Modesty Shorts

Perfect way to avoid being a Panty Fighter.

Hayate: Uh… well, that's okay, but isn't it kind of unseemly? I mean, a girl climbing up to such a high place while wearing a skirt?
Hinagiku: Oh, no problem. I'm wearing shorts underneath.

— Hayate the Combat Butler

Short skirts are feminine, sexy, and cool in the summertime. But, as any girl will tell you if you move too much, it's very hard to avoid creating Panty Shots while wearing one.

This is where Modesty Shorts come in. They let a girl run, jump, tumble, fight, climb ladders, or even fly without anyone catching a glimpse of her underwear. Other common variations are large puffy bloomers in non-period pieces which are used as a bit of a fancier version normally on more gothic characters. In Western works, spankies are worn for this purpose under cheerleading outfits, or sometimes tights or leggings.

This trope is common in anime, as School Uniforms are almost always extremely short. It is often worn by Kick Chicks, Cheerleaders, Action Girls, Tomboys or anyone else with an active lifestyle. It's also perfectly practical in real life.

Compare Proper Tights with a Skirt. May be combined with Zettai Ryouiki.

An alternative solution for this problem (in fiction, at least) is the Magic Skirt.

---

Examples:

Advertising

• In a commercial for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Marcy does a kick revealing that she wears shorts under her schoolgirl skirt.
• Hersey's Air Delites animated ad.
• A male version is found in this Lycos search engine ad here (It's in French with English Sub). A man in a kilt is having a hard time keeping his kilt down while playing the bagpipes. The dog in the commercial brings him some of these shorts so all is safe from being seen.

