Eating the Eye Candy



""At male strip shows, it is still the women that we watch, the audience of women and their eager faces. They are more obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves.""

- Jean Baudrillard

There's just something completely gorgeous about that one guy. The female protagonist just can't help but stare and drool over his gleaming smile, his sapphire eyes, or any other attractive features. Even if she's a Tsundere who loudly declares that she Does Not Like Men, expect her to be unable to stop herself from noticing how well-built that guy over there is, and how compelling his eyes are... Sometimes her inner monologue will devolve into Purple Prose.

This trope is usually identified with Love At First Sight. Some cases may result in Distracted By the Sexy, eventually leading to Longing Looks once romance enters the picture.

Male Gaze and Female Gaze are related, but distinct, as they are concerned with how a work is presented to the audience (i.e., presuming the viewer will come from a male or female perspective, respectively). Eating The Eye Candy refers to a character's interest (which can, however, carry over into framing and presentation). Gender-flipped examples exist for both tropes. Subjected to Double Standard since it doesn't carry the implications of Male Gaze: a woman who looks at a man sexually is more often than not written as 'cute' (blushing and swooning), whereas a man looking at a woman sexually is commonly written as 'vulgar' (making rude remarks and even hooting!). Can be used quizzically in combination with All Women Are Lustful, Bigger Is Better in Bed, Chippendales Dancers, Female Gaze, Male Frontal Nudity, Shirtless Scene and Walking Shirtless Scene.

A cross between Hello, Nurse!, Ms. Fanservice or Mr. Fanservice and the Gaze tropes.

Advertising

 * The Diet Coke 11:30 ads, like this one (from 1994), involved an office of women gathering each other round by just saying 11:30 and then "Diet Coke break"- not a single one of them getting a Diet Coke themselves but instead looking across to the building site across the road where a construction worker would be having his Coke break, peeling his shirt off, gulping down a can and letting the sweat pour down onto his chest while "I Just Want to Make Love to You" plays.
 * Rory Bremner parodied this, substituting Bill Clinton for the builder, and making the first woman to arrive closely resemble Monica Lewinsky.
 * The housewife watching The Cleaning Hunk in this commercial for Xtra-Pine All Purpose CleanerNSFW
 * The airport security guards in this Underdaks ad
 * Jordache Voyeur Girls

Anime & Manga
""...did you seriously lose because you were watching him flex?""
 * Monster: Johann's handsome features are frequently commented on and checked out by a lot of people.
 * One episode of Nagasarete Airantou has Ikuto taking a bath and being unknowingly watched by Chikage. She glances at his body, makes several comments about his attractive features and blushes while doing so.
 * In Basilisk, when Oboro and Gennosuke are crossing a very narrow bridge, we follow Oboro's gaze as she stares at Gennosuke's back.
 * In the anime version of Dragonball Z, Princess Snake first stares at Goku for his body; she keeps staring, though, because of his table manners.
 * In Ranma ½, Akane occasionally sees Ranma this way -- broad shoulders, cute face, kind smile. In true Belligerent Sexual Tension style, it often immediately precedes Ranma himself making some spectacularly jerkish remark to her.
 * Ranma's other would-be love interests also do this; it's just much rarer that they get the chance to do so. Kodachi does this to Ranma the first time she seems him. Despite the fact he just, you know, knocked her out cold and almost caused her to fall off the roof.
 * When Akane sees a naked, male Ranma in the first episode/chapter, she can't help but let her eyes wander down there....
 * Sôsuke from Full Metal Panic is subject to this a lot by all of his admirers. His looks are enough to get everyone (and I mean everyone) to stop in their tracks and check him out. Even small part bystanders that never show up again (which is made especially obvious in the novels). One Lampshaded instance was with Nami (from the novels), where she pretended that she was only watching him change clothes because she wanted to make sure he was an AS pilot. Lemon teases her and notes that she was just checking him out. Oh, and the anime knows to show plenty of Fan Service of him being shirtless (complete with cute little scars all over his body). Including a scene where he's hallucinating, and randomly imagines himself being tied up, shirtless, and in obvious distress -- for no real reason at all.
 * Violinist of Hameln: Shchelkunchik has a very... painful... take on this trope. Basically, during a divination class, Shchel's crystal ball shows the whole class a humiliating event in his childhood that ended with him pantsless in the school pool with a water scorpion pricking his delicate parts. Everyone comments on how big and swollen it became, the girls most of all.
 * Done with tongue planted firmly in cheek in Darker Than Black, where Mayu gets a little too fixated on Hei -- particularly his "delicious collarbone" -- after a late-night rescue.
 * Studio BONES spoofs it once again in Star Driver: apparently, Midori Okamoto's Cybody has a fanservice mode. It backfires, though.


