealing outfits, but at least they're practical. And in Faith's case, the Stripperiffic factor was intentional.
Willow: Don't worry, we're sure to spot Faith first. She's like this cleavagy slut-bomb walking around.
They actually used the phrase "stripperiffic" to describe Vampire Willow's outfit.
Lampshaded in the Angel episode where Cordelia became a princess in another dimension. She says that when she was an actress in the original world, the director made her wear a bikini that was tiny, skimpy and exploitative. She then looks at her current attire, which wasn't any better.
NCIS's Abby Sciuto, Perky Goth and resident Hot Scientist, wears shorter skirts than everyone else in the cast and outfits that border on the fetishistic at times. When Jenny Shepard takes over as director, she hands her a copy of the dress code. When a clearly very unhappy Abby then totters into work in a suit, Gibbs tears up the dress code in front of her — because he's not having an unhappy Goth as his lab tech.
In a DVD extra, the actress Pauley Perrette claims a TV exec told her the shorter her skirts, the better the ratings.
90%+ of the dancer's costumes on both So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With The Stars, especially the women. Of course, they're dancers. The entire point is moving their bodies, so they have good reason to make sure you can see as much as possible.
Special mention has to go to Edyta in the 2010 season, whose dresses got shorter and less covering for every dance. It's possible that ABC forced her and her partner off the show early because she was about one slip away from getting the network fined by the FCC.
A plot point in a season 1 episode of Party of Five. Julia works at a club and the owner decides to make the waitress's uniforms more revealing to attract more customers. The end result is black leather that's even more revealing than Xena's costume. The fun starts when Julia arrives home to find the social worker waiting for her.
Ahh, Xena... It didn't protect the limbs, head, and neck, but oddly enough, this◊ is pretty much state of the art armor for her time whenever that was. Sure it doesn't cover the aforementioned areas, but she does have gauntlets and high boots. And who wants to Walk the Earth in a helmet? (This is not getting into Gabrielle; at least Xena's stripperiffic outfit was armoured.)
To be fair, she did wear more armor than Hercules.
Star Trek's famous miniskirts may well have been a "symbol of Sixties liberation", but it's worth noting that spacewomen in 1950's TV sci-fi also had short skirts (e.g. Carol Carlisle in Space Patrol, and Vena Ray in Rocky Jones: Space Ranger).
Spartacus: Blood & Sand cranks this Up to Eleven with the gladiators. What they wear normally consists of loincloths with maybe knee pads while in the arena they all go in with their chests completely exposed. In a twist, the women on the show have fairly modest clothes apart from the slave girls who frequently have to walk around naked.
Music Videos
Sabine Meiko the VOCALOID has a tiny skirt and a very tight top. Both seem to be leather. Megurine Luka and Megpoid Gumi seem to be like this as well.
Lily and Rin Kagamine also count-the latter's shorts give Misty a run for her money. And on the Engloid side of things, there's Sonika and Lola (depending on the artist).
Most hip-hop/rap videos count.
Myths & Religion
The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan) lays out the rules for clothes worn during a Satanic magical ritual. LaVey had some lingering 1960's sexism in his lines of thinking, regardless of his radical ideas. His writings often seem to give the impression that only men have a sex drive, and he reportedly expressed envy to a beautiful woman's ability to wrap men around her little finger. Put another way, he didn't quite realize that women like to stare at the Estrogen Brigade Bait every bit as much as men like to stare at Ms. Fanservice:
Black robes are worn by male participants. [...] Female participants wear garments which are sexually suggestive, or all black clothing for older women. [...] Sexually appealing clothing is worn by women for the purpose of stimulating the emotions of the male participants, and thereby intensifying the outpouring of adrenal or bio-electrical energy which will insure a more powerful working.
This is one area where the men are more exposed than the women. About 80% of the male WWE roster only wrestle in trunks and boots. And about 98% wrestle shirtless. This often veers into Fan Disservice when the guys have packed on a few pounds (Matt Hardy, we're trying not to look at you).
As applied to pro wrestling, this trope is Older than They Think. When this form of sports-entertainment first became popular in The Fifties, there was definitely a Double Standard for the sexes in terms of how much skin could be shown. Female wrestlers wore the more traditional singlet, which bared their arms and legs but nothing else. Male wrestlers, however, could strut around in bikini briefs and hardly anyone would think that was improper. Then again, the "amateur"-style wrestlers such as Kurt Angle have been known to wear the singlet, too; it's pretty much a unisex garment.
Women of course in WWE are almost always there to be Stripperiffic given that most of the WWE divas are former models. Maryse, Lay Cool, Gail Kim and Kelly Kelly are the most exposed. Not that we're complaining...
Perhaps ironically, given that the divas are used mostly for Fanservice, quite a few of them are dressed quite modestly as many wrestle in long tights and sports bras. Melina Perez, Beth Phoenix, Mickie James and Rosa Mendes wear quite modest outfits.
The Beautiful People in TNA are practically built on this trope. Although Angelina Love always wore long pants, Velvet Sky, Madison Rayne and Lacey Von Eric always wore as little as possible. And don't get started on their entrance...
WWE used to have a habit of booking the divas in special costume themed matches that would require them to wrestle in various stripperiffic costumes such as a "School Girl Battle Royal", "Lingerie Pillow Fight" as well as various swimsuit matches.
WWE are pretty restricted on what they can do with these now that they've gone PG but that hasn't stopped them from trying, with facepalming results. A recent "Summer Breakout match" saw the divas wrestling in one-piece swimsuits. The Bella Twins, Maryse and Gail Kim were involved and were noticeably covered up a lot more than they would be in their usual ring gear.
TNA once booked a "Leather and Lace match" between Velvet Sky and Angelina Love. See the Wall Banger entry for details on that spectacle.
Janice from The Muppet Show could kinda be considered a slightly toned-down version of this. Of course, it is still a family-friendly show, but she does wear a bit of a skimpy outfit: a pink tank top cut short, and, she's a puppet, so you don't really see anything below the waist that often, but she wears incredibly short jean shorts.
Sports
Female tennis dresses have gotten pretty close to this, with much media commentary on the matter. Pretty much the only road they won't go down is showing their stomach. Otherwise, micro-skirts and tops that leave zero to the imagination are pretty standard for a sport where you can hit what is essentially concrete going for a tough shot. Serena's "catsuit"◊ at the US Open is the biggest offender so far.
The outfits worm by female Beach Volleyball players definitely qualify; as their costumes generally consist of a sports-bra-style top, and a teeny bikini bottom (no thongs so far, but give it time). It's the only sport with a maximum coverage limitation. This can be partially justified by the fact that it is Beach Volleyball, and that bikini bottoms and sports bras aren't exactly alien to a beach environment, but nevertheless.
Costumes for female track-and-field athletes in general are approaching beach volleyball levels of skimpiness.
The Lingerie Football League is exactly what it sounds like. Women playing tackle football. In panties.
Tabletop Games
Justified in WhiteWolf's Scarred Lands d20 System Tabletop RPG: using arcane magic releases heat within the spellcaster's body, explaining the core rule systems ban on wizards using armor while also giving the caster the buff protection from cold with the side effect of making any heavy clothing really uncomfortable to wear. Some cultures embrace the skimpy garb this situation tends to require.
Many Elves, when they don't have to wear something more practical. Especially female Drow who seems to know only two sorts of clothes: quasimagical chainmail plus cloak of near-invisibility and stunningly pimped outun-dress.
Elminster in Myth Drannor featured some elven ladies "dressed" in a handful of enchanted gems glued to the skin in artistic patterns. Or flying around the wearer in patterns pleasant to the eye and thus being illuminated in every way available.
In 3.5 the Drow have an excuse: In their society, the more you cover up, the more flaws and weaknesses you're perceived to be compensating for, to the point where wealthy and powerful drow only really wear clothes as something to hang expensive finery from. Drow of the Underdark actually addresses this in depth. It's common for drow girls to expose a lot of skin due to the above and Fanservice, but considering most females in drow society can protect themselves with magic, wearing a sexy outfit is akin to announcing your spellcasting ability as well as confidence!