Anime & Manga

• Mikoto Misaka of the A Certain Magical Index franchise has this trope as her fashion calling card, much to Kuroko Shirai's dismay. Also, Shizuri Mugino does it once. Mikoto's clones wear striped panties instead, which often helps Touma determine when he's speaking with one of them, rather than with the original. Of course, he eventually realizes that trying to peek under a girl's skirt to determine her identity is... problematic, so he buys 10032 (the clone he usually meets) a cheap necklace instead.
• Sayuri of Asteroid in Love wears those when attempting to do reconnaissance on the Earth Sciences Club, mainly because it involves her suspending upside down to take covert photos at the clubroom.
• Bakemonogatari: Suruga Kanbaru wears this, in conjunction with her school uniform. Of course, it's left unclear whether or not she's actually wearing anything underneath them.
• Carla from Doraemon: Great Adventure in the Antarctic Kachi Kochi wears shorts and leggings underneath her skirt, which is appropriate attire for an Action Girl who gets into plenty of high-speed chase scenes, jumping across platforms, and mid-air battles on the Take-Copter.
• In episode five of Love Live! Sunshine!!, Riko is worried about the rather short skirts of their idol outfits. Chika tries to assure her by lifting up her own skirt to show off the shorts she's wearing underneath, to which Riko tells her to put it down.
  Chika (Dub): I got shorts!
  Riko: Stop it! Put your skirt down!
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Setsuna wears compression shorts under her skirt and has a bit of both shyness and tomboyish traits. Akamatsu did this to show that she was a less sexual character than the other girls. She later ditches these but wears long-boyish underwear instead.
  • Asuna dons in later chapters, too. Although in her case it's less about tomboyishness and more about not wanting to flash people whenever she fights in a miniskirt after a certain Going Commando incident in the Kyoto arc...
• Hayate the Combat Butler:
  • Katsura Hinagiku wears a skirt over her bicycle shorts.
  • Izumi also wears these in the first season of the anime for a quick joke/censorship reasons but in the manga, she is shown not to, at least on some occasions. She was wearing them when Hayate needed to use his special attack on Yukiji and feared the side effect would lift Izumi's skirt.
• In later chapters of Horimiya, the artist Daisuke Hagiwara gave female characters shorts under their short skirts so that they can sit in a feminine pose freely without being immodest.
• Satsuki Miyanoshita of Ghost Stories wears them in one episode, after getting tired of Hajime flipping her skirt and revealing her panties.
• Eureka of Eureka Seven wears a pair under her very short dress.
• Ai Nanasaki from Amagami SS wears her School Swimsuit under her clothes, leading Jun'ichi to think he got a view of her panties when... he didn't.
• Suzuna of Eyeshield 21 wears biker shorts under her cheer uniform. This is partially because she's the Token Mini-Moe of the cheerleading team and partially to reflect her Short Tank personality.
• A common Running Gag in How to Read Manga is "don't you dare wear bloomers/shorts": basically, a man gets so angry when the Panty Shot he anticipated is ruined by the girl in question wearing shorts or covering bloomers that he slaps her.
• Pokémon:
  • Crystal, when she's introduced in Pokémon Adventures, drops her skirt to take on some Slugma, revealing that she's wearing bike shorts underneath.
  • Also in Adventures: With all of Sapphire's impressive physical feats, it was really quite thoughtful of Ruby to make her bike shorts along with the skirt.
  • An episode of the anime where we see May changing into a swimsuit confirms that that strip of white cloth over her shorts is indeed a skirt, rather than an extension of her undershirt.
  • In all Pokémon X and Y-related media, Korrina, the Shalour City Gym Leader, is a lot more free to show off on her rollerblades knowing she has a pair of these.
• Kaname in an early chapter of Full Metal Panic! wears gym shorts under her skirt to prevent panty shots.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Vivian Wong does this in the 4kids dub—but ''not'' in the original.
• Wendy Garret of GUN×SWORD wears black bike shorts underneath her trademark yellow dress: probably a wise choice for someone who plans to hike across a whole continent in a short skirt.
• Bakuman。: In the Show Within a Show PCP, Annojo Mai has these. Mashiro and Takagi were very deliberate about this.
• A teacher in Urusei Yatsura gave Lum a pair of shorts to wear underneath her uniform after noticing that she was flashing other students as she flew around the school.
• The title character in Phantom Thief Jeanne wears these with her Magical Girl outfit in the second season. In the first season, her outfit had no shorts underneath and was more following the Magic Skirt example.