 * In the first episode of Macross Frontier, it certainly looks like Ranka's subjecting Alto to some female gaze when they first meet (the Bishie Sparkle sets on so hard that you can hear it). Then she admits that she thought Alto was a very pretty girl until he opened his mouth. Alto is not amused.
 * In Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest, Ms. Aoshika asks Inugami to strip in order to see if he has any wounds (and thus prove if he was the boy she met the night before). She doesn't find any injuries, but she's not exactly dissapointed...
 * Despite being a Chaste Hero, Hayate pulls this on Hinagiku. After his gaze lingers too long she chastises him for it, but she definitely enjoys the feeling.
 * Notably, Hinagiku is the only one of his Unwanted Harem to get this from him. Even when seeing other girls nude, he turns away before they get their senses back enough to be chastised, he does blush after seening (and then thinking back to) seeing Ayumu changing.
 * Similarly, Ash of Pokémon pulls this one on Misty when he meets up with her between the Advance and Battle Frontier arcs. Misty doesn't chastise him for it.
 * In Katanagatari, Togame doesn't even bother with pretenses for ogling the perpetually shirtless Shichika -- she just tells him to sit still to make it easier to do.
 * Near the end of the Hot Springs Episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, most of the gang beat up the beastmen who operated the Ganmen-disguised-as-hot-springs-resort. The camera pans across the cast... revealing that Yoko is peeking at the completely naked Kamina's butt from the corner of her eye. When he makes a move that would bring her into his sight, she blushes and quickly looks upwards. Shortly afterwards, her jumping up and down in victory celebration makes her suffer a Wardrobe Malfunction... and Kamina immediately returns the favor.
 * In the 14th episode of Tiger and Bunny, Karina mentions that lately she's been having trouble keeping her eyes off of Kotetsu.
 * THE iDOLM@STER - The audience of the Are We Live? show, particularly towards Azusa's outfit.
 * Vampire Hunter D can't walk into a single town without half the residents attempting to undress him with their eyes.

Comics

 * Marvel Comics' character Starfox causes this as a side effect of his powers, besides also being a Flying Brick. And he can turn the effect Up to Eleven to overload your pleasure center and incapacitate you by feeling too good. Well, if you've gotta be attacked, that's the way to go...
 * In Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, the reporter that Captain Marvel goes to for help takes a very obvious look at his crotch while standing right in front of him.

Fan Works
"'"Honestly", Otacon thought ruefully, "At this rate, next I'll be thinking about how big and strong and manly he is.""
 * Stray does something like this in some of its descriptive passages, particularly when Adamska is being described, although the POV character is another man. The story also hangs a lampshade on it:


 * Cherry Lipgloss did this with describing Critic's work outfit. Subverted later on, as more people view it as dressing like "white trash".
 * Ashes to Ashes, the Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire fanfic, has May doing this to Maxie!

Films -- Live Action
""You think it's only man turned on by striptease?""
 * From What Women Want, among other things, the line, "Oh my God I just looked at his penis. I hope he didn't see me..." Of course, he does.
 * In the movie Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, after Lola has just met Sam and he's walking away, there's a moment where the camera focuses on his butt.
 * In Youngblood A fully clothed Cynthia Gibb gets three lingering stares at Rob Lowe's bare butt.NSFW
 * Cindy Crawford is shown scoping out Billy Baldwin's ass at the gas station in Fair Game.
 * In Exit to Eden, Dana Delany can't keep her eyes off of Paul Mercurio.
 * The Transporter 3. Valentina maintains a sullen attitude towards Badass Driver and fellow hostage Frank, until the latter takes off his shirt to fight a gang of mooks. We see her smile in appreciation and their Belligerent Sexual Tension starts from that moment, culminating in Valentina forcing Frank to take off his shirt again for some "Glad to Be Alive" Sex.