The Dark Sun setting is made of this trope, for both males and females. Designers who'd worked on its initial development have openly admitted choosing a desert setting (as opposed to, for instance, an arctic one) because of the ample beef-and-cheesecake opportunities afforded by the artwork.
The Gensai a 4th edition Player race: "To show off the energy lines etching his or her body, a genasi often wears clothes that leave at least some portion of his or her body uncovered." Yep, they've built Stripperiffic costumes into an entire race.
In Warhammer Fantasy Battles there are those that use it. Witchelves and sorceresses of the dark elves wear stripperific "clothes". Chaos marauders wear nothing but leather pants or loincloths and possibly helmets. Slayers wear either nothing or just pants or a loincloth, this is however justified as they try to get themselves killed and the less protection they wear the easier it is.
Though as far as slayers go, fanservice probably wasn't what the designers had in mind, given that even outside the game's core audience of male nerds, sexual attraction towards suicidally angry potbellied midgets with huge mohawks and huger beards who run around with axes is pretty niche.
Warhammer 40,000 averts this trope for nearly all female troops. Female Imperial Guard looks more or less the same as the males, just with more feminine faces and curves. Eldar Howling Banshees wear form-fitting armour; but are completely covered from head to toe. Sisters of Battle are similarly encased in form-fitting power armour. It is played straight with Sisters Repentia, who wear little more than scraps of parchment covering key areas; and Dark Eldar Wytches, who are best described as wearing leather bikinis with armoured, high-heel boots (other Dark Eldar get more to wear, but not much more).
Most notable of all is Lelith Hesperax, who is depicted in the new codex as wearing nothing but a bra, thong and armoured boots.
Magic: The Gathering is occasionally guilty of this, especially when it regards angels. For a direct comparison, see the image for Teysa, Orzhov Scion◊. Note how the male character's clothes lack the openings shaped like the Orzhov's mark. The Vulshok and Auriok seem to be explicitly forbidden from wearing more clothing than absolutely necessary.
Exalted features quite a few characters who have no taste for pants, such as Harmonious Jade (long loincloth), Sulamore the Wan Stravophore (stripper bondage nun gear), and Thousand-Faceted Nelumbo (often depicted wearing nothing but shoulder pads, knee pads, and a cape... then again, as an Alchemical, she doesn't necessarily have visible genitalia). Of course, they're all Exalted of various stripes, which means they get access to Perfect Defenses, things that allow you to dodge, parry or withstand any attack even if you're naked and just holding a dessert fork.
This entry simply would not be complete without mention of the cover of 1st edition book Savant and Sorcerer, known among fans as "The camel toe book".
GURPS characters would ordinarily be at quite a disadvantage without armor. So if you want your Action Girl to be Stripperiffic anyhow, you are advised to play with the Bulletproof Nudity rule, giving a defense bonus for wearing fewer clothes.
A whole lot of the female characters in Anima: Beyond Fantasy are dressed like high-class call-girls, with plenty (well, relatively speaking) of leather, lace and frills.
Struts are horse fashion model dolls that dress like 19th-century hookers. Creepy!
Video Games
Ohatsu in Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams begins the game conservatively dressed. After her outfit is supposedly destroyed in a battle, however, she changes into a sexier, stripperific outfit that she pieced together out of the remains of the old one.
Yuki is pretty stripperific in Enchanted Arms, although the first rule in a desert is to cover ALL your skin. Sunburns require more water than sweat waste.
Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies has the Warrior profession. There's a bit of a difference in the Male and Female standard getup. Of course, it's fully customizable, but still.◊ And almost every other game from the third game onward has at least one example.
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King has some [1] in a few scenes involving Jessica and her apparent "Va-va-voom" in addition to several monsters using "puff-puff" (accompanied by honking noises).
In the Valis series, Yuko's Valis Suit has consistently been illogically skimpy, being pretty much a bikini and (if it counts as armor) a skirt. Cham/Char in the third game has slightly less impractical armor.
Strangely, the third game's magic user is dressed in a full robe. Tellingly, though, she's also the only one who wears sandals rather than boots.
Also strangely, in the fourth game, Lena starts off with more modest clothing, even if it's still impractical as battle armor. However, when she gets special armor that grants her temporary invincibility (until it takes enough damage), that special armor turns out to be as skimpy as (or possibly skimpier than) Yuko's.
And then there's the way Elexis St. Claire dresses...
Averted in Half-Life 2, where female characters (including Alyx Vance, most prominent woman of the series) are dressed in appropriate, non-revealing clothing. Likewise, the resistance's female members are dressed much like their male counterparts, and Judith Mossman is dressed in jeans and a turtleneck. Well, it is a prettytightturtleneck...
Valve games in general tend to avoid this trope. Chell in Portal wears an orange jumpsuit the entire game and Zoey in Left 4 Dead is appropriately dressed for the Zombie Apocalypse.
The demoness Shannon in God Hand wears a very tight and close-cut one-piece outfit. As if in acknowledgment of this trope, just before the first fight with her, she actually mounts a stripper's pole for a moment...
Samus Aran from Metroid avoided this trope entirely, to the point where her being a female was the Tomato Surprise of the first game. However, pictures of her wearing more revealing clothes are sometimes unlockables.
In Zero Mission, she also spends a section of the game with just the suit she apparently wears under the armor (also seen in Super Smash Bros. Brawl). While not revealing at all, it is skin-tight. However, it does serve several practical purposes considering she wears it inside that massive suit, and justified in that it's not exactly something she's supposed to (or wants to) fight in at all.
Soul Calibur applies this to just about any character who isn't in full plate. While Ivy and Taki are the poster girls for the trope, players tend to forget that most of the men are equally underdressed. Hilde of Soul Calibur IV was explicitly designed to avert the trope — but the creators can hardly expect a cookie for it when the other characters are more scantily clad than ever.
Though Ivy did have a more conservative alternate outfit in Soul Calibur 1 and 2. Her alternates in the other games, on the other hand, were only less of this trope.
Subverted by Nicole in Dead or Alive 4, quite possibly the last place you would expect such a subversion to occur. As a female version of Master Chief in a game that otherwise uses this trope with pride, it is nearly impossible to tell her gender just from looking at her. In a funny twist, her gender is the Tomato Surprise at the end of the Haloidfan video. The person who's surprised by said Tomato? Samus Aran.
Mai Shiranui of Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters. Perhaps the quintessential example of the impractically dressed warrior. Her Garou counterpart B. Jenet wears a cocktail dress into battle and flirts with the guys quite a bit.
Lampshaded in Fatal Fury 3: when Terry Bogard defeats her, he tells her, "First, don't call me Goldilocks! And second, cover up that cleavage!"
She's hardly the only example in the series. Angel from 2001 quite possibly tops her in this regard, and in Mai's victory quote against her Mai says something about her "trying too hard".
Ever wonder how Mai manages to stay in that outfit? The anime implies that she doesn't, as her nipples occasionally slip out of her costume.
KOF also has one of the earliest and most notable fighting game aversions with Art of Fighting's resident Muay Thai lady King (no relation to the title), clad in a tuxedo that originally served to conceal her gender in the first game.
Subverted by the Tarutaru race in Final Fantasy XI while followed by other races: While most races have differences in gear appearance based on gender, with Race Specific Equipment (RSE) and Harnesses tending to be more revealing for females than males (though Subligaria were equally revealing for both), Tarutaru models are unisex below the neck (possibly to save on storage space) and their versions of the most Stripperiffic outfits in the game are less revealing than even the male versions from other races, rarely exposing much of the chest or the shoulders, and almost always covering the neck with a high collar, as well as making the flesh-toned material covering the legs in most subligaria pale enough to contrast very obviously with the Tarutaru's actual skin color.
In fact, the use of unisex bodies combined with the tendencies of most headgear to cover hair means that it becomes almost impossible to tell males and females apart when wearing a cap, hat, or helmet; only minor facial features like the shape of the hairline and angle of the eyebrows, combined with the limited number of available faces, makes this discernible.