• Isanami from Brave10 wears cycling shorts under her miko open attire. In 1599.
• Fabiola Iglesias from Black Lagoon wears black shorts under her full length skirt. And she does still need them when she busts out her capoeira moves.
• Plotpoint in Ultimate Teacher where the resident Cute Bruiser Hinako can only fight when she's wearing Lucky Kitty bloomers, a brand that she's worn constantly since childhood so that she could fight without getting teased about showing her panties.
• The extras in one volume of Fruits Basket examined the school uniforms. It notes that if your skirt is as short as Tohru's, it's a good idea to wear shorts underneath.
• Arisa Bannings' battle outfit in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT, which is a pink Mini Dress Of Power and jacket combo worn over a pair of cycling shorts.
• In All Rounder Meguru Kamiya explains that everyone wears gym shorts under skirts these days. Cue Big "NO!" from two upperclassmen.
  "What's with them?"
  "That's the sound of their lecherous dreams being shattered..."
• Himouto! Umaru-chan: The shorts Umaru wears when at home are actually these.
• Kiki's Delivery Service uses the bloomers variety to avoid inappropriate upskirt shots of the often-flying heroine.
• In episode 9 of Tokyo Mew Mew, Bu Ling is shown to wear her regular clothes, shorts and all, under her maid uniform.
• Kodocha's Sana Kurata is revealed to be wearing a pair when her school's gang of bullies shred her skirt with box cutters.
• Variable Geo: Jun wears a black pair of bike shorts with her waitress uniform. Which prevents any peeks up her skirt during her high flying specials, like her signature finish: the "Kubota Special".
• Bleach: During Renji's flashback to how he and Rukia met, he is wearing a very short kosode, but clearly visible underneath are the skin-tight shorts he's wearing, which come further down his legs than his kosode does.
• In the manga version of Azumanga Daioh, the girls hang Chiyo upside down from a window as a good-weather charm. She's wearing shorts under her skirt.
• Kashima, the resident Bifauxnen of Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, is shown to wear shorts under her uniform's skirt in her official profile.
• Sakura from Naruto wears a pair of bike shorts under her dress. Ino is shown to use bandages for the same purpose when first introduced.
• Some of Sakura's outfits in Cardcaptor Sakura involve these.
• Transgender Aoi Futaba of You're Under Arrest! wears biking shorts under her skirt.
• Action Girl Benio of Twin Star Exorcists sports a pair. In one episode of the anime adaptation, she goes without because they're being washed. Of course, that winds up being the day that she's forced into taking part in what amounts to indoor parkour with Rokuro as part of a test of their ability to work together. He quickly agrees to forget that he saw anything.
• All of the titular team of Smile Pretty Cure! wear biker shorts under their skirts.
  • They're worn by other Cures, too, such as Cure Black.
• The title character from Tomo-chan Is a Girl! wears shorts under her skirt because she's active (not to mention a Kick Chick); on top of that, she wears a fairly short skirt with her school uniform because it's easier to move around in. In one story arc, her friend Misuzu forces her to lose the shorts in an attempt to draw the attention of her best friend Junichiro. Naturally, Finagle's Law is in full effect, and a stray gust of wind gives Jun a good look at Tomo's panties.
• Mina Ashido from My Hero Academia is stated to wear shorts under her skirt, presumably to facilitate her hobby of dancing. Resident perv Mineta notices when she does some breakdancing.
  Mineta: What's the point of a skirt if you're just gonna wear shorts underneath?!
• Natsuki Kuga from My-HiME, after the skirt-blowing, panty-less incident.
• In Dragon Ball, Videl's shirt/singlet in her first and second outfits are so large that they come down to short skirt level, meaning that her tights effectively act as this.
• Teasing Master Takagi-san: In one scene where Nishikata challenges Takagi to do a flip over the bars at the playground, she asks him to turn around while she does it because she's wearing a skirt. He peeks at her anyway to make sure she isn't cheating, and, naturally, she's wearing shorts underneath.
• My Dress-Up Darling: When Marin goes to her first cosplay outdoor event, she wears a pair of black shorts under her skirt, as per the event's rules. There are even signs all over advising the cosplayers to do exactly that.
• Seitokai Yakuindomo prefers not to use Panty Shots so any gag that would otherwise result in one gives the character shorts. Which makes sense for someone like Mitsuba, but it's a little strange to see Aria don them while held upside-down in handcuffs, considering she normally wears far less than that.