 * In Captain America the First Avenger Agent Carter tries to touch post-transformation Steve's abs (for those of you not in the know, the procedure made him ridiculously buff) but quickly pulls her hand back. The moment was not scripted.
 * Far and Away has a scene where Shannon tries to ogle Joseph while he's undressing (without letting him know she's doing it) through the flimsy screen that divides their room.

Literature

 * Take a sip for every mention Bella from Twilight makes of Edward's Eyes of Gold, marble skin that sparkles in the sunlight, or his overall beauty being comparable to an angel's. You'll be under the table in no time. Twilight: Causing liver failure worldwide!
 * In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy takes the breath away from every female in Hertfordshire just by walking into the room: "Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien..."
 * Taken Up to Eleven in the BBC miniseries adaptation, with lots of camera time devoted to Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy riding horseback/bathing/swimming/casting smoldering gazes around/etc.
 * You know how David Bowie was a lust object for a significant proportion of American females of a certain age, due to Labyrinth? Colin Firth was the same for BBC viewers due to one scene -- "Mr. Darcy! Your britches!". It reached Memetic Mutation levels.
 * Brilliantly Parodied in this scene from Lost in Austen --
 * A great number of Old Skool romance novels (that are in first person, from the woman's point of view) use this -- and understandably so.
 * Night Huntress has several scenes with Cat commenting on how attractive Bones is.
 * In The Belgariad, most of the story is told from 3rd-person limited perspective, from the point of view of the hero, Garion. Every so often it switches to his romantic interest, who often spends time watching him. There's some descriptions of his sandy hair (usually tousled) and how his face is "nice enough".
 * Fate/Zero plays around a bit with this. When Saber and Irisviel first encounter Lancer, the prose takes an immediate turn from standard to totally purple as it waxes rhapsodic about his beautiful eyes, his elegant features, the small beauty spot on his face that seems to add even more charac--Wait, beauty spot? Yep, it turns out that Lancer is the Heroic Spirit of Diarmund Ua Duibhne (who has a supernatural ability that makes all woman who see his face fall in love) and the prose snaps straight back to normal once Irisviel realizes the mind-trickery and overcomes it with her innate magical resistance.
 * Narrator of The Hollows, Rachel Morgan, tends to get kind of distracted around attractive men. It even happens when she converses with the demon Midias.
 * The image for this trope page is the comic book version of the Anita Blake Vampire Novel series, in which the main character Anita often has problems with this trope seeing as about 99% of the people surrounding her are gorgeous supernatural men who want to get into her pants. That poor woman.
 * This actually saves the main character's life in one of the Ciaphas Cain novels, since pausing to admire the view makes an assassin's attack miss him.
 * In The Dresden Files, this happens automatically whenever a White Court vampire is in line of sight. Its not voluntary, either; the White Court exude a natural aura that draws everyone's attention to their physical beauty, both male and female. This helps them "hunt" their prey, drawing mortals to them so they can feed on their emotions (lust, fear, and despair being the big three). Its also deconstructed, however, when one of them, Thomas, tries to live a normal life without maliciously feeding on humans, as he can't hold down a job because his coworkers inevitably get drawn to him through his involuntary mojo and he gets fired when they jump his bones and his innate hunger for emotions takes over.

