Basic Trope: An Action Girl rips part of her dress off so she can fight while still wearing what's left of it.
- Straight: Barbara is enjoying herself at a festival, wearing a pretty dress that's distinctly different from her normal outfit. Suddenly, bad guys attack! Barbara immediately rips off the hem of her dress and goes for the nearest Improvised Weapon before charging into the fray.
- Exaggerated:
- Barbara and the rest of her friends are attending an upscale gala, wearing an array of Pimped Out Dresses. When Emperor Evulz has his minions, with General Drake and Violet Darkheart leading the pack, crash the party, all the women there immediately tear off parts of their dresses so they can help fight.
- Barbara is a bridesmaid at Alice's wedding, which is violently interrupted by Razorface the Bloodguzzler. She comepletely shreds the bridesmaid dress she was wearing and fights in a more practical outfit she had underneath.
- Downplayed:
- Barbara merely hitches up her dress to avoid it getting in the way whilst she's kicking the baddies' asses.
- Alice’s dress accidentally gets ripped off during the fight.
- Justified: Barbara wants to join the fight quickly, but would be hindered if she tried attacking while wearing such a restricting and unfamiliar outfit.
- Inverted: Barbara slips on a more elaborate outer skirt because it's heavily warded.
- Gender-Inverted: Bob, the male Action Hero, tears off the hems of his overlong dress pants so he can fight the bad guys more easily.
- Subverted:
- Alice joins the fight without having to tear her Pimped-Out Dress. One of the perks of being a wizard, one supposes.
- Barbara thinks she's a good enough fighter to take on the bad guy despite wearing a long dress. She kicks his ass.
- Double Subverted:
- Thanks to her spellcasting abilities, Alice is able to immediately join the battle without having to damage her dress. However, she still finds it difficult to evade enemy attacks while wearing her dress. Her gown quickly gets snagged on Drake's sword, forcing her to tear it free.
- Except, because she finds it keeps getting in the way, she tears it off anyway mid-fight.
- Parodied:
- The Action Girls remove all their clothes to launch a Full-Frontal Assault at the slightest hint of danger.
- This has happened so often that the girls brought dresses with a detachable velcro skirt just in case.
- Barbra tears off the dress in preparation for danger... but then it turns out she misunderstood the situation and sheepishly reattaches it.
- Zig-Zagged: Emperor Evulz sics Drake, Violet, and his minions on the ball. Barbara immediately tears off her skirt and leaps into action. Alice, on the other hand, tries to avoid damaging her clothes by firing spells from a distance, but is eventually forced to rip part of it off to free herself, much to her dismay. Claudia dressed sensibly enough that she isn't hampered by her attire and doesn't have to tear it just so she can fight, and Maria somehow manages to avoid damaging her dress entirely.
- Averted:
- Barbara's clothes are enchanted so that she never has to damage them just to gain full mobility.
- Barbara is wearing a suit rather than a dress.
- Enforced: Fanservice.
- Lampshaded:
- "Another fight? At this rate, I'll have no nice dresses left."
- Barbara strangles one of the bad guys with the torn off part of her dress while screaming at them for ruining her social life.
- Invoked: "Why did you rip part of your dress off?" "That's what Action Girls always do."
- Exploited:
- Evulz deliberately attacks the heroines when they're wearing long dresses specifically so they can do this — it's a Fetish for him.
- Barbara uses the ripped-off strip of dress to wrap up an opponent's head, and then beat the stuffing out of him while he's distracted.
- Defied:
- "I'll be damned if I'm ripping up another dress, I'll fight as I am."
- Barbara wears a little black dress so she doesn't have to wreck her dress when the inevitable fight starts.
- Or "I don't care if it takes a few minutes and I have to fight in my [underwear/birthday suit], I paid a lot of money for this dress, and I'm not going to rip the skirt off or let baddies tear it up. I'm going to remove my dress completely and put it in a safe place, then go fight the bad guys."
- Barbara learned her lesson last time, and is wearing a suit.
- Discussed: "This is the part where an Action Girl would rip up her Pimped-Out Dress — but not all of us have an unlimited clothing budget."
- Conversed: "They always do that. Does it really make that much difference in a fight?"
- Deconstructed: Barbara tries to tear the dress, but it doesn't come away as easily as she thought and she gets tangled up in the fabric. Violet looks down at Barbara struggling on the floor and chops her head off.
- Reconstructed: Barbara struggles with tearing the dress at first, but despite being at an initial big disadvantage, ultimately points out that if she'd insisted on fighting on without getting rid of the hindrances, she'd be in an even worse mess due to tripping up on her own clothing.
- Implied: After the fight starts, a very ragged piece of the lower extreme of Barbara's dress is on the ground.
- Played for Laughs:
- One of Barbara's best friends is Taylor, who regularly repairs Clothing Damage for her and everyone else in the City of Adventure. Business is always brisk.
- Barbara rips off her dress, suddenly remembers she doesn't have anything underneath it, then sheepishly recovers and slinks away to a quiet corner to redress.
- Barbara tries to rip her dress, but it doesn't rip away too easily, requiring some time and effort to do so.
- Played for Drama: Barbara has been working tirelessly, to the point where her friends are starting to worry about her not having any downtime. So they convince her to attend a festival and just relax for a while. Barbara reluctantly agrees, but has difficulty letting her guard down and having a good time ... and just when it looks like she's starting to adjust, the party is disturbed. Her minor progress towards having a more normal life immediately falls by the wayside as she snaps back into action mode, ripping her dress so she can join the fray.
Back to Action Dress Rip.