Asian Animation

• In Happy Heroes, from Season 10 onwards, Sweet S.'s outfit is changed into a dress, and she is seen wearing shorts under her skirt in some shots.

Comic Books

• Added to Supergirl's costume from late 2009 until her costume change for the New 52 reboot. According to the artist Jamal Igle, “At the first meeting I had with [Matt Idleson, the editor] after I got the book, he said, ‘I never want to see Supergirl’s panties again'."
• The original Golden Age Wonder Woman wore flowing culottes. So, in The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016), apparently owing to the common misconception that those culottes were a skirt, Wonder Woman wears a skirt over a pair of shorts which match her top.

Fan Works

• Lampshaded in SOS Pretty Cure after Haruhi takes down some bullies. They express disappointment at not seeing her underwear, and she flips her skirt deliberately to show them her bike shorts just to add insult to injury as she remarks, "Sorry to disappoint."
• Cure Dragon wears this in Futari wa Pretty Cure Dragon; Rica Watson also wears this with her school uniform.
• In the semi-genderbent Sword Art Online story, The Kirita Chronicles, Kirigaya Kazuta wears shorts underneath her skirt in the real world prior to the beginning of the Death Game.
• The over-the-knee bloomers make frequent appearances in SFW Touhou Project doujins, particularly action-oriented ones with lots of movement. They fit right in with the outfits most characters wear.

Films — Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Passionate Sports Girl Rainbow Dash (the human version) wears compression shorts under her skirt, as does human Diamond Tiara.
• Alice in Wonderland: Alice wears knee-length pantalettes under her dress. It proves handy owing to changing sizes a lot as well as unintentionally exposing them to the viewers at times.
• Encanto has the majority of the women of the Madrigal family wear knee length bloomers under their skirts that prevent any exposure during vigorous dancing, such as by Mirabel in the opening number. Possibly averted by Isabela, because she alone gets a Magic Skirt.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Peni Parker wears shorts underneath her school uniform, which is handy when she shows off some of her more athletic moves.

Films — Live-Action

• In Resident Evil (2002), Alice wears black shorts underneath her red dress.
• In A League of Their Own the female baseball players uniform includes skirts and shorts. This was actually the case in the Real Life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League upon which the film is based. The players originally wanted to wear slacks, as they had always done when playing baseball. They are at first horrified and disgusted to find that their uniforms will include skirts, with the catcher muttering: "I have to squat in that thing."
• In It (2017) Beverly wears knee-length tights under her dress.
• In The Poseidon Adventure, all of the women except Stella Stevens were wearing shorts under their evening gowns, for some reason.
• Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill.
• In the Live-Action Remake of Blood: The Last Vampire Saya wears shorts under her already long skirt to avoid Fanservice. This is in tone with the original film, where Panty Shots are averted.
• Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell in Hook. Having a live actress wearing Tink's getup from the Disney movie likely wouldn't have worked out.

