Male Gaze



The Male Gaze is a term from Gaze theory that describes the tendency of works to assume a male viewpoint even if it does not have a specific narrative Point of View, and in particular the tendency of works to present female characters as subjects of implicitly male visual appreciation.

One of the most obvious results of Male Gaze is the way a (usually male) director/cameraman's interest in women informs his shots, leading to a focus on breasts, legs, asses and other jiggly bits even when the film isn't necessarily supposed to be a T&A-fest. For example, a sex scene between a man and a woman may show more of her body than it does of his, or focus more on her reactions than his (see Right Through His Pants). Alternatively, it could appear in shows that aren't overtly sexual - for example, scenes of bikini-clad female characters talking that emphasize their bodies rather than showing just their heads.

The term also applies in other mediums, such as video games and comic books. During the Dark Age, comic books were often perfect examples of the male gaze, with scenes being framed to show off a female character's "assets" over everything else. The trend continues at a lower level today.

If the female in question is aware of the Fourth Wall, she'll likely snap "Ahem, eyes are up here!" at the camera/artist.

The concept was popularized in Laura Mulvey's 1973 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," quite likely the most cited essay in all of Film Studies.

See also Fan Service, Jiggle Physics, Gainaxing. Not to be confused with Male Gays. Contrast Longing Look and Female Gaze.

Advertising

 * A recent Coke commercial featured a trio of guys at a party with a trio of girls. The viewer does not see any of the girls' faces, and the camera focuses solely on their tight clothing.
 * The Brazilian Butt Lift Commercials are full of this. Not surprising considering the title.
 * Justified since the ad is for a butt work out, and you have to show off the product, i.e., the results if you want to sell it.
 * Evony's banner ads feature little more than a pair of gigantic boobs accompanied by the words "Play now, my lord!" or "Save your lover the Queen!" or "Play now discreetly!". Bear in mind that Evony is a Civilisation-esque strategy game.
 * Not to mention that the lack of any visible shine on her pupils, the rather copious amounts of makeup and somewhat obvious photoshopping of the face make it more creepy than it is hot.
 * The ad for Rappelz starts with a close up of a female upper chest with the caption 'like what you see?'. Even when it zooms out a little, the focus is still there. The fact that she's wearing a Breast Plate doesn't help its cause.
 * The banner ads for Claymore on this very wiki. The vertical one is well ok, showing a full body shot of one of the female characters decked out for battle. What does the horizontal view do? It starts out showing only her chest. It then moves further up her body as the ad continues, but the shot of her breasts does its job at catching your eye. Feel free to make the comparison yourself.
 * Similarly for the Dragonaut: The Resonance ad. It doesn't seem to focus on anything, but the text makes it clear what you're supposed to be looking at 'Real dragons have curves'. Ironically they chose the least noticeable female dragon to portray.
 * The ads for "Part 2" are similar; the vertical one is okay, but the horizontal one starts out with a shameless ass shot. Funi certainly knows how to attract the show's target audience.
 * This recently new commercial for Corona light beer.
 * This new commercial for Reebok EasyTone shoes, designed to "make your legs and butt look good".
 * For the record: The ad is a pleasantly-constructed young woman in short shorts expounding on the virtues of the shoes in question, and the cameraman taking notice of the effect the shoes have on her legs and butt. Naturally, her response is an unamused "eyes up here" gesture.
 * Their ads are ostensibly aimed at women. Maybe gay/bi women are a huge target audience for Reebok?
 * An advertisement for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia played with this trope, showing the male gaze until the camera pans up revealing the woman in question to be the hideous (under the makeup, the actress is rather attractive) Margaret McPoyle.
 * Played with in a recent Jean-Paul Gautier perfume campaign. The ad for the male perfume is typical male-gaze: a sailor leaves a woman after a night of passion; she's shown half naked, writhing in the sheets. The ad for the female perfume is exactly the same, except it's the woman leaving and the sailor writhing half naked in the sheets.
 * In Killing Us Softly: Advertising's View of Women, her major lecture series, Jean Kilbourne argues that the male gaze is so pervasive in modern culture, particularly advertising, that it has changed the way that women look at each other - that even heterosexual women look at other women in the way that a heterosexual man would.

Anime & Manga
"Koizumi: "Go forth, procreate.""
 * Happens in Bodacious Space Pirates, largely with Marika, especially in the first ending credits.
 * When Faye Valentine's top is cut open in the Cowboy Bebop movie, the camera shows nothing above or below her breasts. The TV series also has several lingering shots of Faye's legs and breasts.
 * Parodied in Excel Saga: When Misaki first appears, the camera begins to pan up her body. It then does a Jump Cut to her rear before resuming the pan and stopping again at her chest. She then asks why the camera keeps stopping. When the camera attempts this again later, she grabs the camera and demands that it cease. Cut to a written apology from the director.
 * When Gohan, Krillen and Bulma land on a strange spaceship in Dragon Ball Z, they want to go explore it. Bulma is apparently so excited to traverse the ship that she forgets to put on pants. She spends the next several episodes in her eponymous underwear for no reason.
 * Then there's Maron, Krillin's ex-girlfriend. Might be Playing with a Trope, since the camera leers along with the male characters... an explicitly "male gaze."
 * Mazinger Z: Often the camera lingered on Sayaka's behind, specially when she wore skirts. It also lingered on women when they were wearing one towel after one shower or changing clothes. Of course, it also happened in the sequels (Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer). Given than Mazinger's creator introduced Fanservice in the anime, it was to be expected. But to be fair, there also were plenty instances of Female Gaze in the series.
 * In Persona 4: The Animation Chie gets quite a few closeups of her thighs in Episode 2. In Episode 9 they literally switch into Yosuke's point of view while he momentarily gazes at Chie's thighs. Episode 15 also has a closeup of her backside as she's about to sit in Yu's lap.
 * In Suzumiya Haruhi, Kyon is the cameraman for the Brigade's movie; with the buxom and beautiful Mikuru the main character of said movie, the camera's view... dips... on occasion. Also note that in chronology, the first thing we see of Haruhi is her chest.
 * Also played less subtly for laughs. Itsuki jokes that Kyon and Haruhi are now Adam and Eve. Cut to a still camera shot of Haruhi walking down stairs... with the shot starting around her waist and eventually working up to her head. Less subtle indeed.


