To-do list:
- Disambiguate between Most Common Superpower, Buxom Beauty Standard, Heroic Build, Fanservice, and possibly other tropes.
That is not how people use the trope. Here is a wick check I did
.
- Correct usage: 18/52 (and some of those are being charitable)
- Action girl has breasts: 26/52
- Woman has breasts: 2/52
- Unclear: 8/52
So we see that not only is the trope misused over half the time, at least half the misuse is just noting that women in action series have visible bosoms, which is not tropeable.
I suspect the trope as defined is valid; the issue seems to be the name. It sounds like it's the female counterpart to Balls of Steel, when in fact it's completely unrelated.
So I propose a rename to something clearer. Best Battler Has Biggest Breasts or something, but less clunky.
I'd like to page ~lexii, who started the thread that got me to finally make this proposal.
Wick check:
Wick check for Boobs Of Steel.
52 wicks were checked. Fractions add up to a little over 1 because in a couple of cases there were multiple examples on a page.
A few of the examples listed here as valid are ambiguous, and I made a judgement call as I'm not familiar with most of these.
- Boobs of Steel: It comes with the build. She well endowed, and has shown hints of being able to fight.
Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General (Note: The first subbullet is incorrect but the second one is accurate, so I'm going to list this under correct usage)
- Boobs Of Steel:
- Impact has a decently big chest, being slightly smaller than the General, which does well to signify that despite being strong enough to be one of the Top 4 Heroes, her debilitatingly massive appetite, which causes her to lose her strength if she misses a meal, prevents her from being as effective a powerhouse as she could be.
- Mother Justice has the absolute largest chest among the entire female cast, visibly beating out the General by 1-2 cup sizes, and she is far and away the strongest hero in the story, to the point that she's The Dreaded for the next 3 strongest heroes.
- Boobs Of Steel: The strongest fighter in the first half of the game next to Yuri, and even at the end, she and Keith are the strongest. And of course, she's far more buxom than Alice.
Characters/Shadowverse
- Boobs Of Steel: Magic variation, she has the largest breast size when compared to the other female characters.
- Boobs Of Steel: One of the few female Battleborns whose methods of attack are dedicated to melee, comprised with stats to compensate the inability to block direct attacks or hide behind the frontlines while having a bust that is easily recognizable to her outfit compared to the other well-dressed femme fatales.
- Boobs Of Steel: She has G-cups and is the tankiest of the bunch.
- Boobs Of Steel: She’s one of the more powerful characters. Needless to say, she has the largest chest in the series.
- Betty and Veronica: Sasuke was the Archie to Sakura's coy and smitten Betty and Naruko's Tomboyish and feisty Veronica. What draws the parrellel more is that Sakura is more book smart and intelligent while Naruko shines in the muscle and jutsu department. As time goes on, Sakura becomes stronger and Naruko becomes smarter. Plus, the size of their busts are very different as Sakura is very sensitive about her lack of growth and Naruko has the size comparable to her tomboyish attitude.
- Evil Is Sexy:
- Balalaika is hot. Revy is hot. Shenhua is hot. Eda is hot. Roberta is hot. All of the main female characters are, to some degree, evil (as is everybody else in this series). And they are hot.
- And the men aren't? Mr. Chang is hot. Rock is hot. Dutch is hot. Benny is hot. Villainy apparently makes for very sexy bodies.
- Boobs Of Steel: She has at least a D-cup, can easily dish out the most damage in combat
Earth Twenty Seven The Justice League
- Boobs Of Steel: As you may have noticed, Karen is rather buxom. And being a Kryptonian she's one of the strongest heroes DC has to offer.
Fire Emblem - Recurring Characters
- Boobs Of Steel: Called "The Voice", the daughter of Naga the Divine Dragon, and extremely powerful and long-lived in her own right. AND by the time she reappears in Awakening as an adult, she's among the bustiest of the cast, perhaps only behind Aversa and Tharja. Even further hammered home when she appears in a bikini as part of Heroes' "Ylissean Summer" Banner - without the dress to cover them up, it's clear she's buxom enough to give Camilla a run for her money. As icing on the cake, Female Robin, who is also revealed to be fairly well-endowed in the same Banner, is decisively smaller in comparison to Tiki when looking at both in swimwear side-by-side.