Live-Action TV

• Arrested Development: Tobias Fünke always wears a pair of cutoff jeans underneath his clothes (or even in the shower), due to being a self-diagnosed "Never-Nude".
• Firefly: River wears black bike shorts under her dresses. There's a couple times where she skips the skirt part and just wears the shorts with a top, as well.
• Highlander's Duncan MacLeod is a rare male example: In flashbacks to his long-ago youth in Scotland, Duncan inevitably wears biker shorts under his kilt, often visible in action scenes.
• See a female in a skirt on Power Rangers? There's a really good chance that they have either black or Ranger colored shorts on underneath.
  • Kimberly wears a leotard under pretty much every single outfit from the first season and a half. Even if she's not actually wearing a dress! Around late-season two she switched to skorts, which give the same effect.
  • Ashley from Power Rangers Turbo and Power Rangers in Space wears black/yellow shorts that extend past the hem of her tiny miniskirts pretty much whenever she moves. Especially in the latter season.
  • Tori from Power Rangers Ninja Storm goes the extra step of wearing shorts while morphed. However, in comparison to other female Rangers with contrasting leggings in the franchise, it actually gives the allusion of a Panty Shot rather than actual modesty shorts.
• While Super Sentai typically loves the Magic Skirt trope, there are some exceptions.
  • Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger: Umeko and Jasmine even went as far as to wear shorts under a Qipao.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: Ahim, being a Pretty Princess Powerhouse, wears shorts that match her dress.
  • The note for Tori from Power Rangers Ninja Storm applies to her counterpart Nanami in Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger. It's not apparent as often as in Ninja Storm, but the Modesty Short/Panty Shot was definitely brought over from Japan.
  • Ninja Sentai Kakuranger has a rare male example in Sasuke, whose jean shorts are so tattered that they look almost like a very risque skirt, and so he wears bike shorts underneath.
• Austin & Ally has Ally wearing short dresses in almost every episode, and she usually has black shorts on if she does something that flips her dress up. It's usually just a shadow since it IS a Disney show.
• Shake it Up had Rocky wear this at least once. She wore biker shorts during a spotlight dance, and for good reason, since the skirt spent almost as much time up as it did down.
• That's Just Me had an episode where Elizabeth wears a jumper-dress to gym class because it's the last week of school and they won't be doing anything. Her mom doubts this, however, and makes her put gym shorts on under it.
  • In the first episode of the sixth season, ''Do I HAVE to Go to High School?!', she's been told her class will be active, so instead of dressing nicely but casually, she shows up in a super fancy 50's style outfit with shorts under the skirt. The activity was later revealed to be dancing, so she never needed shorts, but her feet hurt from her diamond flipflops.
• Friends: When Rachel is trying to impress a guy, she puts on her old high school cheerleader uniform. When she turns a cartwheel, we see she's wearing shorts.

Music Videos

• The "Caramella Girls" are shown wearing compression shorts under their short skirts while they're dancing the Caramelldansen.
• Kpop idols wear safety shorts under their skirts and dress and be seen in music videos while dancing and twirling like in f(x)'s "Electric Shock" and "Rum Pum Pum Pum" as well as Girls' Generation's "Visual Dream".

Pro Wrestling

• These kind of shorts were Macaela Mercedes's backup when she was placed in an evening gown match, in case she lost(she did at least once to The Diva).
• Daizee Haze's most common ring gear basically is modesty shorts with a really tiny skirt. Ditto her protege Veda Scott.
• Black Rose and her protege Red Velvett have "shorts" considerably longer than the "skirts" on top of them.
• Common attire in Irish Whip Wrestling and especially necessary for Tara Doyle, whose skirts have sometimes detached under the strain of her intense technical mat work.
• Rebecca Knox didn't wrestle for Irish Whip, but brought the skirted wrestler look to the neighboring IPW: UK while also serving as what she called "A jigging leprechaun". Ironically she did once give the viewers a panty shot from the top when her skirt slid down, but otherwise the modesty shorts served their purpose.