And played completely straight by the Mithra, who are a mostly One Gender Race that seem to have an aversion to pants. Even when equipping a Mithra with an item called "trousers" that normally would be trousers on the other female races, it often turns into a pair of panties for Mithra.
I would also like to nominate the Dancer Empyrean Artifact Armor (aka AF 3) set as this trope. Dancers are supposed to be frontline, hybrid warriors. A black, lacy outfit that shows more skin than not makes me wonder what kind of dancer SE thinks we are...
Almost every Final Fantasy game has an example. Some stand out more than others (looking at you, X-2), but every game will feature at least one person like this. Final Fantasy, however, is notable for its equal opportunity — even the men are prone to this trope (Kuja can even put most of the girls to shame). Seriously, we could try and list every single instance of this, but it would take up most of the page.
Speaking of X-2, Rikku's bikini, that she wears during the Hot Spring scene, is less revealing than her default costume during the game!
Summoner/Black Magician Girl Rydia, from Final Fantasy IV, was already skirting the line with her post-adolescence Leotard of Power. Her outfit for the sequel, The After Years, doesn't resemble clothes so much as strategically-applied, gravity-defying green paint. Porom winds up with a Stripperific costume of her own, too; both of them actually had their clothing censored for the North American release of the game. Surprisingly, there's also a male example in Golbez of all people.
Lampshaded by some of the female guards of Troia on the Nintendo DS version, a nation ruled by women. One of them even gets annoyed at being mistaken for a dancer.
The cast of Vagrant Story wears about enough clothing to cover half as many characters. Ashley Riot has his infamous chaps with the butt-cheeks cut out of them, you can be relatively sure that Sydney Losstarot has no body hair, John Hardin one-ups Ashley with trousers that simply have no ass at all — and the list goes on.
The armour you get in World of Warcraft is often much more revealing on women than on men. However, it must be admitted that as of "Burning Crusade" and especially as of "Wrath of the Lich King", with its heavy emphasis on Nordic-style cold weather armor, Blizzard has gotten much better about this for the players (although a few chestpieces still show a little stomach if you're not wearing an undershirt). Some of the new designs for major lore characters are... questionable, however.
Alexstrasza◊ the Life-Binder, Queen of the Red Dragonflight, benevolent guardian of all living things, and part-time stripper(?).
Lady Sylvanas Windrunner◊, Banshee Queen, Dark Lady, Queen of the Forsaken, and, apparently, Queen of the belly-shirt. Everyone is necro for Sylvanas.
The Northrend sets actually make it hard to tell gender (or even race apart from the height differences) unless the helmet display is turned off.
In the greater Warcraft universe, Stripperific is the modus operandi of the Demon Hunter. Both men and women traditionally go completely topless (sometimes a strip of cloth for the women, but it's up to the individual) and either tight cloth or tight light leather covering for the legs. It fits well with their style, though; Demon Hunters use speed, agility, and special sight to battle opponents, and any additional weight from armor can slow them dangerously. They also rely on runes tattooed on their upper bodies to provide magical protection.
Along with Demon Hunters, there are a lot of other instances of equal opportunity Stripperiffic. For example, both male and female Orgrimmar Grunts wear minimalistic armor. There's a lot of it for player characters, too. For example, the Giantstalker set has armored short shorts regardless of the character's gender.
With Transmogrification coming soon, this could be played straight. Tanking Deathwing in a plate bikini, anyone? Or, if you don't bend that way, tanking in an Oddly Revealing Chestguard*
A piece of chest armor that looks like a harness on men and a fairly standard piece of plate armor on women
anyone?
Armor sets in Guild Wars also have the tendency to be slightly more revealing for women than men, but it's not glaring except for the Elementalists... the men wear full suits and long coats, while the women basically look like belly dancers. This may have been subverted with Paragons, who wear short skirts... men and women alike.
Although it is actually possible to get male Paragon armour that doesn't show a bare midriff. Not so for the women.
Female mesmers favor Gorgeous Period Dress, but there are a couple that come across more as evening dresses, so to speak. Female warriors generally avert the trope... except for the Gladiator and Elite Gladiator sets (and in their defense, the male versions are just as fanservice-y), monks and necromancers both have armor sets that consist of tattoos and scar patterns, respectively, with only the most vital bits preserved for modesty, male and female alike. Female rangers get avert this trope... except for the Elite Druid armor, which consists of little more than a leather bikini...
Let us not forget the Kurzick and Elite Kurzick armor for female Ritualists, which is apparently held on with spirit gum (admittedly, the male armor is fairly revealing as well). Some nonscar Necromancer armors are serious offenders, too - lace/gauze-is-not-a-substitute-for-clothing Elite Cabal and Obsidian, let's-protect-everything-except-the-vulnerable spots Elite Kurzick, and a-leather-strap-does-not-a-bra-make Sunspear - while the male Necros almost always get full-body leather suits.
In WarCraft 3, most of the Night Elf female units wear little more than bikinis and capes. Lampeshaded by the Archer, where if you click her enough times, she grumbles, "I said a bowstring, not a G—ugh, never mind." The Blood Elf Sorceresses wear a low-cut outfit that reveals much of their considerable cleavage. The character Jaina Proudmoore wears just a sports bra, tight pants and hooded cape. Subverted with the Night Elf Wardens from WC3's The Frozen Throne expansion, who wear concealing great cloaks and what visible areas are armoured properly. Played disturbingly straight with The Frozen Throne's Dark Ranger, an undead elf in a stripperific outfit.
On the other hand, the orc units, all male, tend not to wear much either: Thrall wears black plate, the witch doctor black robes, the shaman thick gray furs, the Farseer a hooded cloak, and the Tauren Chieftain a lot of bits. Every other orc, tauren, and troll unit is at the very least shirtless. Both male night elf heroes are shirtless, too.
Velvet from Odin Sphere. There's a bit of Lampshade Hanging in the Winterhorn Ridge stage when a shopkeeper NPC remarks "A half-naked maiden on this mountain? I hope I'm not hallucinating..."
Another Winterhorn Ridge shopkeeper asks, "You came all the way up here dressed like that?"
Fire Emblem plays this straight with every dancer except FE 7's Ninian (but they are dancers, so that is kind of the point). Some of the other female combat classes come close but tend to be justified (pegasus knights need light armor so as not to slow them down in flight, archers shouldn't be exposed to direct combat anyway, mages and healers aren't normally expected to fight).
There are a few males that also wear stripperiffic outfits. In the tenth game Sothe wears the same outfit as in the ninth, but since he's gone from 15 to 18 the shirt no longer covers his midriff and in general is a tight fit.
Nephenee is a weird example, her armor cover's everything that should be covered by armor, but the clothing she wears under it covers barely anything (especially with her tier 3 outfit in Radient Dawn)
Male example: Largo. Shorts and a bear-cloak head thing?
Calill and Lucia's outfits looked suspiciously like lingerie.
The Super Robot Wars introduced the stripperiffic outfit in form of the swimsuit-like DFC suit, worn by Aqua Centolm, heroine of Super Robot Wars MX. Not that she has the personality of a Ms. Fanservice, so she's obviously embarrassed with it. Justified with the fact that that kind of outfit is required on piloting her mech. And even the male hero Hugo Medio wore a similar stuff.
Ironically, in Aqua's cameo appearance in OG Gaiden, she said Lamia Loveless' outfit was of Stripperiffic quality. God knows how she will react when she learns that the DFC suit is way more Stripperiffic than that.
To make it even worse, in the OVA, she gets Stripped Off for Real.
Then this kicks off again in Super Robot Wars Z in form of the female rival Xine Espio... who seems to be taking some clothing tips from the DFC.
Jill Valentine apparently spends the time between Resident Evil and Resident Evil 3 changing from a combat uniform to a miniskirt and tube top. It is excused away in official media that Raccoon City was suffering a heatwave.