 * Haruhi's butt also gets a lot of emphasis during the Endless Eight arc.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh!, used on Anzu/Tea while she was playing a Dance Dance Revolution-like game. Whether intentionally or not, it gives the impression this is where Yami's gaze is focused. Hmmm...
 * EPIC POUTING MANUEVER!!
 * Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's: Carly's  is one long focus at her body from her legs up. Also, Fortune Lady Lighty gets this on her first appearance. Also in 5Ds, when Aki dons her outfit for riding duels, which is a bright red leather bodysuit cut low on her breasts. The pan up from her feet to her head is complete with Crow whistling at her. To top it off, Aki notes the outfit doesn't feel like her (compared to her Victorian-style influenced outfit), and Yusei assures her she looks fine.
 * The OP of Black Lagoon has a few random shots of Revy's butt, which is in line with how she mostly gets depicted the manga.
 * The almost supernaturally endowed Rangiku Matsumoto on Bleach is constantly subjected to this.
 * Interestingly, the similarly well-endowed Orihime Inoue is very rarely shown in a fanservicey way - unlike Matsumoto, she never even wears revealing clothes, but the camera still frequently zooms in on her chest. Especially when Kon is talking nearby.
 * This whole trope made Rangiku's choices on the 'fashion show' episode 228 that much more interesting. With one possible exception - all her outfit choices were surprisingly tasteful and classy. The sixth one, the exception? No more or less revealing than an outfit you might see being worn by say, your average woman wearing a tank top and pants.
 * In Princess Tutu there's a scene where Autor is walking behind Rue. The camera switches to show her walking from behind, then slowly pans down to gaze at her rear end and legs. The camera then switches to show Autor looking downwards with a blush on his face, then quickly glancing up when Rue turns towards him as if trying to cover up where his attention had gone.
 * "Soul Eater" has a really strange example. When the weapon characters are in weapon form their Meisters can still talk to them, and a reflection of their human form is shown somewhere somewhere on the weapon's surface. The female weapons' reflections are always naked, but the male weapons are fully clothed. This changes in later chapters.
 * In Busou Renkin, Kazuki is walking behind Tokiku up some stairs. We get the expected shot from his point of view, followed by a shot of his blushing face. In light of what Tokiku's telling him at the time, the shot feels highly random.
 * There's also the 2nd Beach Episode where Tokiko complains at the camera for lingering too long on her navel.
 * The third episode of Code Geass had a blatant one of these during Kallen's shower scene. The shower curtain gets accidentally pulled aside, and we see her standing in the shower with a Toplessness From the Back shot. Then the camera drops about 3 feet, perfectly framing her behind.
 * R2 did this constantly, especially during its first half, to just about every attractive female character. Some of the most egregious examples occurred whenever Kallen or C.C. piloted a Knightmare, including gratuitous ass shots.
 * Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is comparably blatant. The Major wouldn't have it any other way. Witness for example the second episode of the first season. The Major is driving a Tachikoma, stops and opens the hatch to get out... and the camera gives us an extreme close-up butt shot from below.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion. The object of the gaze is later promoted to Major. Coincidence?!
 * Can't forget Ritsuko, Rei, and Asuka who provide the other half of the Fan Service for the show.
 * Rei, especially. In Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0, there is a scene near the end of the film when the camera slowly pans across her uncensored nude body as she's donning her plugsuit.
 * During Lalamon's evolution sequence to Rosemon in Digimon Savers, the camera makes sure to pan up her behind and directly into a cleavage shot. When the time came for Data Squad, this part of the sequence was cut out.
 * In Street Fighter Alpha The Movie, the camera has so many random cuts to close ups of Chun Li's and, to a much lesser extent, Sakura's pelvic reason, that it makes for a rather entertaining drinking game.
 * And in Street Fighter 2, the Animated Movie, during Chun-Li's shower scene, there's a close up on her butt, and another, much more zoomed in, one in the Japanese version of the scene, complete with Gainaxing of the buttocks.
 * Just before the shower scene, the Monitor Cyborg goes for the gold as it first features Chun Li's lovely face, then her frontal assets and finally a near-lingering shot at her crotch. You can bet Bison and Vega were enjoying the view.
 * Played with in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. In the eighth episode, Thymilph is seen watching the heroes on a WallOfMonitors. One of them has a close-up of Yoko's breasts. There are also instances of Gainaxing which the camera sometimes gives particular focus to. Simon's or Kamina's gaze does linger on early in the show, and getting a "good look" at the girls is even a plot point during the sixth episode.
 * The camera is specifically Kamina's gaze on first meeting Yoko. She even looks into it mildly irked, but his eye keeps roving.
 * "Good morning sunshine." We get a view from Yoko's chest, seeing quite a bit...
 * Two of these show up in Azumanga Daioh, oddly enough. One is the series's sole Panty Shot, tho done in such closeup that you can't really tell what it is until it's over and others are reacting. Both are primarily due to the subject (Sakaki, sadly) being the focus of the gaze in both cases--the shot is supposed to be that of the staring character. Only one is an actual male, though.
 * Weird example from the GetBackers manga. Ban, Ginji, Kazuki and Juubei are taking a bath in a hot spring. Ban, Ginji, and Juubei generally stay submerged below the shoulders--but Kazuki, who only looks like a girl, gets some very obvious Toplessness From the Back and ass-shots, to the point where Ban is kind enough to cover up his guy-parts at one point for the intended audience and tell us all how hot a girl Kazuki would be.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima does this on a regular basis. The "camera" occasionally focuses on the girls' butts for no reason in particular, and anytime a girl does anything active, a Panty Shot is inevitable. Even if the girl is wearing something other than a skirt.
 * The various works of Go Nagai. He's not very subtle about it.
 * Yakumo in the School Rumble manga when she first meets Harima. This was left out in the anime.
 * Strike Witches. None of the girls wear pants or skirts. The camera makes sure that we're aware of this.
 * Training with Hinako, an anime exercise DVD (they make those now) has the audience's trainer, Hinako, doing various parts of her workout with the camera knowing exactly where to aim itself.
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist, it's not unusual to focus shots on the Homunculi's ouroborus tattoos. Lust's tattoo, of course, is right above her cleavage. Maes Hughes lampshades this one for us.
 * Used as foreshadowing in "The Philosopher's Stone" episode of the first anime. A delivery woman is warned about a Serial Killer who goes after pretty, young women. Then there's a nice body shot of Winry when she meets the woman at her refrigerated van..
 * One can't really blame people for remembering the exploding panties in the first season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The first season's Transformation Sequence had a lot of panning shots of the underaged title character's naked body and it was used often. Though they were still present, these were toned down in later seasons.
 * In the first two seasons, Arf's very round butt gets plenty of close-ups.