Sports

• Buffalo Bell, the main mascot of the Orix Buffaloes baseball team, wears bloomers under her skirt.

Video Games

• Persona:
  • Persona 4: Chie wears compression shorts under her uniform skirt, perfectly justifiable her being the Kick Chick of the team.
  • In Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight and Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, to avoid any Panty Shots during their dance, the girls wear shorts underneath their skirts.
• Lightning in Final Fantasy XIII and Serah Farron in Final Fantasy XIII-2 both wear black bike shorts under their miniskirts.
• Tifa in Final Fantasy VII Remake has a visible pair of black shorts under her skirt, perfectly fine considering the embarrassment Tifa went through when ascending the Absurdly Long Stairway at Shrina HQ with her mini skirt in the original game. It’s also more sensible compared to Dissidia Final Fantasy where getting a Panty Shot while playing as Tifa is unavoidable. Remake Tifa even has a Modesty Bra under her top in this version as well.
• Lucca from Chrono Trigger, has shorts underneath her skirt in the official artwork. In game is a mystery.
• Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth with Kay Faraday — official artwork shows that she is wearing a pair of shorts under her skirt.
• Bloomers are prevalent in Touhou Project fanart due to the Lolita-style outfits and highly-acrobatic depiction of the game's Bullet Hell fighting. Also canonical for at least some of the characters in the spin-off fighting games.
• Street Fighter:
  • Sakura Kasugano wears her gym shorts underneath her uniform. Though given how short they are, the effect is mostly lost on most western gamers.
  • Street Fighter Alpha 3: Karin Kanzuki wears a red schoolgirl outfit over her biker shorts.
  • Super Street Fighter IV: Ibuki and Makoto's alternate outfits are their school uniforms, with bike shorts under their skirts. For Street Fighter V, Ibuki's default outfit is more like Sakura's in that she's wearing dark gym shorts, not biking shorts, which show off more of her upper thigh.
    • Ibuki does go back to this in some outfits such as her Story and 30th Anniversary outfits wearing shorts under the skirts but averts it with some outfits such as her Battle Outfit that have full-blown panties.
• Aika from Skies of Arcadia wears black shorts under her mini.
• Ling Xiaoyu◊ from Tekken commonly wears a qipao with shorts underneath; if not for these, she'd be bare all the way from the hips downward. And for extra modesty points, when wearing her bonus schoolgirl uniform in Tekken 3, one of her victory poses ^note  where she does the splits during a handstand is disabled to prevent her from blatantly flashing her panties.
• In a male example, classic depictions of Castlevania's Simon Belmont had him wearing small shorts under the "skirt" plates of his armor.
• In Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Lady is wearing some short black leggings◊ under her "ammo skirt". Probably very wise with all the acrobatic flipping she does and especially when Handsome Lech Dante is holding her upside down by one leg during a cutscene.
• Kid Icarus' Pit's redesign used in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Kid Icarus: Uprising features black shorts under his toga (smart move, with all the flying around he does).
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • After fighting with her bare legs under her dress in Melee, Zelda was given a set of leggings under it from Brawl onwards.
  • Peach wears large puffy bloomers under her dress in Melee and Brawl. In the fourth game, this was changed to a black void past her lower legs.
  • Palutena wears them too. In version 1.0.6 of the Japanese version, they got even more modest.
• Touken Ranbu: Kokindenju-no-Tachi as a male example: he wears what seems to be a Sailor Fuku with a very long tapered skirt, but with the problem that it's slit up to his hip. Because of this, he wears a pair of shorts underneath, which when coupled with the slit skirt still do a good job of accentuating his shapely, tattooed legs.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Most of Link's incarnations have given him either a set of green shorts or, more commonly after the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a set of tights under his tunic.
  • In Hyrule Warriors, where Zelda takes the role of a fighter, she dons modesty shorts. A smart choice, given that her outfit is open in the front, kind of like a Showgirl Skirt.
  • Linkle, Link's Distaff Counterpart from the same game as above, wears shorts underneath her skirt.
• Almost all of the Cartoon Doll Emporoium dress-up dolls, since they're made for kids, will have shorts when you strip them instead of normal panties, although while a few games have normal panties, they are usually black. The Dress Up Dream dolls, which usually share ties with CDE, do this same thing.
• Unless they are wearing a full-body costume, female Miis in Mario Tennis Open wear shorts under their skirts.
• Played with by Kick Chick Serina Leaf of Conception 2: Children Of The Seven Stars, as her skirt is so frilly on the underside that it's impossible to see above her knees. Illustrated perfectly in her official art, which is an upskirt shot.
• ARMS has the singing Ribbon Girl, who wears compression shorts under her skirt.
• Splatoon:
  • In the first game, the playable Inklings always keep shorts on regardless of what outfit they're wearing, making them work like this for outfits with skirts such as the female variations of the school uniform and the Squid Girl tunic.
  • Marie of the Squid Sisters wears a pair of black shorts under her dress and over her leggings.
  • Splatoon 2, when expanding options for pants, has a miniskirt over the usual bike shorts as one of the options.
• Tales of Xillia's Leia has a school uniform DLC outfit that leaves her with a short, plaid miniskirt. It's difficult to see, but if she's wearing it during her introduction scene, the player can see that she's wearing a pair of black shorts underneath.
• In The Wonderful 101, minor members Wonder-Tennis and Wonder-Cheerleader both wear black shorts under the skirt-portions of their CENTINEL suits, with the latter having tights on as well. In Wonder-Cheerleader's case, her "pose"^note The stance a character takes on the gallery when found as a new permanent member to the team, or as figures has her giving a high kick facing the screen that would have completely exposed her if not for the shorts. Both members still lose the shorts along with their suits when knocked out, as all members of the team get knocked out of their suits.
• Ajna of Indivisible has a skirt that she can hike up to allow her to move easier and black shorts under it.
• Elise from Fire Emblem Fates wears black short shorts under her hoop miniskirt. This also makes sense, considering she rides a horse into battle.
• In the Dragon Ball Xenoverse games, all skirts have either biker shorts or tights underneath them. There's also a few cases of Modesty Bras: Tops that expose male characters' bare chests (like Beerus' clothing or Gogeta's vest) can be worn by females, in which case they wear the default tube-top bra underneath it.
• When D.Va in Overwatch got a skin that has a proper skirt (essentially a Korean Hanbok, albeit much shorter than usual) in the Lunar New Year event, she had a pair of white biker shorts added underneath.
• Bridget from Guilty Gear wears these, though she still holds down her skirt after jumping and in one of her winning poses one of her yoyos accidentally gets caught in the dress and shows the shorts are rather form-fitting around her buttocks, much to her chagrin. It should also be noted that Bridget used to identify as male until -STRIVE-.
• God Eater series: A few mini shorts underneath skirts are available for the female player character as a clothing option.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Fiora wears a white pair of these under her original miniskirt. Unequipping the latter will also remove the former, as they come bundled together.
• Senran Kagura: Miyabi wears shorts under the skirt of her school uniform.
• Dead Space: Lexine in Extraction is an unusual case of wearing a skirt over a skin-tight bodysuit. The Male Gaze moments with her make it clear just how short the skirt is and still imply fan service.
• Idol Manager such shorts come up as a potential choice for the performance outfits of the idols. There are in fact two "short skirt" options: one with shorts and one without them.