Sheva from Resident Evil 5 thinks going into the middle of a war zone in a purple tank top and tight pants is a good idea. Jill is also discovered in the game later on - wearing a Spy Catsuit with distinct cleavage. However, while you may play as her in the outfit in the Mercenaries mode, there is another outfit where she is just wearing perfectly innoculous clothing◊
Linda Maltinie from the first Snowboard Kids game dresses in leopard-pattern skintight pants and a red bikini top. As the game title suggests, she is garbed as much on frigid mountain tops. She's ten. The Japan-only Playstation sequelSnowboard Kids Plus introduces a few more characters who fit this trope, including a male example in the flamboyant and muscular Ruby Green, who has a bonus outfit consisting of a green speedo and snow boots. Did I mention he's also ten? (This is actually lampshaded in his bio, which makes light of his annoyance at being mistaken for a chaperone whenever he's around the rest of the cast.)
Oddly averted in Dungeon Siege 2 in which the armor is just stretched around the character model. For most of the class armors this was alright with the notable exception of the nature mages whose class armor was a midriff top with a miniskirt. This was very funny if you were playing as a male half giant.
An end-of-the-game unlockable from the game P.N.03 features the female protagonist in an incredibly revealing suit, complete with a thong. Keep in mind this is a shooter game. It also makes her a One Hit Point Wonder, adding a new difficulty to this already Nintendo Hard game.
Eileen's regular outfit in Silent Hill 4: The Room (during gameplay, at least — the one she wears before she joins you is pretty casual and unrevealing). To be fair, she thought she'd be attending a party instead of getting caught in the otherworld...
Possibly a subversion/inversion of the "Humongous Mecha with dome-like tin cans in the chestal region" version of this trope mentioned above, Zone of the Enders' Orbital Frames almost always site their cockpits between the legs◊ of the mecha, in an often phallic-shaped module — even on the apparently "female" frames. Interestingly however, this makes some sense, as it keeps the pilot slightly out of the way of most pummellings, frees up the head and upper body for necessary sensors (the pilot's view is from the perspective of the head) and other machinery , and makes it extremely easy to eject the entire cockpit section in an emergency.
Almost all frames also have feet that come to nothing more than a point, and when they stand on solid ground, a high-heel like spike extends for balance.
The Unreal series started fairly innocuously, with the females in workwear and armour similar to the males (at least of their faction). Unreal Championship 2 The Liandri Conflict (ie: Selket) raised the bar, then the bar had a bottle rocket put under it by Unreal II The Awakening. In that title, the player would face enemy mercenaries in massive powered armour, with the female mercs fully armoured on the limbs but wearing only a plexiglass screen and some circuitry from their thighs to the top of their head.
Somewhat justified in the later Phantasy Star games (Online and Universe), as armour comes in the form of "Frames" and "Line Shields". The first is mounted on the left wrist, and the second is laced throughout clothing as a set of energy pathways (thus "line" shield), often doubling as a decoration. Both project a protective field around the wearer (which can also be focused into a small area as a shield for parrying purposes), so basically as long as you have one you can wear whatever you like underneath. It's perhaps unsurprising people thus tend to wear even less than modern day, protected as they are by such lightweight and stylish energy shields.
Parodied in Timesplitters: Future Perfect. The henchmen working for Khallos wear the same skintight uniforms as the Henchwomen and complain about it a lot.
Lampshade Hanging in La Pucelle Tactics: The heroine and her friend both get into an argument over the immodesty of each other's uniforms... until they realize that their boss was the one who picked them out.
Faux Action Girl Rachel in the Xbox version of Ninja Gaiden wears an outfit most respectable strippers would probably consider tacky.
Played straight and Inverted in Mortal Kombat, where quite a few of the male and female fighters wear skimpy outfits while beating the crap out of each other (seriously, the dress code for Edenian royalty must have been based on SlaveLeia...). The only real exception to this is Ashrah, whose outfits are about the most modest and covering garments ever seen on an MK female.
Ashrah's alternate ditches her pants and hat, and she's still more covered up than most of the other girls.
There's some Fridge Brilliance in Mileena's case. She's fully aware of her status as a Butter Face (Underneath that veil is pure Accidental Nightmare Fuel), so she tries to compensate by showing off as much of her body as possible.
The character artwork featured on the front-page for Rappelz is so blatantly revealing and impractical that one wonders if it were deliberately mocking the trade.
Not just the character art — the in-game outfits for females often look like little more than bathing suits and thigh-high stockings. It makes for an interesting contrast with the ten foot long double-handed ax or the taller-than-the-characterglowy sword, as well as with the often-Humongous Mecha-inspired male armor. Female warriors tend to be more of the painted-on-spandex armor, which leaves little to the imagination, but still technically "protects", at least if you're being attacked by friendly kittens. A female mage or summoner, on the other hand, had better have a large supply of double-stick tape and a good way of keeping warm in the ice dungeon while wearing three inch-wide strips of fur and a pair of go-go boots. The slogan on the homepage just adds to it: "Explore The Hills And Valleys Of Rappelz." You could all it Accedental Innuendo, except you can be fairly sure its not an accident.
Suikoden Anything Jeane wears will instantly qualify.
StarCraft features relatively few female units. We only see the face of the Terrans' Dropship pilot. On the other hand, while the Brood War Medic and Valkyrie units aren't shown as being particularly Stripperific, they do have very flirty voice packs—the Medic even has a beauty mark, and winks. And while the in-game model of Infested Kerrigan isn't particularly stripperiffic, her appearances in rendered cutscenes and other media most definitely are. Sarah Kerrigan, on the other hand, wears standard Ghost armor and is annoyed over the players' constant clicking. (Repeated clicking on Medics and Valkyries, as mentioned, produces flirts.)
According to StarCraft: Ghost, ghosts fight with their derričre uncovered (yeah, not even a thong).
In the sequel, one of the Medics' responses to repeated clicks is, "For the last time, I am not a strip-o-gram!" Most of the rest of her talking is still very flirty.
While she is a kickass character, Queen Catherine Ironfist's (Heroes of Might and Magic III) leg-and-cleavage-baring plate-and-mail armor is disappointing. Further, Mutare's sleeveless leather shirt and Adrienne's benippled tunic strain...suspension of disbelief when male characters are in full armor or robes.
Particularly notable is Etna, who wears a midriff bearing leather top and a very short skirt. Made somewhat disturbing by the fact that she has the body of an underdeveloped thirteen year old girl. Her outfit in Disgaea 2 is somehow more revealing, as her top now bares a generous amount of cleavage (or it would if she had any cleavage), and her skirt is now split on both sides, baring her thighs.
Lampshaded in the Prinny commentary, where the commentator Prinny has a few words to say about Laharl and Etna's (lack of) clothing choices.
The female heroines of the Atelier series tend to go all over the place with this. On the one hand, the heroine of the very first game, Marie, wears an outfit with a chest that would be questionable in California◊, never mind the supposedly faux-German setting her game takes place in (though some Real Life Renaissance outfits had similarly bared cleavage); several other characters in other games also have fairly revealing outfits. The majority of female leads in the games, however, tend to have pretty tasteful, modest, and arguably even conservative outfits. The best examples are Elie◊ and Viese◊ from Atelier Elie and Atelier Iris 2 respectively; they're dressed in such a way that aside from their hands, the lowest you can see exposed skin is the neckline.
This seems to be the basis of the outfit of Shanoa, the heroine of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Which means, she'll be the first Stripperiffic good guy to ever embrace the canon story by IGA (at least after Sonia got thrown out of canon). It's somewhat justified in that the tattoos on her body double as weapons.
note however that she is dressed much more conservatively◊ than most other examples on here, for the most part only her Sexy Backis revealed◊
Sheena from Tales Of Symphonia}}. Maybe not quite so Stripperiffic, but she walks around with an outfit that reveals her ample bosom quite a bunch with ease...
And then Tales Of Symphonia Dawn Of The New World deliciously lampoons the trope, and their own use of it, with the Lezerano Company's good-luck charms, invented by Presea. Among them is "An outfit that despite having a bare midriff, never allows your skin to get cold, and also protects against enemy attacks." Called the Loni-Kyle, for some reason.