Punishing: Gray Raven - Playable Constructs
- Boobs Of Steel: Has the largest bust thus far, and is a very physical fighter who uses a very large weapon.
Dragon Age: Inquisition – The Inquisitor
- Boobs Of Steel: In addition to being the most physically imposing, a female Qunari inquisitor is bustier than human, elf, or dwarf inquisitors.
- Boobs Of Steel: Fitting for the ultimate knight.
Unbreakable Red Silken Thread Secondary Characters
- Boobs Of Steel: She has these just like in cannon, in chapter 11 she confirms they're a Double D 42. She is also probably the strongest character in the entire story so far.
- Boobs Of Steel: She's definitely stacked, and she's strong enough to throw a Terran Marine in full power armor over her shoulder.
- Boobs Of Steel: It's Wonder Woman; this is a given.
Skeleton Knight in Another World
- Boobs Of Steel: She's one of the deadliest Dark Elves and is quite stacked.
- Boobs Of Steel: Downplayed. Ronka's got some curves, but they haven't been given much focus yet.
- Boobs Of Steel: Both Maya and Kilmaria are well-endowed women who are the two most powerful beings in the fantasy world.
- Boobs Of Steel: Well endowed and the sturdiest tank in the game.
- Muramasa: The Demon Blade gives the Tiny Guy, Huge Girl couple of Fuujin and Raijin. Raijin is a visibly and hugely muscular woman (seriously, she'd put any and all female bodybuilders to shame) about 3.5 times larger than the player with little in terms of clothing, a large chest, and monstrous thighs (think "tree trunk-sized") that'd make Chun-Li look like a twig. She's still very beautiful, especially when her "dere" side finally comes to the surface. Fuujin, by contrast, is a very mellow, very adorable little imp, usually calming down the thunder goddess in her less rational moments. He also states (in the original Japanese version and in the Aksys retranslation) that he loves her fat ass.
- Boobs Of Steel: Even as the other players do get stronger, Ouka is the only main team member (aka not Balmung) to be able to take an enemy down in one hit. Hell, her first scene in human form is beating the crap out of a data-bugged skeleton with her fists, something that gave everyone else trouble. Of course, that also falls into Rule of Funny whether or not she's able to.
Video Game/Drakensang
- Boobs Of Steel:
- An Amazon character may become this, if you choose the right body type.
- in TRoT Eilif Thunderfist, who also doubles as Large and in Charge.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: The duo Asra line, Ninja and Archer (especially Archer), for two big reasons. They're the ones with the most variations and re-releases.
- Bullet also strongly resembles Angel in, eh... build, hair colour, dress sense and fighting style, though their personalities couldn't be further from each other.
- Boobs Of Steel: Leigh and Mai Giru, who Naruko nicknames 'Busty boobs' and 'Super-busty-boobs-sensei' because of this.
- Boobs Of Steel: Clarissa's core cadre of assassins is all women with sizable busts, including Zaki.
- Boobs Of Steel: She's quiet busty and once even killed a crocodile.
Incredibles 2 (Helen might be a valid example, but the example as written takes the trope to mean "big breasts" rather than "bigger than the other action girls")
- Fanservice Pack: Helen was redesigned to be more buxom and toned, and Violet has slightly wider hips than in the first movie. Violet and Tony also received upgraded designs, the former also having longer hair.
High School D×D: SLASHDØG (one or the other might be a valid example, but they can't both be). [[quoteblock]]
- Boobs Of Steel: The Harem King Memorial artbook listed her boobs size at 100 cm, surpassing the likes of Rias.
- Boobs Of Steel: As the head of the Himejima family she is a powerful mystic with an immense purification ability. She also ties with her cousin as having the biggest recorded breasts in the series at 102cm.
- Boobs Of Steel: Every female hero in the game have sizable busts, and all are badasses.
Black Widow [[quoteblock]]
- Boobs Of Steel: She quite well endowed and is a deadly physical fighter.
Manga/Freezing [[quoteblock]]
- Boobs Of Steel: Generally prevalent among the stronger and strongest cast members, particularly Satellizer and later, Cassandra, but some characters such as Charles Bonaparte are extremely skilled and very petite in build.
Punishing: Gray Raven - Playable Constructs
- Boobs Of Steel: She's typically not this as she's a long-ranged fighter, but her Abystigma frame puts her into this category by both making her an incredibly powerful melee combatant and most overtly showing off her ample bust.