Live Action TV
"Rory: Aren't you going to turn your back?
 * Done numerous times in Scrubs, sometimes seriously (e.g. with Colin Farrell), sometimes less so (where the distracted gazer walks into, or trips over something), and sometimes just outright mocked and lampshaded (when a male patient had such a winning smile it was affecting everyone who saw it).
 * Inverted: No one wants to see The Todd's banana hammock.
 * Done often on Sex and The City, in particular with Samantha's various conquests, and especially ramped up for The Movie. She is quite tempted by her hot next-door neighbor, who just so happens to shower outside as the camera lovingly lingers over his body and even gives us a brief cock shot.
 * In a second season episode of Hannah Montana, Miley gazes (there's a spotlight and everything) at a boy named Trey, whom she later thinks is "the one." Of course, Trey is never seen again after that episode, save a brief mention in an episode or two later saying that they had broken up.
 * In the "Band Candy" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Buffy can't keep her eyes off of Angel's sweaty bare chest.
 * In one of the later seasons of Buffy, while the Scoobies are at the Bronze, Willow spends about 2 minutes eying a hot girl in leather pants with Xander. It becomes rather awkward for them both when the group realizes that said girl is Dawn.
 * The X-Files episode directed by Gillian Anderson starts with the Male Gaze (camera just below armpit level, directed past Scully's bosom) and turns to Female Gaze (Mulder asleep in bed, apparently naked save for some strategically placed bed coverings).
 * Lois and Clark has a Sexy Silhouette scene where both Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain mutually flabbergasted each other while changing clothes. Very unsubtle in Getting Crap Past the Radar -- Clark pops his cork, while Lois drips a little puddle onto the floor. I'm talking about the champagne, of course.
 * Lampshaded in this "Smack the Pony" sketch.
 * During the Shirts vs. Skins basketball game, Melana on Average Joe was distracted by the Hunks' (Skins) bodies after they took off their shirts.
 * Ditto for Larissa on Average Joe Hawaii when the Hunks took their shirts off for the Shirts vs. Skins dodgeball game.
 * In the "Toni's Boys" episode of Charlies Angels, Kris Munroe got really turned on in a male strip club when she watched male Angel Bob Sorenson take his shirt off and then watched a male stripper rehearse.
 * In an episode of Spin City, the female workers keep calling in a hot water-cooler repair guy (or something similar) with increasingly-trivial or thinly-veiled requests because they enjoy watching him work. Of course, he soon gets fed up with being seen as a sex object.
 * On Dog Eat Dog, host Brooke Burns and contestants Lisa and Jessica enjoy watching Colin play Strip Golf
 * On Dirt, Courtney Cox enjoys a full view of a naked Julian Acosta.NSFW
 * In the Made for TV Movie Vows of Deception, Lucinda (Cheryl Ladd) enjoys Nick's (Michael Woolson) bare chest.
 * Doctor Who companion and Torchwood lead Jack Harkness is the recipient as often as he is the instigator.
 * When Rory, Amy Pond's boyfriend, complains about the Eleventh Doctor spontaneously stripping and changing clothes in front of them in "The Eleventh Hour", the Doctor simply suggests that they turn their backs if they're so bothered by it. Rory begrudgingly does so. Amy, on the other hand...

Amy: Nope!"


 * Cassandra accuses Rose of doing this to the 10th Doctor in "New Earth" (while she's possessing the Doctor).
 * Jessie watches J.D. shower in the Baywatch episode, "The Natural".
 * From Almost Live: "Great Butts With Wendy White"
 * This Season 3 teaser trailer of The Vampire Diaries should come with a sponge (to sop up the drooling) and a biscuit to sop up that gravy...
 * From The Young and the Restless: the look Lauren Fenmore gives a half naked Brad Carlton when she meets up with him in the weight room at the Jabot gym.
 * Castle and Beckett have a history of doing this to each other due to massive amounts of Unresolved Sexual Tension. For example, in season two, Castle had gotten attacked by an angry dog when they went to bust a criminal so his pants were ripped and Beckett watches his ass as he walks away with a rather impressed expression. In a deleted scene from season three, Beckett leans over the murder board to write something and Castle checks out her ass. The even more amusing part is that it wasn't scripted--Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion came up with that bit on their own.

Music & Music Videos

 * The lyrics of "Amy Amy Amy" by Amy Winehouse are four minutes of this.
 * During the Post Show Wrap-Up to the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, Tabitha Soren said that she noticed that a lot of people bared their chests during the awards show. Soren went on to say that she thought En Vogue's 9 shirtless dancers were great to watch and that she found the Red Hot Chili Peppers' performance to be entertaining partly because they weren't wearing shirts.
 * Olivia Newton John in the video for her hit single "Let's Get Physical"
 * Tanya Tucker and her friends do a lot of this in the video for "Hangin' In".
 * During The Creep, Nicki Minaj is "oogling and ogling" a bunch of jocks from where she's hiding in a locker.