Devil May Cry: Gloria. Did anyone else want to play that "I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today" song from Avenue Q over her introduction? That said, the love interest in the same game is pretty much completely covered up.
All the female jobs in Ragnarok Online range from modest to blatantly stripperific. In most jobs, higher classes means less clothing. And the stripperific isn't only on official images; sometimes, you can see your cute sprite◊ gainaxing! Justified with the Dancer/Gypsy class, but the others...
From the "Humongous Mecha" section, we have one of Roll's super moves from the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Normally a tiny maid robot who comes up to Ryu's waist and whose average moves do as much damage as Ryu's sneeze, and has as much sex appeal as Ryu too, Roll has one set that makes her grow to Humongous Mecha size, complete with... yes, those domes on the chest. Then again, they're missiles, so does that count overall?
Feena from Grandia is said to be one of the most skilled and intelligent adventurers in the world. Her outfit of choice? A bikini top (with inexplicable sleeves) and a very small miniskirt that by all rights shouldn't cover anything. And yet we still never get a panty shot. The physics of it all are mind-boggling.
Bayonetta features a gun-toting witch wearing a skintight bodysuit... made of her hair. That she strips off her body as she uses her magic. And turns it into a hair dragon while standing around in the nude. See it in all its glory right here.
Ayumi, main character of the upcoming anime-styled action game X-Blades, fits the trope perfectly.
Note that a less covered material (pardon the pun) is Ayumi's Regeneration and Armor clothes, which does cover her but still lands in Chainmail Bikini territory, of the "Relatively realistic armor with a flash of cleavage" flavor.
Lampshaded in Star Control II. The officer's uniform of Syreen is very revealing, and the protagonist takes a note of it. Needless to say, for all-female race that uses its sex appeal for all sentient races as a spaceship weapon, this can be considered Justified Trope.
F.A.K.K.2, adapted from a sci-fi Heavy Metal Magazine and staring a 3D modeled Julie Strain, begins with a skin-tight jumpsuit, which suffers Clothing Damage, then is replaced with leather bikini and then a few strategically placed straps. Later clothing, while revealing progressively more, somehow provide more protection.
Planescape's snarky Cute Monster Girl Annah has a set of identically different bodices and hip-high boots that cover enough of her to make her cleavage and legs more conspicuous.
It can get lampshaded and justified to an extent. If the PC is a thief, then he and Annah (who is also a thief) can exchange experience, tricks and general ideas on how to improve their skills. In particular, the PC can suggest that Annah makes her outfit even more Stripperiffic by cutting some extra holes so to pass for a harlot and distract potential victims. He confesses that he always thought this was the purpose of the bodices anyway, and she claims that she just gets hot, which she supposes is due to her infernal heritage.
In fact, most of the outfits worn by most of the females, including the NPCs, qualify. The one outfit that actually subverts this is the one worn by Fall-From-Grace, who is a succubus. Then again, she's a chaste succubus.
Rayne's vampire sister, Ferril, in Bloodrayne 2 is strategically covered only in what appears to be living tattoos. That's not even getting into what Ephemera or Rayne herself wear.
pop'n music has Miku, a showgirl who may or may not be a stripper given her skimpy attire, which consists of a black bra and miniskirt (which flies up in one of her animations).
Played gratuitously in Lost Odyssey, where the regal noble empress Ming◊ is wearing a bikini bottom and what appears to be some sort of elegant tool belt on the bottom, and what can best be described as "sorta vest-ish, but with more breast exposure" on the top. Slightly more conservative, in that she doesn't look like a fantasy prostitute, is the Hot LibrarianSarah◊, who is wearing pants with what appears to be an ensemble of cape, Detached Sleeves, and white corset. Oddly, the female pirate is wearing a sensible leather dress with a bit of plate mail here and there.
In the Oneechanbara games, when blood touches the lead characters it increases their power — at the cost of some very, very nasty side effects. Thus, it actually makes sense for them to fight in clothing that's relatively tight and/or revealing.
As the games cencept is really not much more than stripperific girls with swords killing zombies, it's probably just a lame excuse.
Justified in Jade Empire, in which armor is completely useless and revealing clothing is stated to be a sign of confidence. Which still raises the question of why the emperor of fantasy-counterpart-Imperial China lets his unmarried daughter and sole heir walk around the capital dressed in that outfit. In fact, when she appears to him in her much-more modest (in comparison) Silk Fox garb, he chastises her for wearing a crass outfit.
She's covering up too much of her body in that getup, not too little.
Neverwinter Nights had a particular issue with this, sensible robes and armour suddenly morphed into low cut dress and body hugging tops when picked up by a female player, you could even strip a character down to their (inappropriate) underwear.
Almost completely averted in Neverwinter Nights 2. All armor is very sensible, and characters wear normal civilian clothes under their armor. The lone exception is the armor female warlock protagonists start with, and it's a unique piece of armor found nowhere else in the game.
Operator Gina, the tutorial instructor in the MMORPG ACE Online is particularly Stripperiffic. Midriff-bearing dress shirt, double-slit miniskirt, garter belts and fishnet stockings. If this◊ is the army of the future, sign me up.
Your fellow pilots will all be wearing Latex Space Suits, and all of them are at least reasonably attractive. Yum.
Warhammer Online has two Dark Elf classes, the Witch Elf and Sorceress who wear a spiked metal bikini and non-existent, form-fitting robes, respectively. However, this does mesh with the Wargame, and all the other female classes avert this.
To elaborate a little: The classes of almost every race dress pretty much equal, assuming they have both genders available. In the case of chaos zealots, it's even the male variant that exposes more skin (he goes bare chested, obviously). The only class that exists for both sexes with the female variant being significantly more exposing is the dark elf sorceress. Now what does that tell us about the physique of male dark elves whose robes generally cover them from neck to toes?
The Witch Elves are the "Brides of Khrane", therefore their male counterparts should act as meatshields to protect their god's brides (plus fluff-wise they're lighting fast so don't need armour).
Most male Dark Elves are scared stiff of them. Sometimes this may be a euphemism, but not always. (Regarding protection — they don't have any "so fast they don't need armour" tendencies either in fluff or crunch. However, they are one of the embodiments of the 'best defense is an overwhelming offense' principle.)
Saki: How can you walk around like that? Don't you have any sense of decency?
Arcana Heart 2's Catherine Kyohbayashi is no better. She also wears a one-piece swimsuit similar to Kira's... and rides a Humongous Mecha. She certainly can't use the 'fight in the water' excuse...
Arcana Heart 3 adds the Ax Crazy Scharlachrot who wears basically a bra and short shorts under her cape.
One must wonder how Vanessa from Luminous Arc manages to avoid untimely "wardrobe malfunctions" in battle.
Ayano's "battle" outfit, holy crap. There's a reason why she's a Glass Cannon with lower DEF (she can tank well against magic, though).
Both averted and played straight in Rumble Roses, an all-girl wrestling game. Don't let the decent wrestling engine and attempts at a story fool you, the game is clearly 85% T&A. Most of the wrestlers wear outfits that are too small or very inconvenient in a fight, such as a scarf or an extremely tight skirt. Even "Face" (Good) characters are dressed extremely sexy, with costumes picked especially for Fetish Fuel but mostly not useful for a fight. This is partly Truth in Television however, as a lot of female wrestlers dress and act sexy on purpose even if their costume gets in the way. Averted however in the Judo Babe, who is a shy "good girl" and whose regular outfit is a judo... robe? Even her swimsuit is a one-piece, showing less skin than the regular costumes of many characters and NOT showing cleavage. (Of course once she turns "Heel" (Evil) she dresses sexier... and in the sequel, official/unofficial artwork, miniature DOLL and fan pictures; she is not nearly as modest.) Partially averted in Miss Spencer, who while showing relatively little skin is dressed for appeal instead of practicality in a tight skirt and a SCARF. (Not a good idea in a fight.) And if the scarf's out of the way(if she's turned upside down, for example) she shows ample cleavage. Ironically, the character Aigle wears VERY little as a Face, but seems to cover up when she turns Heel. (Except, still cleavage.) Lady X averts it by wearing a pantsuit (with cleavage) but as she's a cyborg with half her body covered in metal, she couldn't show much skin anyway.