- Boobs Of Steel: Susuki is quite stacked and kicks plenty of ass.
- Boobs Of Steel: Lt. James has an incredible rack and is the only female character to have engaged extensively in combat. She's good at it, including hand-to-hand — reference the brutal butt-stroke she deals out in "Divided" and when she "kills" Scott at the beginning of "Pain".
Azur Lane Sakura Empire Battlecruisers And Battleships
- Boobs Of Steel: Has a quite sizable rack, and she's one of the strongest Sakura Empire battleships.
Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA
- Angelica, full goddamn stop. The fans are already clamoring for her when she first appeared with her awesome Gilgamesh Install, and her following appearances gave her plenty of time to shine, what with The Reveal about this series' background and her awesome fight vs. Kuro and Miyu's brother. After her Heel–Face Turn, she's become even more popular as the fans jokingly said that she embodied "the perfect heroine for TYPE-MOON", with her combining traits of all three of Stay Nights heroines (blonde hair, Girlish Pigtails, big boobs', stoic yet honorable nature, and older sister-like personality).
- Boobs Of Steel: Yang and Ceres have the largest busts and the hardest punches.
Wanna Be the Strongest in the World!
- Boobs Of Steel: Tons. It's justified since many of the female characters are wrestlers.
- Boobs Of Steel: Is very well endowed and since she wears Sarashi, it shows.
- Boobs Of Steel: She's quite fit and very well endowed. Her large chest somehow doesn't affect her running. Anna is confused by this, and how she got them.
- Boobs Of Steel: She's one of the bustier girls of the main cast, and she's no slouch in the physical strength department, either, as her Action Girl entry shows.
- Boobs Of Steel: Tang Xuan supposedly has the largest chest of the main characters, and she's also a very tough tomboy.
- Boobs Of Steel: Awesome Girl is a very tough Flying Brick with a very large bust to match.
- Boobs Of Steel: Hanzo.
Fabricant 100 [[quoteblock]]
- Boobs Of Steel: One of No. 100's clear characteristics beside her strength is her very large breasts size.
- Boobs Of Steel: She has one of the largest busts among the characters and is one of the three leaders of her biker gang.
Survival in Another World with My Mistress! [[quoteblock]]
- Boobs Of Steel: Sylphy is quite stacked, and one of the most lethal ground combatants in the series.
- Boobs Of Steel: Zig-zagged. Ayame is the bustiest character (so far) but is below a less-endowed Yarizui in terms of fighting capability, but Matsy used to be the "Monarch Butterfly", the strongest Wolf in the east, and she's bustier (even back then) than Yarizui is.
- In Naruto the Movie: Road to Ninja Shizune has huge breasts that she notably lacks in the regular universe, meanwhile Tsunade (Boobs Of Steel incarnate) ironically inverts this, since she is flat chested here.
- Kirze from King's Raid is a Cat hybrid with Boobs Of Steel and Hartman Hips, has cat-like mannerisms when you speak to her in the inn and her trascendence animations, and her default outfit is a corset with a transparent short Showgirl Skirt and high boots.
Conclusion: Fully half of the examples are cases of people thinking the trope is simply about action girls with visible bosoms, and that's not even all of it.
I suspect the issue is the name. It sounds like the female counterpart of Balls of Steel, but is a completely unrelated trope.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 10th 2023 at 6:11:56 AM
low-poly Shinri
Along with the possible disambiguation option, Yindee’s suggestion also looks good.
While I’m at, I found some inversions that I’m unsure count as misuse or not (note that they are in regards to magic powerhouses that physical ones):
- Cold Steel I and II invert this for the students of Old Class VII, as Emma has the biggest chest, but is a magic powerhouse instead of a physical one.
- Agnes from Kuro is another inversion, being a healer and magic-user whose chest looks even bigger than those her fellow female party members.
Hmm. I don't know about those examples. A true inversion would be if, the flatter a woman is, the more strength she has.
the Retromancer
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
These don't sound like inversions. They don't even sound like examples.
Calendar enthusiast
After sleeping on it, I've come around to the view that this isn't really a trope, it's just something that sometimes happens.
