Redundant section i SweaterGirl description

I just noticed that the trope description for Sweater Girl contains a section which seems like an irrelevant tangent.

The background is that Sweater Girl is not "a girl who wears sweaters", it's a (very mild) fanservice trope about women wearing tight sweaters to show off their figure. This was discussed rather extensively quite a long time ago, when people were debating whether the trope was tropeworthy or desirable.

The section in question starts with:

"A special note as there are cultural differences: in Asian countries, school girls (and even boys) wear a sweater to cover up their developing figure..."

and goes on to say that, basically, that in some cultures women aren't shown wearing sweaters for fanservice, but because they wear them for other reasons.

But isn't this irrelevant and unnecessary? The trope is about women wearing sweaters to show off their figures. That many women (in our culture as well as the ones listed) wear sweaters for other reasons, or even to hide their figure, is PSOC, so we don't need a section listing such cases.

And we certainly don't need a disclaimer to say, basically, that sometimes the trope doesn't occur, and when it doesn't, it's not the trope (I know that sounds really redundant, but that's exactly my point).

So, can this section be cut?

Edited by GnomeTitan on Sep 15th 2020 at 3:27:27 PM

It looks like an attempt to say what the trope is not and got carried away.

It could be, and in that case it's unnecessary, since the first paragraph says that it's about sweaters worn as fanservice, and there's no need to point out that sweaters can be worn for other reasons.

But I read it more as someone thinking that the trope is about girls wearing sweaters in general, and then reacting to the fact that the article just talks about fanservice. But then it's based on a misunderstanding and should be removed for that reason.

My reason for posting here is to get a consensus approval to remove the offending section.

Edited by GnomeTitan on Sep 15th 2020 at 10:04:12 AM

I would agree that that paragraph is irrelevant. I also notice that the Anime and Manga section includes a bunch of examples that seem to be just "girl wears a sweater" which should probably be removed.

There was discussion elsewhere at some point about whether "wearing a baggy sweater to hide your figure due to insecurity or shyness" could be its own trope, but I don't think it went anywhere.

I could see it being relevant as a cultural counterpoint: noting the existence of a cultural environment in which sweater-wearing is used to an effect diametrically-opposite to the one recorded in the trope. That is, it's noting an environment in which not only is sweater-wearing (I would imagine) less likely to be sexualised, but in which the opposite is (I presume) likely.

As such, I'd say that it seems tangential, but not unrelated.

I see what you mean, but the question is whether it's relevant. Does a trope description really need tangential counterpoints like this?

It would be a different thing if the trope was omnipresent in Western media, that is if sweaters were always seen as sexy. Then it would be valuable to have a note that this isn't the case in other cultures. (A somewhat similar case to that is Black Bra and Panties, which are almost always sexualized in media; that trope description notes that in real life, black undergarments are worn for a variety of other reasons).

But I don't think that's the case here. Even in Western media, we have baggy sweaters worn to hide your body, and ratty sweaters that are more like a turn-off, and ugly Christmas sweaters worn for fun, and sweaters worn just to keep warm and comfy; and everybody knows that. So I still think it's redundant to pedantically note that it's different in other cultures, because it actually isn't that different.

That's a fair point. If it were to turn out that such use resulted in sweaters never being used for the purposes of sexualisation in the cultures in question, then it might be relevant (with that additional information), but without, it does seem pretty much like what we have in the West.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Sep 17th 2020 at 5:52:00 PM

Can you look into the history and see if the paragraph was added in response to misuse? Or if it was always there? If the "girl wears sweater" examples came after, then it isn't even working to discourage misuse.

Might tie into this thread that touched on broadening the scope of some tropes outside the West. As in that thread, I think that bit in the description should not be there without usage to justify it.

Edited since I misunderstood the previous post.

It seems that thread is about broadening culture-specific tropes to include what's basically the same trope, but set in a different culture. For example, there may be a Japanese-named anime trope that is the same as an English-named Hollywood trope.

But in this case, the person who added the section in questions seems to want to do the opposite: to narrow the trope to exclude non-Western sweater tropes. Which seems redundant - the trope is already narrowed down to exclude that.

Edited by GnomeTitan on Sep 17th 2020 at 9:39:42 PM

For some reason, the writer also seemed to think that wearing sweaters for reasons beside looking sexy is limited to Asian countries. I'm for culling misuse the omitting that paragraph. Maybe you can tally the misuse first if there's a petition to rename at TRS in the future.

Edited by Tabs on Sep 17th 2020 at 2:44:18 AM

Tabs: I looked in the edit history, and the section in question was added in June, 2014 by MythSearcher.

The TRS discussion about this trope was half a year earlier, in late 2013. That discussion was very extensive and ended in a consensus that the trope is a fanservice trope about tight sweaters, not any other kind of sweater wearing.

So MythSearcher's addition wasn't based on any earlier dissent on what the trope was; that was settled well before they made it. Instead, it seems to me that they either were being pedantic (and just formulated themselves a bit clumsily), or they weren't aware of the TRS discussion and were trying to unilaterally broaden the trope definition (which is not a kosher thing to do, of course).

Anwyay, the effect of their addition is that it appears to broaden the trope definition, and I guess that's what my main beef with it is.

If we can't get consensus to remove it, perhaps we can keep it as a footnote that sweaters can have other connotations, but rewrite it so it's clear that that's another trope.

Edited by GnomeTitan on Sep 18th 2020 at 10:15:03 AM

If not removed, I think condensing it to a line or two one what this trope is not is better than keeping a rambling paragraph.