Of all the female clothing in The Matrix Online, the items that have the best buffs or enhancements are the ones which show the most skin.
In Fighting Vipers, all the human characters wear armor but it can be broken in the game. When Candy's armor is destroyed she wears only a frilly skirt, boots, gloves and a leather bra. Even with her (skimpy) armor, Grace still is Stripperiffic but once it's broken she wears a one piece bathing suit that reveals her cleavage.
City of Heroes. While it's completely in the hands of the players, many of the costume choices in this game are fairly stripperific, especially for females. Some notable costume choices:
Three leather straps that go across your bare chest... available only for guys, however(!)
The "eden" choice is two spike-like shapes that are painted over your chest and only (just barely) cover the character's nipples.
The female version of the tank top is skimpier than the male version, and goes so far as to add extra cleavage shading!
Also, if you pick an odd skin color, you can create a matching outfit and appear completely naked at first glance.
Finally, an old (now squashed) bug allowed females to go around topless... with nipples showing! However, they would have the chest, arm, and abdominal muscles of a male model, so it may seem more squicky than arousing, depending on one's tastes.
While the Sonic the Hedgehog series usually falls under the category of Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal and thus this trope is easily handwaved, an early issue of the Archie comic made a joke about Princess Sally wearing a "revealing two-piece outfit". At the time, she only wore a pair of boots.
Rouge the Bat, who wears a black skin-tight spandex suit and a pink, heart-shaped Chainmail Bikini that exposes varying amounts of cleavage, depending on the game. In her first appearance she was actually very bouncy. Her alternate outfits tend to be even more stripperific, if not outright Fetish Fuel.
Lampshaded in-game when a guard describes taking orders from her while not knowing where to look. Joanna Dark (the player character) also plays this trope completely straight by sneaking around a snow-covered mountain pass in a heavy coat and pants...when the former stops just past her breasts.
Adverts for Flyff seem to make out that the women have really skimpy armor. This apparently isn't the case in-game.
Tomb Raider: Lara Croft, though she at least tries to dress up for the weather. It's better than a Fur Bikini, but only just.
Darkstalkers is probably the most ridiculous example there is. Felicia is a Catgirl who is practically naked aside from small patches of fur just barely covering her up (her butt is pretty much always uncovered). Morrigan's "outfit" is really a bunch of bats that fly around her constantly and turn into her clothes (the same applies to Lilith, her Lolicon sister). There's a bit of Getting Crap Past the Radar in Pocket Fighter when she says that the bats carry her things when she goes shopping. Take that however you'd like.
Tenchu 2's Lady Kagami. What can I say, she's an "if you got it flaunt it" kind of woman.
Batman: Arkham Asylum features Harley Quinn in a new uniform. Although her old clothes were tight, they covered most of her skin. Her new uniform looks like the standard Naughty Nurse Outfit, combined with bondage gear. Poison Ivy also gets a new costume, which again is more revealing than her normal comics getup.
Justified, in that Harley is not exactly sane, and it's not at all unreasonable for her character to choose pleasing "Mr. J" over actual protection.
Lampshaded in Arkham City, where you can overhear two prisoners talking about her outfit.
Inmate 1: Have you seen Harley's new outfit? I don't get why she wears that skimpy little thing.
Inmate 2: She must be crazy wearing that out here! Doesn't she know that these guys haven't seen women in a looonng time? She'd better be careful.
Adventure Quest Worlds is the first Artix Entertainment game where leotards and revealing robes are compulsory for all women of all classes, no matter what. Even most of the over clothes are burlesque in some way.
In a bitter way, AE is no longer unique where optional stripper clothes are concerned.
Although later released armours tend to cover the players neck to toes for both genders*
Some to the point that the player appears androgynous at first glance.
, while some skin-revealing armours apply to men as well.
The female versions of Raider armor in Fallout3 are generally quite revealing, some more than others. Then again, they are on the men as well◊, making it an equal-opportunity trope in this case.
Largely averted in Mass Effect, with the notable exception of one particular dress style that is seen occasionally on female humans and asari. Every other female character wears appropriate attire, even the Green-Skinned Space Babe — Ashley Williams and the female Shepard wear the same dark blue shirt-and-pants uniform as every other crewman aboard the Normandy when off-duty, while Doctor Chakwas and Liara T'Soni stick to lab coats with gloves that cover everything below the neck. All combat armor leaves only the head exposed (and all have a helmet for hostile/nonexistent atmospheric conditions), and one female party member never leaves her full-body, not-very-skintight environmental suit.
Samara from Mass Effect 2 wears a skintight catsuit with an extremely low neckline. Subject Zero/Jack doesn't even wear clothes from the waist up, just a belt..thing that just barely covers her nipples.
Miranda is another major exception. Her standard outfit is so tight that it's lampshaded during her loyalty mission. A gaming site even wrote an article called "The Truth Behind Miranda's Behind" at one point.
Bioware did pick up and the somewhat negative reaction from the fans on these outfits, and have released a couple of optional Appearance Pack DLCs that address is. The first pack gives Jack a proper jacket and vest, which appear to be armored, while the second pack gives Miranda a suit of light plate armor similar to the light armor suits in the first game, complete with replacing her Combat Stilettos with boots.
Sheena Etranzi wears an incredibly impractical Battle Bikini and a trio of belts around her midriff in Contra: Hard Corps◊. Apparently Konami and WayForward Technologies didn't think this was stripperiffic enough, so they removed the belts and added a generous amount of cleavage in Contra 4◊. The other female character in Contra 4, Lucia, is a bit more modest, wearing a blue one-piece swimsuit with chaps.◊ Then again, most of the male characters are shirtless.
In Jays Journey, no one can shut up about Gaia's outfit, which is essentially a bikini. Gaia actually flaunts her body to try to get her way, but no one responds the way she expects. In one scene, she comments that she's been looking for attention. Jay remarks that the outfit should be enough; Gaia responds "Well, it wouldn't be in any game besides this one."
BlazBlue's Litchi Faye-Ling wears a Chinese outfit that reveals quite a lot of her humongous melons... which bounces a lot. Her outfit also reveal a lot of her legs and her shoulders. Her back is modestly covered though (then again, what do we have Noel for).
Considering an offhand comment Litchi made in Noel's Joke Ending in Story Mode, Litchi's outfit looks that way on her probably because it's several sizes too small for her, so she really has to leave the front open (since her Most Common Superpower is in the way), and she probably cut those holes on the sleeves on purpose so that her arms don't get restricted in movement (also, assuming that's exactly the same outfit Noel is wearing in that same ending scene, it fits Noel perfectly).
Noel and Jin are both relatively high-ranking members of the NOL and are regularly sent to the front lines. Yet neither possess any armour and look more like they should be doing deskwork. In Jin's case, he does have those tights, but they are apparently so he doesn't catch a chill from Yukianesa. So if he wasn't using Yukianesa, and unless they design a new uniform for him, Jin would probably be running around with about the same amount of clothes on as Makoto.
Here comes a new challenger! Making an appearance as an adorable squirrel girl, Makoto joins the fray wielding Dual Tonfas and hardly any clothes on. She makes Litchi look modest. Not that it is a bad thing...
Also Mu-12, who wears a tie and a crotch plate thing and not much else.
Persona 3: FES notably lampshades this trope. For the most part, female characters wear their school uniforms during the Dark Hour, however some unique costumes can be found which change the model of the character who wears them. A 'High-cut Armor' is described as 'Armor that looks like a bikini', and sure enough, if equipped on a female character, they will verbally acknowledge the ridiculousness of it. Later in the game, all of the main character's swimsuits become available for purchase from the police station, for the modest sum of 300,000 yen.
The adverts and home page for Perfect World International seem to become more stripperiffic with every new expansion. The in-game armour for females doesn't seem to fare much better, with the Chainmail Bikini predominating for nearly every race and class.