"Hanekawa: "Am I imagining things, or does it feel like the details regarding my skirt would span about four pages?""
 * Lampshaded and...inverted? Subverted? Actually inverted Female Gaze? Anyway, a Girls Love example in this Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Doujinshi.
 * Rosario to Vampire screams this trope the whole time. Especially when Kurumu appears, or when Moka transforms.
 * In Ryuusei no Rockman Tribe, it's pretty hard to keep the drama of Hot Shonen Mom Akane being kidnapped by Phantom Black when the camera keeps framing her behind and chest in the middle of shots.
 * Done often with Nodoka in Saki, sometimes via an actual in-story camera man.
 * Done to a Narmful extent in the first arc of the Umineko no Naku Koro ni anime.
 * Done at every possible moment in NEEDLESS. I challenge anyone to find me a single episode that does not do this at least a few times.
 * Stratos 4. The opening sequence alone is already filled with these.
 * In Durarara, whenever Professor Nasujima is in the scene, you can bet that a very large portion of the screentime will be dedicated to his favorite set of twins
 * Many moments in Bakemonogatari, but most obviously, the very beginning. In this line of thought, a citation from Kizumonogatari:


 * Naruto: Often happens in regards to Tsunade.
 * In chapter 312 of Berserk Isidro meets the enthusiastic Isma. Who leans over to talk to him. With her chest standing on the height of his eyes. There's even an arrow pointing from his eyes to her breasts.
 * In a Beach Episode of Sailor Moon, Ami has found Usagi's little brother, unconcious. When he wakes up, she's so happy he's okay that she hugs him, and the audience catches all this from behind her. And there was some...surprising detail as well.
 * In RahXephon, when Ayato is introduced to female characters, the "camera", showing his viewpoint, makes it clear exactly which features he's focusing on.
 * Male Gaze is the only shot/angle/juxtaposition in existence in the Godannar universe.
 * In Baccano, one of the first hints Ennis is a love interest of Firo is a subtle use of this trope: The moment they bump into each other, the "camera" starts on her chest for a split second.
 * In Tenchi Muyo! GXP, the view seems to settle on Lady Seto's chest whenever she appears.
 * Satoshi Urushihara's work. It's no secret he draws a lot of naked women, but what really makes it this trope is how, whenever a woman is naked, she will always be positioned so her breasts are included in the panel. It actually gets kind of narmy after a while.
 * THE iDOLM@STER - The cameraman of the Ribbit Ribbit Kitchen certainly knows where he's aiming the camera.
 * Done, surprisingly enough, to Misty in the Japanese version of the 34th episode of the Pokémon anime. Tommy/Tomo, a boy raised by Kangaskhan, blatantly asks her if her can suck on her breasts while the camera zooms in on her chest. The North American version removed the zoom and had him ask "Are you people or Pokémon?" instead, but she still slapped him.
 * Sorcerer Hunters pretty much runs on this trope, being a kind of pervy comedy show where the two female leads are S&M queens, but the opening sequence has numerous T&A close-ups. Notably there's a short sequence of a lady who doesn't seem to appear anywhere in the actual show, touching her thighs and red-painted lips, but we never see her face: her only distinct feature is a lot of long, black hair, so she might be Marron.

Comic Books

 * Comic artists who draw this way will often show a female character facing away from the camera, but twisting her back (sometimes improbably) towards the 'camera' so that the viewer can get a good look at her breasts as well as her behind.
 * Rob Liefeld is probably the most infamous artist here; see, for instance, here.
 * Ed Benes has a reputation for this too, though his knowledge of human anatomy at least allows him to make them look human when they do such unlikely poses.
 * Artist Mike Choi drew a cover that showed a character in this pose. He got called out for this in a review that was so critical and apparently so painful to read that Choi has stopped reading reviews about his work, period. Even the good ones. Interestingly, he stated nothing about whether or not he stopped drawing women in the Tits and Ass Pose.
 * Damn near anything by Frank Cho.
 * Of course there's everyone's favorite, J. Scott Campbell.
 * All Star Batman and Robin features an issue in which Vicki Vale spends an entire scene standing around posing in lacy pink underwear for absolutely no reason. The script for the scene (included in the trade paperback) contains a blatant admission from Frank Miller as to what he was doing: "Okay, I'm shameless, let's go with an ASS SHOT."
 * In The Loners the team debate whether the villainess's getup is a costume or a tattoo.