Print Media

 * Teen fashion magazines do (and induce) this all the time.
 * Playgirl magazine
 * Photographer Christie Jenkins' book A Woman Looks at Men's Buns which is a collection of pictures of men's butts, Jenkins calls herself a "connoisseur" of men's butts.

Sports

 * Soccer players are popular with women because of their muscular builds six pack abs and nice, tight asses. Also, they get all sweaty, take off their shirts and bare their smooth, chiseled chests as explained here, here, here and here.
 * Also popular with women: the men's swim team at any high school, college as well as during the Olympics because these guys are in speedos.
 * Don't forget basketball using old-style uniforms with the tight short-shorts, for the leg-women out there. And there's always bare, muscular arms. Some women like basketball for this reason, and this reason only.

Video Games
"Breathless, glinting skin
 * In the PC adventure game Laura Bow: The Dagger of Amon Rah, the main character Laura and many of the other female characters spend a lot of time talking about how attractive Steve is, from the moment you meet him on.
 * There's a moment in The Haunting Of Castle Malloy where this happens off-camera. When Nancy calls her girlfriends Bess and George for hints, they pause in talking to her, to savor the sight of a perfect poolside set of washboard abs.
 * Text implications suggest that the Handmaiden is doing this to a male player character in Knights of the Old Republic 2.
 * In Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark, at one point a Mimic steals your character's armor. If your character is male and Aribeth is in the party, some humorous dialogue ensues.
 * In Mass Effect 3 when a romanced Kaidan returns to the Normandy Shepard's gaze goes to Kaidan's butt. Shepard gives a smirk for good measure.
 * And in Mass Effect 2 Kasumi Goto's Shadow Broker dossier reveals that she's written Haikus about Jacob, the resident beefcake.

Muscles working in rhythm

Cloaked desire watches"

Web Comics

 * The Order of the Stick: Therkla demonstrates.
 * El Goonish Shive: While somewhat jealous of how muscular the other girls were, Sarah ends up reminding herself to avoid this trope during the Party arc when staring at herself.
 * Though only a joke picture, Kieri in her Snow Bunny form Slightly Damned gets an eyeful of her boyfriend, Buwaro.

Web Original
"Caboose: (to Andy, horrified) You told me it was another arm!
 * Red vs. Blue: Shortly after meeting Crunchbite the alien, Tucker has a hard time pulling Tex's attention away from his... alien.. muscle structure.

Crunchbite: (happily) Blaaaaarrrrrrg!

Andy: Ha, ha! Hey Caboose, high five!

Caboose: ...I don't want to do that anymore..."

Western Animation

 * Code Lyoko: In the opening of Season 4 episode "Bad Connection", Ulrich is stuck in the hallway wearing just a Modesty Towel. When Aelita and Yumi walk in with Jérémie, the girls at first (weakly) pretend to be looking away, but spend pretty much the rest of the scene ogling.
 * On Family Guy, when Peter gets plastic surgery to make himself extremely handsome, Lois loses the ability to form complete sentences.
 * Lois also drills a hole in Stewie's room to watch Tom Brady shower.
 * In The Road to El Dorado, Chel gets Miguel and Tulio their ceremonial clothes for the celebration in their honor and then doesn't leave the room when they start undressing. Tulio notices this and promptly asks her if she minds, which she replies, "No." She eventually does leave, but not without taking a good long look at them first.

Real Life

 * Male strippers
 * Although there is quite an audience for fascist guys in general, Jörg Haider would not only have made an excellent Bond villain but also caused a couple french female reporters to be reprimanded when they got waaay off track starting from the point one referred to him as a "Silver Fox." Unfortunately this clip no longer seems to be online, possibly due to his passing.
 * The Jane Austen Museum in Bath, U.K., has a painting/image of a smouldering Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy literally in every room.
 * Parodied in Carbolic Smoke Ball: Rosacea Swayne comments that girls are being deprived of seeing lithe, muscular boys with their shirts off in person during the summer months due to the obesity epidemic.