Even Pokémon is not immune: there's Clair, who wears a rather short one-piece which even gets Lampshading by some people in the remakes, and Phoebe, who wears only a bikini top and apron skirt.
Sabrina goes from a kimono style tunic in Generation I to a spandex suit with a tunic in Generation II, just the spandex in Generation III, and a tank top and low-cut jeans in Generation IV
Additionally, Candice wears a schoolgirl uniform with a short skirt; Flannery, Gardenia, Dahlia, and Karen with bare midriffs; Misty's swimsuits; Maylene wearing her leotard (lolicon), and finally Winona and Roxanne appear with their stocking legs.
There's Hilda's Daisy Dukes, with the other female player characters displaying hot pants and short skirts as well.
On top of that, there's the female player characters from the Pokémon Ranger spinoff series who seem to have an aversion to any type of lower body wear extending below the thigh.
Most female player characters from Sacred. Special mention goes to Seraphim.
Gladius has this for both sexes. It works perfectly for its combination of Roman gladiators and Norse vikings (both Real Life examples).
Dragon Age: Origins has the witch Morrigan, a dark-haired beauty with Eyes of Gold. Morrigan's "top" is essentially two strips of purple cloth covering her breasts, seemingly held together with a few strings, along with a single sleeve. When questioned on her outfit, Morrigan notes she spent her life in a forest; the implication is that Morrigan cobbled together her outfit from scraps.
The iPhone game Arodius has this played straight AND averted. And literally.
You play the game as a stripperiffic angel who wields a sword but shoots lasers that goes on some quest to defeat her enemies... the bosses are all in full armor, and depending on the difficulty, they become more and more naked the more you shoot them.
In other words, the game has the greatest enemy health bar in the word. Until Level 3.
Wild ARMS in general tend to avert this trope, even avoiding form-hugging outfits to an extent and cladding its heroines rather modestly, a rarity for modern game franchises.
Except the anime. It's amazing Loretta's dress even stays on...
Finally played straight with Rebecca Streisand's hot pants in Wild ARMS 5.
And of course, all champions have several alternate skins, some more and some less revealing than their normal ones.
Leona and Vayne, for example, avert this trope in most of their skins, but both have one alternate skin that play this trope straight.
The Queen of Thorns from Demigod is completely naked, with only a few brambles growing over her delicate areas preventing the game from getting rated for adults only.
In Prince of Persia: Warrior Within both the Empress of Time (to some degree) and especially her servant Shahdee wear something that is only a distant poor relative of clothes.
In Sands of Time, the prince loses more and more parts of his shirt over the course of the game.
Common for female warriors in Rift; less so for other classes. Also common among NPCs; Asha Catari, for example, seems to take pride in her Power Tattoos. And there are plenty of Walking Shirtless Scenes scattered around the game world, too.
The upcoming K-MMOTERA Online is already famous (or infamous) for this.
Shiki in The World Ends with You wears a crop top and short jacket, along with a very short, low-cut skirt. Her real self, though, averts this completely.
Not only isn't the defense-power of clothes in S4 League completely unrelated to how much of the body is covered, the only parts giving any defense at all are pants and hair...
The SNK game Athena strips its heroine down to a skimpy red bikini in the game intro. This is not the more modestly dressed Athena appears in Psycho Soldier and the King of Fighters series, but the Princess Athena who appears again, bikini-clad, in SNK Vs Capcom SVC Chaos.
Magical Mysteries: Path of the Sorceress has the PC clad in a spaghetti-strap sheer top and thong bottom which would look much more appropriate in a Victoria's Secret fantasy lingerie show. Slightly justified as she is a sorceress, but when all of the (undead) bosses so far have been both male/sexless and dressed in full armor or robes...
Web Comics
Pinky, the title girl from Pinky TA, wears nothing but a short tank top, a belt, and a black thong.
Parodied in Schlock Mercenary, where the field commander alters the order for the (female) owner's body armor from a modest design to a rather more buxom one; she responds by testing its strength-magnification features on his ribcage.
Also satired in the adult webcomic Supermegatopia, in which a group of former superheroes and superheroines with names like "Topless Lass", "The Tease", and "Long Tom" form the All-Stripper Squadron and use their powers in a more profitable manner than fighting crime.
Completely averted in Chasing the Sunset. All the female characters wear practical everyday clothing which generally bares just the arms and lower legs. Clothing for special events is slightly more revealing; clothing for combat is heavier.
The title character from Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki wears clothes that look like they're painted on... because they're alive. Sort of.
Freya wears clothing into combat that must be glued on.
Parodied in the Sluggy Freelance story arc "Years of Yarncraft", where Zoe is upset that every single female character design in an MMORPG is petite, well-endowed, and wears a Stripperiffic outfit... even the slime monsters.
Dungeon Damage has Cat, a rich Spoiled Brat and part-time thrillseeking thief who dresses outrageously (by Medieval Venician standards) but finds that what looks good isn't very practical, as when she winds up on a mountaintop in a blizzard in a midriff-and-cleavage baring vest.
No longer active, but there's a webcomic out there named Chainmail Bikini. Which became an Artifact Title when the character died (and the player opted to roll up a new character instead of accepting a resurrection), but the titular object certainly fit the concept; it offered a slight charisma bonus at the expense of reduced AC. On a paladin.
Huang Gai in San Three Kingdoms Comic... always appears completely butt naked. When Art Evolution kicks in and he is changed into his Dynasty Warriors 6 attire, he still has time to make his lower half completely Stripperiffic too.
Terinu's females are sensibly dressed most of the time. Then there's Ninetta, a six-foot tall alien who likes to walk around in daisy dukes, crop tops and bare foot whenever she can get away with it. Also there's Gwen, who favors tight jeans and crop tops as well, though she is fifteen and a stereotypical fashion obsessed teenager. Even she draws the line when she's made a slave girl and forced to wear an "Exotic Dancer Barbie" outfit though.
Freakangels has Arkady... a character that is bald, and wears a white loose as hell tank top, is barefoot, and for a bottom, wears a see-thru long patchwork skirt with no underwear. However, her vagina isn't drawn in, but one of the other characters does finally comment on it saying, "I wish you'd put something on under that..." In volume 2 and onward, Arkady now wears a tighter tank top and panties under her see-thru patchwork skirt. It was actually a bunch of fans that requested the change, as it made them uneasy.
Engie-tan of Nerf NOW has some major wardrobe malfunctions. Actually, that goes for any of the female characters.
Too Much Information: The protagonist's shoulder devil, Cleo, is a sexy demoness covered only by long tresses of flaming hair. His shoulder angel, Spooky, "copes" by switching to a feather bikini.
The title character of The Challenges of Zona's usual outfit is a leather version of Red Sonja's chainmail bikini plus a gold torc. Her sister Tula dresses comparatively modest in a halter top and tight pants with cutouts but still qualifies IMHGO.
Distracterella from the League Of Super Redundant Heroes has the ability to be distracting as her superpower. Part of it manifests in her costume, which is effectively black latex Body Paint with 3 brightly colored stars acting as Censor Boxes — in effect, she is drawn nude except for said stars. Amusingly, about the only one the power works on is the reader, it's not shown to do anything in-universe other than make her Ms. Fanservice.
And in an amusing case of I Knew It — it is not effectively black latex body paint, it isbody paint, something that was not spelled out (and was a plot twist) until after this entry was added.
Moira Weir in Tales of Gnosis College wears a swimsuit that surely counts as such. And soon, she loses even that.
The impracticality of the trope is lampshaded on this page of Spinnerette.
Web Original
Sarah references this in the lonelygirl15 video "Am I A Criminal?": "If you're gonna B&E, you wanna bring the T&A!"
In the Whateley Universe, Mega-Girl wears a teeny Supergirl/Power Girl kind of costume that shows off a ton of skin. And she wears it almost all the time. Phase has seen her studying in her dorm room, in her costume. There's a reason why.