 * Courier from the Gambit X-Men spinoff. Interestingly, Courier was a male shapeshifter who was Mode Locked in this form by Mr. Sinister.
 * Italian comic (eventually imported to America) Route de Maisons Rouge. This page says it all. Though since the comic is about feuding brothels, it is perhaps to be expected.
 * Sin City, Frank Miller's love letter to the pulp/noir genre. Any female characters who aren't gun-toting self-regulating prostitutes tend to fall at either extreme end of the Innocent Angel-Cold-Hearted Femme Fatale spectrum, and in striking contrast to Miller's diverse, interesting and strikingly designed male characters, are virtually identical from the neck down and drawn with sex appeal a forethought
 * A lot of it in Empowered, which is parodying the entire concept. One example, Emp comes home from a successful mission still wearing the Hot Librarian outfit she was using. Thug Boy's POV panels focus on Emp so much that they are forcing her talk bubbles out of the frame.
 * When the final issues of Ultimate Wolverine VS. Hulk FINALLY came out, there's a scene with Betty Ross injecting herself with a drug in her buttocks, which are front-and-center in the panel.
 * Averted in one issue of Identity Crisis where Wonder Woman is interrogating a prisoner about who tried to kill Ray Palmer's wife. The prisoner is said to be smart because he's focusing on Wonder Woman's lasso, not her cleavage.

Film
"Sue Charlton: That croc was going to eat me alive. Michael J. "Crocodile" Dundee: Well, I wouldn't hold that against him. Same thought crossed my mind once or twice."
 * The male gaze is a moving thing, not static. So it is most closely echoed in film and TV by panning or tilting shots along a woman's body, rather than framing one part for any length of time. One of the more original 'reveals' of the female form is in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window: In Grace Kelly's first shot, only her hand is seen (switching on a light IIRC), then an arm, then a bit more, etc, with her face last.
 * Charlie's Angels (and the sequel too, naturally) featured numerous scenes which pointedly and gratuitously framed the lead actresses' rear ends. This is particularly noticeable in the numerous fan-servicey scenes of various female characters dancing, stripping (don't ask) or in the slow-mo action shots where the Angels inexplicably always seem to wear tight pants or bodysuits of some sort, and high heels, regardless of whether or not they'd be convenient or comfortable or even safe to fight in. Considering it was based on a 1970s' jiggle show, though, is anybody really surprised at any of this?
 * The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Mockbuster Angels Revenge was the same thing, with less-attractive women. Early in the movie, we get a shot straight up a ladder as a woman is climbing it, and Crow quips "Hey, you're giving away the plot!"
 * The first Hercules movie from the 1950s featured a scene in which the male characters are captured by a group of Amazons. Despite the obvious threat of the women's weapons, the camera "inexplicably" focuses on a long line of long legs (bare, natch). On the other hand, these were beefcake movies where Hercules ran around shirtless flexing his muscles.
 * The Sentinel and Harsh Times were both released around the same time, and both featured Eva Longoria, and both had a shot where the camera focuses on her butt. In both cases it was to emphasize how the men in the scene see her. In both cases the director was also a male.
 * Toward the end of Alien, there's a long scene where Ripley's in a shirt and panties. During the whole time, the camera's focus is clearly aimed rather lower than her face, and doesn't go back up to its usual height until after she gets some more clothes on.
 * Spoofed hilariously in Scary Movie, which is pertinent since horror movies are perhaps the most guilty of this trope (often in squicky ways as a woman contorts her body sensually and moans orgasmically as she is dying). The movie opens with a woman (played by Carmen Electra, if memory serves) running from a psycho killer, her clothes getting ripped off by anything she runs by, and stopping to pose and flick her hair as she runs (in Slo Mo, no less) through a sprinkler.
 * A film of 1984 had a scene with Julia and Winston in the room on top of the antique shop. For some reason she gets up and walks around in the room for minutes completely naked and the camera shows her entire body. Every shot at Winston, though, shows only his head, or at best his upper body.
 * Parodied in The Naked Gun 33 1/3 when Leslie Nielsen's character first sees Anna Nicole Smith. Watch as the camera goes slowly up the legs... and up the legs... and past the knees... and up the legs... and up the legs... and up the legs... and past the knees again...
 * The James Bond movies have this from time to time with the Bond Girls, prominently when anyone's getting out of the water with a bathing suit - ostensibly as a tribute to Bond girl Honey Ryder. Casino Royale manages to make it both Darker and Edgier and Stupid Sexy Flanders by showing Daniel Craig looks in blue instead... (To quote a livejournal icon, 'IM IN UR MUVIE APPROPRIATIN UR MALE GAZE'.)
 * In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, we first see Vanessa Kensington via a slow pan up her entire body.
 * When Sue from is bending over in her (very) string'd bath suit, Mick "Crocodile" Dundee is watching her from behind the bushes.