Ukrainian Red Cross
Back in 2010 the description was much, much longer. Here it is, for reference. Most of the points were possible explanations for this trend, and some were moved to the analysis subpage while others were scrapped entirely.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Hooked a crowner for whether to disambiguate or redirect. I left off renaming because this is in such bad shape, and because it doesn't appear to be a real trope.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
low-poly Shinri
Letting everyone know that I voted for the disambig option. Did not thumbs up or thumbs down the other options.
She/Her | Currently cleaning N/A
He/Him
Also voted for the Disambig option. The only thing I thumbed down as the redirect to Fanservice one.
Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project
Apparently the author of Black Lagoon comments on this trend in his own work, but I can't tell if he used it accidentally or intentionally. I can't be bothered to read the swimsuit special to check it out. The "huh?" in his quote "Guess the size of a woman's bust is a measuring stick for how strong they are, huh?" makes me think it was a coincidence. I think he would've used other words if it was planned. *shrug*
Edited by Gosicrystal on Aug 4th 2023 at 2:38:50 PM
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Calling in favor of disambiguating.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
The disambiguation page is up.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
I vote against this disam motion.
(she/her)
The crowner was just called in favor of the disambig so it's a little too late for that.
Macron's notes
I'm not a fan of the disambiguation the trope has been put through. Perhaps it could be renamed to something that's more specific to its intent?
Maybe something like "Mounds of Strength" or "Muscles and Mammaries" or something else? The trope is still valid for busty female characters with great physical strength; it was just being misused for characters like mages.
Additionally, as a way to address its misuse on mages and similar characters, maybe a new trope could be added. Maybe something like "Mana Tanks" (which is in reference to a Skyrim mod) could help with misuse issues.
Edited by darkdill on Aug 9th 2023 at 3:34:01 AM
Again, too late.
Dang. Oh well, it was worth a thought. Maybe the trope could be replaced with a new one that is more specific.
Am I a weirdo?
If you think there's a new trope that can be salvaged from the remains of Boobs of Steel, take it to TLP. If you plan on doing that, I'd also advise helping with the wick cleaning here as it's a great way to gather any potential examples of your hypothetical new trope.
Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.
I'm guessing copy-pasting stuff from the original page could get me an edit block (I did that once for expediency and got blocked temporarily). Additionally, if we were to go by what I'm thinking, I'd need to launch two different tropes at once.
The first, the remade Boobs Of Steel, would be renamed to something like "Boobs and Brawn", which I think would a more suitable title even if it doesn't really roll off the tongue as much as the original name.
The second would need to be named something like "Melons and Magic", meant for mage-like characters. This too would be a name that, while not necessarily rolling off the tongue, would be more accurate and result in less misuse.
I've actually never used the TLP to create any pages yet.
I have the lingering feeling we may have axed a genuine trope. Not only that — the disambig doesn't seem to be very useful. I've gone through a bunch of wicks and only one could be swapped (Most Common Superpower on Gen¹³). The rest were either not superpowered characters, or not an example of Buxom Beauty Standard / Fanservice / Heroic Build.
Edited by Gosicrystal on Aug 9th 2023 at 5:16:01 PM
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
You're allowed to add tropes to the disambig you know.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Uh, if anything what killed the "trope" was that it was too specific. "Busty action girl" is a thing, albeit not necessarily one that's tropeworthy independent of some other tropes we have, but the description was trying to further claim that there's a specific power ranking system where the bustiest one is the toughest, and there was next-to-no evidence of that occurring in practice except maybe as a coincidence.
Maybe the whole "the bustiest girl is the strongest" part of it needed to be removed, and it could just be "this girl qualifies because she has big boobs and is physically strong" rather than hierarchy thing. The hierarchy part of Boobs Of Steel was the big problem with it.
Just stoic wisdom.
"Has big boobs and is strong" feels chairsy.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
I mean, you're welcome to try in the TLP, but it's too late to try and reignite anything on this thread.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Crown Description:
Boobs Of Steel is heavily misused, and there are doubts that it's even a real trope. What should be done with it?
It appears that the definition hasn't changed since then, but it seems like the lack of a contrast in the examples was present even then going by the comments, though the fact that ZCEs were more prevalent back then could be a factor.
Edit: Replaced an arrow with a quoteblock because this ended up being a pagetopper.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 1st 2023 at 4:01:50 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.