And lampshaded repeatedly, like the time Gloriana had to wear her costume in Boston in the middle of winter, and discovered one of the downsides to an outfit that's basically a maillot and boots. Plus, there are classes on costume design and such at Whateley Academy. They're taught by a little old lady in a floor-length dress and a shawl.
Immersiontested what would happen to two women who actually tried fighting in video game costumes. A male equivalent was also provided but he never seemed to get past being prepped by one of the female techs.
The electrified-whip wielding heroine Lilywatt from the blog-novel Flyover City! eventually goes undercover as a stripper (but only because the plot demanded she do so).
In a male example, The Nostalgia Critic has a teensy skirt on in Suburban Knights. The man has fantastic legs, but Lupa needs to teach him how to bend like a lady and in battle he's desperately trying to stop it riding up.
Western Animation
Stan Lee's Stripperella. What can be more Stripperiffic than an actual stripper who dresses like a stripper to fight crime?
Futurama's Zapp Brannigan. His tunic just barely covers his genitals... from the front. If he bends over or climbs a ladder, you're out of luck.
A pair of random pedestrians in the first episode, as Fry goes flying out of the transport tube and hits a building. The couple in question are both wearing what looks to be laminated plastic, fully clear except for the black stripes covering their inappropriate parts.
Speaking of which, there are apparently black bar generators that create... floating black bars so that blurnsball players don't have to cover up while in the locker room.
Whenever Amy Wong is wearing something other than her default sweatsuit, it's usually pretty stripperiffic; while Leela typically inverts the trope by dressing fairly conservatively. Reversed in "Jurassic Bark", where Leela and Amy are wearing exercise gear: Amy's is a conservative leotard-and-tights outfit; but Leela's is a seriously Fetish Fuel black leotard consisting mostly of narrow straps and large cut-outs. Her attempt to tear it off later in the episode gives a nice Underboobs effect.
Leela's superhero outfit as Clobberella in "Less Than Hero" also qualifies; and is suitably lampshaded.
Turanga Munda: You're a superhero? Well that's wonderful! But did you have to make the costume so revealing?
Considering it was a kids' cartoon, the early '90s X-Men series allowed some characters to get pretty darn Stripperiffic, and combined it with some great angles.
It didn't help that the coloring of Jean Grey's outfit made it sometimes hard to know which part were skin and which part were from the outfit.
Neither did the coloring for Sabertooth's outfit. Half the time it looked like he was plain moonlighting us.
In the recent Wolverine and the X-Men series, Emma Frost surprisingly survives Adaption Decay in almost every possible way... including her extremely revealing outfit. Plus, she has a sexy British Accent to boot. God bless them.
Dr. Mrs. The Monarch's prototype outfit in The Venture Bros.. Lampshaded twice by The Monarch, who even points out Theiss Titillation Theory, and her Murderous Moppets who exclaim how they love hugging her in her new costume.
When asked if she's afraid of, ahem, "spilling out" of her costume, Dr. Mrs. The Monarch notes that her breasts are taped to the costume.
Compared to her old Queen Etherea costume, it's almost modest.
Let's not forget the aptly-named Molotov Cocktease (and how could you, with a name like that?), whose outfit has a breast-baring and ass-baring slit up the front and back. Then again, her "off-duty" fashion sense doesn't scream subtle either.
Who cares that they're robots a minimum of 10 feet tall? With Transformers like Elita One, Arcee and Blackarachnia, you can still see exactly where their clothes would be. Even though, being robots, they don't actually wear clothes. Hell, G1 Arcee has more armour on her shoulders than she has on her legs. This gets taken to disturbing extents in the comics — Chromia at one point has a molded thong on her body.
The title character of Ćon Flux. The most she wears in the cartoons is a black vinyl sports bra, a matching chastity belt, and thigh-high stripper boots. And there's ample evidence that all Monicans dress this way.
A woman attending 2011 Comic Con was asked to leave by police because her Aeon Flux costume was illegal! (it showed too much butt). She changed into a latex Star Wars uniform instead.
All the girls in Total Drama Island, except Beth, Eva, Bridgette, Courtney and LaShawna. The only reason Beth and Eva aren't is because they aren't supposed to be appealing to men (Beth's a loser, Eva is a jock). LaShawna is supposed to be more sensible than the rest of the girls, so she probably would not wear a close fitting outfit. Lindsay may be justified for looking like this in that she's a Brainless Beauty, who probably would not care if she was bleeding to death, as long as she looked good.
The Winx Club girls' outfits vary greatly in modesty, but season four's Sophiex transformation takes the cake. Just look at Flora. Her top looks like a couple of leaves sewn together, and it's backless!
Averted with Musa, whose Sophix covers more than any of their other outfits (with her enchantix being the most revealing). Tecna's outfits have gotten progressively more Stripperiffic as the series went on, starting out with a full bodysuit, then a pretty, sort of tech-looking tube top and skirt, and now her even less covering Sophix (the outfits have also gotten less sci-Fi looking, which is odd since she is a fairy whose element is technology. The last one even has flowers on it!
Fire Nation clothing for girls in Avatar: The Last Airbender seems to be default. See Ty Lee's normal outfit and Katara's Season 3 outfit, as well as Suki's in the later half of Season 3.
This can at least be somewhat justified by season 3 taking place in the summer and that the fire nation seems to have a more tropical climate than the other nations.
Also, the Fire Nation itself is on a series of volcanic islands, some still active. Most of the mainland is taken up by the large volcano in the middle. It's gotta be pretty hot.
The Mask gives us Cookie BaBoom and her suicide belt bikini she uses in her plot to assassinate Mayor Tilton.
Real Life
Truth in Television: Ballroom dance. What you see on Dancing with the Stars or Strictly Come Dancing is a pretty good example, but you can find the backless dresses with plunging necklines at professional and even collegiate competitions. Males don't get away scot free either: the two acceptable shirts for Latin and Rhythm are either a tight black shirt or a ruffly white one that's open in front. The clothing for Standard and Smooth styles are much more conservative.
Similarly, Salsa dancers often wear very revealing outfits, typically with tight tops and short, loose skirts designed to flutter about with the slightest movement.
Celtic Warriors, at least according to Roman accounts often went into battle naked and painted with woad. This served a practical purpose: it freaked the Romans out. In addition, if fibers get into an open wound, it gets really easily infected. No clothing, no fibers. No fibers, no infection.)
Simpler yet: most Iron Age Celts' only garment was a big piece of cloth wrapped round the shoulders and hips and held in place with a pin or two and a belt. Not practical for fighting in, and if you survived, you didn't want it hacked to bits. Much better to leave it behind and look macho.
The Celtic expies that Kahlan has her small force imitate in order to scare a really large force of D'harans in the Sword of Truth do something similar, except they are painted white and go into battle... aroused. Kahlan strips down and paints herself white too to ensure the latter occurs.
The Maori do one better. Maori men not only went into battle naked, but considered an erection a sign of courage.
Ancient Minoan dresses were topless by default. To be more descriptive, the most common costumes for Minoan females consisted of two types: an every-day dress that consisted of a full, ankle-length skirt, and a loose, short-sleeved blouse which was fully open in the front; and a ceremonial dress consisting of a long, mulch-layered skirt, and a tight bodice cut to fully expose the breasts. Minoan women apparently didn't believe in hiding their assets.
Minoan men hardly fared better. The common male garment consisted of a short white woolen kilt, often worn with a prominent codpiece. And that's pretty much it, except for an optional woolen cloak in inclement weather.
Those who thought that people of recent history were uniformly prudish lot should see 18th century women's fashion that was imitated across Europe. Plunging necklines were a major part of the period fashion, and at times it deliberately left one, or even both nipples bare. Compare this to the attitude people had to Janet Jackson's "wardrobe failure".
It's increasingly common for young women (mostly high school and college age) women in the U.S. to wear sexy Halloween costumes that fit this trope. If it exists, it can be sluttified. Everything from traditional Halloween costumes (witches, vampires, etc.) to copyrighted characters, and everything in between come in sexy versions for young women.
Amusingly, lighter-skinned strippers generally avert this, dressing very modestly when off work, so as to avoid developing tan lines.
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