"Stans: Your ass is awesome."
 * In Pitch Black, when Fry is crawling into the cavern with the first sighting of monsters. On the commentary the director even says "Young boys everywhere, you're welcome."
 * In Serenity, right after one of River's hallucinations, the camera cuts to showing her lying facedown on the deck grating, and the camera angle is conspicuously positioned to give the viewer a perfect shot straight down her cleavage. And, of course, the countless shots of River's feet.
 * High School Musical 3 had a shot of Sharpay's butt that filled pretty much the entire screen.
 * The Courtship of Eddie's Father is about a widowed father and his son sizing up various candidates for second wife/stepmother.
 * The final poster of G.I. Joe the Rise of Cobra features all of the main characters, including The Baroness, but she is the only one facing the viewer, along with her body twisted in a Rob Liefield-style pose so her ass is as well. Then again, it's more or less in-character.
 * Anyone who has seen the second Transformers movie will realize from Megan Fox's very first scene that director Michael Bay has gone out of his way to not do anything to discourage this trope.
 * He asked some people why they watched the first one; "For the hot chick." So he decided to get it out of the way before he started.
 * The third film carries this to a new level. We first see the female main character dressed in a man's long shirt with tiny panties, as she ascends a staircase, with a tight focus on her legs. She is on camera for at least a minute before we see her face. The rest of the movie has her in either skin tight outfits or very short skirts and dresses, doing things like getting out of low-slung cars with her legs as the only visible part of her.
 * In Die Hard, the camera pans down just slightly but very noticeably to show that Bonnie Bedelia's jacket/blouse thing had opened up a bit, showing her slip.
 * In Cabin Fever there is a scene where the hot brunette walks across a grass field to a house. The shot builds out to a close up of her swaying butt, in jeans, and even slows down to slow-mo as it does so.
 * The introduction to an earlier scene is a slow pan over a sexy bikini-clad blonde laying on a raft.
 * A later scene featuring a topless woman is taken from exactly the right position so the we see her large breasts twice at once: directly from the side, and front-on via a reflection in a bathroom mirror.
 * Many reviewers have claimed that the subsequent leg-shaving scene focuses an inordinate amount of attention on the woman's breasts, despite it essentially being a psychological horror scene.
 * The sex scenes are filmed in such a way to maximize the display of breast-jigglage or booty-shaking.
 * The Lady in the Lake used the stylistic choice of filming every scene as it would be viewed by Philip Marlowe. In one instance, the woman he's talking to goes out of focus, because he's busy leering at her Sexy Secretary.
 * In Lost In Translation the background of the opening credits is a shot of Scarlett Johansson's behind. Interestingly enough, this scene was shot by Sofia Coppola, who acted out the shot herself first to make the actress more comfortable.
 * In Woody Allen's Bananas, it's done to comic effect with a leather clad secretary who brags she and her friends are going to have a porno party.
 * Troy Duffy got Julie Benz to be in his movie, The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day, and damn it all if he wasn't going to take full advantage of it for his male audience. But, to be fair, there is a hefty amount of Fan Service for the ladies as well, so we could just look at it as equal opportunity exploitation.
 * In Creature from the Black Lagoon there is a scene where the shapely Julie Adams is swimming in the eponymous lagoon. At one point she dives, causing the top of her body to submerge and the bottom to rise above the water and move right into the camera. For a brief moment almost the entire screen is filled by her ass.
 * Bitch Slap consists about 80 % of Male Gaze. It's fully, fatly justified to say the camera licks, caresses, and more or less dry humps its subjects - there are moments when the same shot of, say, the viewpoint gliding up a mile-long leg stepping out of a car, is actually repeated twice if not thrice, only to be followed by close examination of the curves that await up there, then brought to the finale with a face shot with plump lips and gleaming eyes.
 * Subverted in the car-wash scene of the original Bring It On. As Cliff approaches the carwash, we see through his viewpoint - until his sister Missy enters the frame at precisely the right height that her breasts are perfectly framed. Disturbingly, it appears that Cliff is able to recognise his sister's cleavage, which somewhat belies his apparent disgust when he realises who he is ogling.
 * Well, if they're brother and sister, when you spend that much time together, you're going to pick up on even the subtlest details, whether you want to or not.
 * The introduction of Grace, Vorelli's Replacement Lovely Assistant, has a slow pan up all the way from her feet to her head.
 * Subverted/reversed in Centurion, of all things: when Etain fights and kills, he is shirtless and she is fully clothed. She's gorgeous and frequently dressed in furs and eyeliner, but her clothes are never that revealing or titillating.
 * Occurs when Julie Warner's character is introduced in the Puppet Masters, but it's actually a plot point. After she Hangs a Lampshade on its occurrence, the lack of male gaze by the townsfolk is her first sign that something is very wrong.
 * In Arashi no Yoru ni, Gabu has a tendency to stare at Mei's arse, which the POV camera delightedly shows off. Which is a rather unusual example, given that Gabu is a wolf, Mei is a goat, and that he's staring because he wants to eat him. (apparently, anyway...)
 * Parodied in this Fan Art for the upcoming Avengers movie.
 * In Take The Lead, we have lead actor Antonio Banderas dancing a fiery tango with the movie's main antagonist, played by Katya Virshilas, who gets several long, lingering, even slow-motion shots of her legs while she spins, her breasts, her hips, and a few overhead shots that go straight down her cleavage. The studio probably could have saved a lot of money casting a stand-in for Mr. Banderas, who is mostly obscured for all but one brief shot where we see his face.
 * The first shot of Ann-Margret in the Elvis Presley vehicle Viva Las Vegas is of her legs only, walking into a garage where Elvis and another man are under a car. The camera then tracks up her body as the men get out from under the car, and cuts to an extreme close-up of her rear end as she walks away from them.
 * Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol features loads of tantalizing shots of Paula Patton and Lea Seydoux, zooming in on their sexy bodies and right down their cleavage.
 * The entrance of Vanessa Hudgens in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is this in every sense of the term (what with it being from Josh Hutcherson's POV and all). And as for the scene where she crawls out of a tunnel that's collapsing around her... did we mention the short shorts she wears for almost the entire movie? And that it's in 3D?
 * It's rare to find a Jessica Alba movie which doesn't use this trope.
 * At one point in Predators, the camera focuses on Isabelle's butt. She turns around, and finds that Stans was staring at it, annoying her.


 * This exclusive IMAX poster for TheAvengers.
 * Marilyn Monroe's entrance in Some Like It Hot.

Literature
"Harry: *narrating* One thing Spenser fails to mention is that the Faerie Queen has a great ass."
 * In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, when Esmeralda is being taken to the gallows, Victor Hugo spends an inordinate amount of page space describing her "long black hair... more lustrous than the raven's wing," her "half-naked shoulders" and "bare legs," and her desperate attempts to hold her garment closed with her teeth.
 * In a lot of Lin Carter's works, (particularly Zanthodon) he'll often spend a paragraph repeating descriptions of all the naked or scantily-clad female characters' attributes every couple of pages. You could make a drinking game out of all the times he uses the phrases like "flawless breasts", "supple body", "luscious mouth". Doesn't help that they are often threatened with rape by pirates or savages every few chapters as well.
 * A short story by French author Anna Gavalda centers around the Male Gaze. The protagonist, a single woman, goes to the bar in search of some fun. A man starts talking to her boobs, but she refuses to acknowledge him. He even switches language from French to English, before he thinks to look two decimeters higher. "Fancy that! I have a face, too!" she thinks, before telling him off.
 * Milton's frequent descriptions of the beautiful, graceful Eve in Paradise Lost.
 * Almost every single description of a female character in the entirety of The Dresden Files.