Web Animation

• hololive initially didn't have their girls wearing these in its Live 3D streams, but as more and more of them got into trouble with YouTube's content policies, all of the girls that wear dresses and skirts for the Live 3D streams now have black shorts under them just to be safe.
• RWBY:
  • Neon wears a thin blue top with spaghetti straps and which exposes the midriff, as well as a tiny pink micro-skirt. However, despite all the skin that she exposes, she wears purple hot-pants underneath her skirt, which ensures no further exposure occurs during battle.
  • Raven wears an extremely short, pleated micro-skirt that looks like gym-wear. Underneath the skirt, she wears a pair of black hot-pants that only occasionally becomes visible when she's moving during low camera angles. As a result, even when she's fighting or the camera is angled upwards from the ground, there's no danger of anything being revealed.
  • In Volume 7, Ruby obtains a new outfit that includes a dark red pleated mini-skirt split on the side and a pair of red shorts underneath.

Webcomics

• In Rusty and Co., Madeline is sensibly wearing (anachronistic) biker shorts under her leather skirt in her first appearance. (In the second, she's wearing winter clothes, making the matter moot.)
• A Dumbing of Age story has Joyce go on a date with Joe and wear a rather fetching yellow dress. After the date goes south, Joyce goes home and changes, revealing that she had pajama shorts underneath the whole time.
• According to Word of God in the commentary of this El Goonish Shive strip, Elliot's Cheerleadra form wears these. This was mentioned due to reader response to the previous comic where it very much looked like Mr. Tensaided got a bit of an eyeful as Elliot flew away.
• Sleepless Domain: In Q&A Time!, some of the cast members are asked questions. When Transgender Magical Girl Zoe is asked how she's adjusting, she notes that she had never worn skirts, like those in her school uniform, before being out as a girl. As a result, she's unused to them and wears shorts under hers. At that admission, Heartful Punch and Outrageous Apple, a pair of more Tomboyish Magical Girls appear. HP is surprised to learn other girls don't wear shorts under their skirts, while Apple dismisses those girls as fools, as one's clothing should always be prepared to do sick skateboard tricks.

Web Original

• Called "activity shorts" by Cat Davis from Cat on the Prowl.
• Weird school rules in Hong Kong: Defied at at least one school in Hong Kong, apparently, as Episode 6 cites a YouTube comment on how a student had to have a parent's letter to wear them under their uniform. Episode 17 then has a female student recall her (female) teacher telling her to lift her skirt so she could check whether she was wearing Modesty Shorts or not, and explain to her male classmate the reason behind this rule was apparently because the school considered wearing them to be an "unrefined" and "crude/boorish" practice.
• In Worm, Glory Girl's superhero costume (a white dress with cape, boots, and tiara) includes a pair of these.

Western Animation

• On Recess, Upside-Down Girl wears shorts under her jumper to avoid any panty shots when she's hanging from the monkey bars.
• Subverted a couple of times on King of the Hill:
  • Hank sees Luanne wearing an oversized T-shirt and apparently nothing else. When he asks her to Please Put Some Clothes On, she raises her arms to reveal "I'm wearing shorts." Hank is disturbed by just how scanty the shorts are.
  • Another subversion occurs moments later when Bobby enters the kitchen wearing an oversized shirt of his own. Without lifting its hem, he removes the underwear he has on underneath it and puts on another pair fresh from the laundry, eliciting the following response:
    Hank: Six A.M. and already the boy ain't right.
• The Winx in Winx Club wear shorts under their skirts (most often seen with Bloom and Flora), averting a few panty shots in the series.
• Twilight Sparkle, in her ballerina form, in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "A Royal Problem". Though it isn't really necessary for the ponies to wear anything under their skirts, seeing as how they usually wear nothing at all.
• The bunny twins from Kaeloo wear black shorts under their skirts.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: In this reboot, She-Ra's costume has shorts under the skirt.
• Elspeth from The Family-Ness wears red shorts with matching vest beneath her pleated skirt.
• K.C. the koala from T.O.T.S. wears white shorts under her skirt.

Real Life

• The dreaded gym knickers. Old-fashioned (still current into this millennium in some private schools) British school uniforms kept girls in short, pleated skirts for sports. For modesty, there were matching bloomers which you wore over your normal cotton knickers, in the same heavy fabric as the skirts. They were as sweaty and abrasive as they sound, and you still ended up with muscle injuries from bare legs in freezing temperatures.
• Though many think of them today as comically outdated women's underwear, over-the-knee bloomers were actually thought of as modesty shorts when they were introduced; they were mainly used by women riding bicycles in long dresses.
• Skorts are skirts with integral shorts underneath. They are commonly worn by athletes in some professional sports (such as golf, tennis, hockey, etc.) and for school athletic kits.
• Some Catholic and Christian schools make girls wear modesty shorts under their skirts as part of their regular uniform, though usually just in the primary grades. However, many students continue to do this into secondary school of their own choice for comfort and convenience.
• This is becoming a touch more common in recent years; the increasing commonality of women wearing more masculine clothing has made getting decently-fitting undershorts easier.
• Many families with young girls have them wear shorts under their dresses or skirts after they've been potty trained. This way the girls can still be active while wearing a dress, and it's simply easier than trying to make a 3-5-year-old sit cross-legged for extended periods of time.
• Despite what anime and manga might lead one to believe, this is actually pretty common in Japan, especially in elementary and junior high schools. While modesty is part of it, so is practicality — students typically have to wear their gym clothes several times a day (PE class, art class, daily cleaning, after-school sports, etc.) — and it's easiest for everyone to just wear their gym shorts under their regular uniforms so they can change back and forth quickly.

---