 * Elizabeth George is guily of this in her book Careless in red, where everyone, including the women make asessments of the women's looks by zooming in on their body type and clothing. This is where we get women doing almost pornographic descriptions of other women "as if to check out the competetion", as George puts it although there is no man around. For some reason all the characters also seems to have the same standards of beauty, and write off women who are two fat or too skinny as impossible love interests for the victim, since "she could never be the subject of a young man's lustful gaze".
 * John Carter of Mars is an officer and a gentleman. Except for a reference to Dejah Thoris' 'perfectly symetrical figure' and an occasional 'bare shoulder' you would never guess he is surrounded by pulchritudinous damsels clad in nothing more than leather straps and jewelry.

Live Action TV

 * The majority of Charmed consisted of butt and cleavage-shots.
 * The Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Let He Who Is Without Sin" featured a pointless close-up of Vanessa Williams' rear as she walked past the camera.
 * Any episode of Star Trek set on Risa features this in spades.
 * Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (the second, inferior one) gives the camera a definite fixation on then Pink Ranger Kat, most notably a very blatant ass shot during a jungle scene. Tanya, the then Yellow, seems to escape this.
 * Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon also featured a blatant ass shot as Rei, dressed as a pop star for a pseudo-concert, walked towards her dressing room. Of note is the fact that this show was a live-action one about five Magical Girls in schoolgirl outfits; a large portion of the show featured significant Male Gaze on general principle.
 * Dark Angel has this in spades. With hundreds of shots of Jessica Alba's ass (most notably in the pilot when Logan catches Max robbing him, and in the episode "Haven" where we get a shot of Max bending over a pool table which actually is from the POV of a male character - he even says "Just enjoying the view"). Half the time that Alec's on a mission with Max or standing next to her, etc. His gaze never goes above her neckline.
 * And then there was "Fuhgeddaboudit," which began with a pan up our heroine's legs clad in a very short skirt.
 * The Painkiller Jane TV series used this a couple of times in the assassination plot/time loop episode: we get to see Jane put her pants on over that nice black pair of panties (from the front, showing off her nice legs), and see the barely-clad ass of the girl Connor was having sex with...
 * On Seacht, kisses between Lipstick Lesbian couples far outnumber any others.
 * Supernatural seem to go out of their way to try and balance it out. To make up for the cleavage shots, we get a Sammy-In-A-Towel coming out of the shower. To make up for the demon sluttiness, we get two women in "The Kids Are Alright" ogling Dean's arse and obviously thinking that they would love to have him as a sex toy. And while they certainly have a hot woman every episode, they pay just as much loving attention to the male leads' attributes - even going as far to pan up a sleeping Dean's naked legs in an early Season One episode.
 * And how about the slow, slow pan up from 80's-hookerwear-clad Alex Drake's feet in the Ashes to Ashes pilot? (Not to mention that she went for a really unlikely length of time without changing clothes.)
 * Doctor Who- Romana I is introduced via a pan up her entire body, "The Girl in the Fireplace" has a pan across Billie Piper's tight T-shirt and jeans-clad body, and Catherine Tate's cleavage has a special place in Who fandom. Much like Supernatural, they do attempt to balance this - Naked Jack, anybody?
 * Peri was introduced with a pan up her bikini-clad body. In one of the few episodes directed by a woman, oddly. Since the producer insisted on Peri revealing as much flesh as possible, the director may not have had a say in the matter.
 * Peri was brought back in the awful "Dimensions in Time" Who/Eastenders Crossover short. One of the scenes was of her boinging across the square in a low-cut top... towards the camera.

"Hazel: When I confronted him about it he was so condescending! He laughed at me, then he undressed me with his eyes; then he had his way with me, with his eyes. Liz: Ugh, the Male Gaze... Hazel: Yeah, they're all a bunch of gays..."
 * Who can forget the Wardrobe Malfunction? (There was an interview with Nicola Bryant who was surprised they left that in)
 * The scene in "The Mind Robber" where Jamie and Zoe are clinging to the console, which has been framed to very prominently display Wendy Padbury's bottom.
 * Karen Gillian's introduction, in a strong contrast with Rose, Martha, and Donna's first appearances, was a slow lingering shot from her legs up, while she was dressed in her police woman kissogram costume. Complete with Shaking Her Hair Loose when she takes off her cap.
 * 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).
 * Slings and Arrows does an appropriately meta version of this: the husband of the Minister of Culture comes to several performances, and brings binoculars. There's always a brief shot through the binoculars, in which we see that he's focusing on the lead actress's cleavage.
 * Baywatch.
 * Every episode of the 2008 Knight Rider series has one of the lead females run around in a bikini or underwear for some obscure reason.
 * When Rachel Luttrell was pregnant on Stargate Atlantis and her chest grew accordingly, directors always made sure that her cleavage stayed in frame, even at the expense of the top half of the heads of main characters who dared to be standing and talking while Teyla sat.
 * Happens from time to time on The Sarah Connor Chronicles, with long, slow tracking shots of Cameron's well-formed behind as she slowly, deliberately walks along.
 * Smallville: Camera focusing mostly on Lana Lang's body (her body-double's, actually) doing cartwheels in a tiny red bathing suit in episode "Nicodemus". Pretty much half of the episode "Exposed", which features plenty of gorgeous, mostly naked strippers, including Lois Lane. Half of the scenes with Lois Lane in general, e.g. "Aqua": Lois getting out of the water, wearing the tiniest bikini that could be found while the camera crawls lovingly over her body in (what else) slow motion.
 * Kelly Hu spent a fair proportion of the pilot episode of Martial Law hanging around in a bikini. For that matter, pick a scene in The Scorpion King with her in it.
 * In an episode of NCIS, Tony decides to snap a picture of Ziva's tightly-clad backside when she bends over at a crime scene. Result: Gibbs Slap.
 * Burn Notice, an otherwise excellent show, adores this trope. Their idea of an "establishing shot" seems to be an aerial view of Miami, and then a rather longer shot of random bikini-clad T&A jiggling by. Faces are optional. They also use these shots as the occasional bumper between scenes. Semi-justified, since Micheal hung out at the beach after getting burned, knowing suit-wearing bad guys would stick out.
 * This may be a harkening back to Miami Vice, which put two of these occurances in the opening credits.
 * Chuck's Sarah Walker has been the subject of a quite a few male gaze moments. Most of the time the camera plays it straight, because honestly, you don't need to work hard to make the sight of Yvonne Strahovski in her underwear look sexy. But sometimes it goes into outright leering territory, from Chuck's fantasy of her cartwheeling into the Buy More in her Orange Orange tank top to the shots from behind when she was dressed in only a tank top and panties. At least Chuck himself is respectful of women.
 * Averted just the once when Morgan got his own Buy More Wind Machine moment in "Chuck Versus the Tooth".
 * In "Chuck Versus the Fear of Death," they went out of their way with the gaze when it came to Greta, both in terms of the show's camera angles and in-character camera shots as the Buy More team stalked her around the building.
 * Spoofed in Cybill, when the title character starred in an X-Files rip-off called Lifeforms. The pilot episode featured countless shots of her legs and cleavage and very few of her face. This annoys her at first, but Cybill soon uses the fact that her legs are the most popular thing in the show to bully the male star and showrunner into rehiring the original creator.
 * Lampshaded on Top Gear, when May is at a Southern California beach talking about the Honda FCX. The cameraman turns to focus on a trio of convenient volleyball-playing girls, and May has to clear his throat to get his attention back.
 * The first episode of That 70s Show features a POV shot as Eric goes into Donna's house. When Donna's mom appears, the camera goes straight to her cleavage.
 * Both present and averted in True Blood lots of lingering shots of sexy women dancing, breasts, butts, and legs, but also shots of naked men's bottoms, chests, clothed crotches, and the like. Mostly uses Jason Stackhouse, but Sam and Lafayette get shown that way too.
 * Really strong in the introduction to Xena - the camera pans up her legs as she fastens her boots, up her body, lingers on her breasts as she fastens the straps of her armor, etc. Occurred pretty frequently in the show as well, especially any that involved Xena dancing.
 * Applied rather literally in the Comedy Central series Secret Girlfriend, as the camera is at all times the POV of the main (male) character, a Heroic Mime who is "played" by the (presumably male) viewer, in a form of second-person television.
 * The first episode of UFO opens with a hemline-level view of a mini-skirted dolly bird sashaying away from the camera. It might have been set in The Eighties, but the mentality was strictly that of The Seventies!
 * Battlestar Galactica. In "Sacrifice" Starbuck has been called on to handle a hostage situation while on leave on Cloud Nine, so she's briefing the marines in a cocktail dress. When her eyes go off them for a second the camera quickly dips down to her cleavage, mimicking what the marines are undoubtedly looking at in that moment.
 * Cuddy from House wears unusually tight clothing for a professional woman, and the camera increasingly lingers on her rear or cleavage as the series goes on. Not to mention her strip scene in House's fantasy at the end of season 4.
 * Mad Men has the walking, talking embodiment of this trope in Joan Holloway. There's this so-meta-it-hurts shot in the episode where they're brainstorming for Belle Jolie that has Joan approach what she knows is two-way glass (with a bunch of horny ad execs behind it), turn around, and bends over. The camera goes right where you'd expect it to.
 * The Big Bang Theory: Penny, the show's only major female character, starts off as a generic girlfriend character with literally no purpose except to look cute. Thankfully, the writers eventually gave her a personality and role beyond eye-candy. NPR article.
 * The CSI Verse has a lot of this (especially CSI: Miami).
 * In an episode of Season 8 of Twenty Four, Chloe, queen of sarcasm, is berating a colleague for not doing his job properly because he's checking out Katie Sackhoff. As she leaves, she sarcastically asks why he doesn't just stare at her rear as she walks away. So he and the camera does.
 * At about 0:17 in this promo for the Lifetime Channel's show, The Protector.
 * In British gardening show Ground Force, the cameraman is extremely skilled at getting downblouse shots on notoriously bra-less gardener Charlie Dimmock. Her omission of bra and preference for t-shirts with low or loose necks assured a large male following for the show, some of whom even knew which end of a spade goes in the ground. And the same camera team also knew their business when it rained and Charlie was working in the wet..
 * Thirty Rock: Liz Lemon knows all about this trope. Her 'mentee' Hazel Wassername however...

Professional Wrestling

 * Turn on any WWE show ever. Chances are, if a woman is onscreen, her name isn't Linda McMahon, and she's wrestling, the camera is focusing on her breasts falling out of her top, jiggling as she moves, or competing for who can get the most ass shots.
 * Or old-timers Mae Young and the late Fabulous Moolah.
 * "Extreme Expose": The segment being the part in the show where three scantily clad women - one just barely over the age of 18 - dance to club music in the ring. It started as the 18-year-old's way to show off how much of an "exhibitionist" she was.

Tabletop Games

 * In the early days of Dungeons and Dragons, it was common to see published modules describe any female characters (if they existed at all) in detail, usually with terms like "voluptuous" or "svelte", while neglecting to give important male NPCs so much as a hair color.

Videogames
See also: Third Person Seductress ""This is no time to ogle pretty girls, son!""
 * Many Dating Sim games (especially eroge) in which the player is male and the haremettes are female go as far as to obscure the male Player Character in every CG, usually not even drawing his face. In this instance, however, the effect is largely to help the player step into the shoes of the player character and so is more akin to Heroic Mime.
 * Some sex scenes even go so far as to make the player character (including the part of him that's actually, uh, interacting with the female he's having sex with) invisible, leading to unintended Squick.
 * It's almost easier to list aversions than anything. Yume Miru Kusuri is unusual for frequently showing its protagonist Kouhei (as well as not hiding his eyes).
 * Played for laughs in Warriors Orochi 3: Guest Fighter Ayane briefly crosses blades with Yoshitsune Minamoto. Their fight is cut short when Yoshitsune catches a glimps of Ayane's ample chest, and he becomes too flustered to continue fighting her. He spends a lot of time afterwards insisting Ayane dress in something less Stripperific.
 * Bayonetta, though the game is rather campy already and very overt about its fanservice in the first place.
 * Metal Gear Solid: after the scene where Solid Snake first meets Meryl, there is an extended shot (in slow motion) of her buttocks as she is leaving. It was intended to draw attention to her unique walk so she could be identified in disguise, but it was so pronounced and out of place that even lovers of Fan Service found it creepy.
 * The third game had a first person 'Snake Cam' at certain points during cutscenes, and when the female character EVA was around pressing the button would often greet the viewer with an extended shot focused on her breasts, either intentionally (Snake looking) or unintentionally (EVA showing him).
 * Hideo Kojima even managed to turn this into a narrative device; later in the game after falling in love with EVA, the Snake Cam focuses solely on her face.
 * The director even went so far as to include some bonus 'Peep Show' segments on the Director's Cut edition, which involved the scenes with EVA recut in various ways, with her dressed in an interesting alternate outfit.
 * He also did a recut scene of a segment where Snake undressed an attractive male, which raises some awkward questions about the director. Especially when it's taken into account the way the games are notorious for dressing men in Spy Catsuits and having long, lingering shots on their buttocks too, and also that the lead character always ends up shirtless at some point in his adventure. Hell, Metal Gear Solid's penultimate battle is a shirtless fistfight on top of a Humongous Mecha.
 * Outside of the recut sections, notice too that holding the button around Bishonen Raikov reveals Snake's eyes to be permanently fixed on Raikov's junk.
 * MGS2's Raiden had a segment where he ran around stark staring naked, hands over his junk. (During this segment, he could run and dodge, but could not do anything that would require his hands to be elsewhere than covering himself up.)
 * In Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots, the cutscenes before each Beauty boss fight spend a lot of time behind the ladies as they are on all fours. Or anything else, really, especially after they're out of their One-Winged Angel form and in catsuits. This happens to be when their mental instability is usually underlined in bright red marker, making it rather difficult for players to be titillated. Snake gets quite a bit of this treatment in cutscenes involving him as well.
 * Hide for a few minutes and every Beauty fight becomes a fashion show.
 * Parodied in Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots, when Otacon and Naomi are using the computer together. His webcam feed is displayed on his laptop, as they work, and while Otacon isn't looking at the video, he's clearly angled it specifically to video Naomi's cleavage. When Naomi tries to look at what's on the screen, he panics and tries to point the camera away so that she doesn't notice. She does, but she actually seems quite pleased.
 * And then, later, he's spying on her and her comrades by positioning a tiny invisible robot between her legs. The target displaying what Otacon is most focused on at any one time flips back and forth from whoever's talking to Naomi's feet, buttocks, or thighs. He does go in for a Panty Shot, but she notices the robot a fraction of a second beforehand and one of her coworkers destroys it.
 * In Metal Gear Solid 2, you can photograph various Page Three Stunna pictures and send them to Otacon, to which he has various amused/aroused responses. You can also send him either pin-ups of semi-naked men or photos of a burly bisexual man, which cause him to question Snake's (and the assumed male player's) orientation.
 * In First-Person Shooter SiN Episodes (i.e. a game in which the camera angles are almost entirely up to the player), the character of Jessica Cannon wears a Spy Catsuit that, when viewed from behind, is apparently designed to draw attention to her rear end.
 * Several in Final Fantasy.
 * Final Fantasy VII - Tifa's victory pose.
 * Final Fantasy IX - FMV with Daggar atop Lindblum castle playing with the pigeons.
 * Final Fantasy X - Lulu's victory pose consists of leaning forwards towards the camera to give it a better view of her cleavage.
 * During his review of FF X, The Spoony One used a counter to keep track of the number of times that the camera was angled such that you got a close-up of someone's ass in the foreground while the important bit happened in the background. To be fair, a significant portion of the asses belonged to men (or Ronso's).
 * Played with in an early scene in the same game where Tidus snatches a person's binoculars and looks around with them, lingering at one point over Lulu's breasts. A similar joke occurs in Final Fantasy X 2, in which Logos is supposed to be showing a sphere of the events they just encountered in Bevelle but the video opens with a long shot of the camera pointed at Yuna's butt. He attempts to pawn off the blame on Ormi, which is quickly deflected when Ormi appears in the same shot.
 * Final Fantasy XII - There's a scene early on where Penelo is trying to talk Vaan out of doing the heist he's about to attempt, and one shot inexplicably centers around her torso. Her chest and crotch are in the shot. Her face isn't.
 * Additionally, Fran's metallic thong seems to have magic camera-attracting abilities. Either that or her ass does.
 * Lara Croft suffers from this in many ways in the Tomb Raider games; not only does she possess somewhat... exaggerated attributes in the bosom and rear end departments, but the clothes she wears (particularly in the earlier games) are designed to enhance them even further. Coupled with this is the fact that she is mostly viewed from behind during the game (partly as a necessity of the game mechanics), and it's not hard to imagine what many gamers of the male persuasion would be thinking about when playing the game.
 * A very, VERY common mod for the early Tomb Raider PC games was called Nude Raider, which made a very... subtle... change to Lara's outfit. (It removed it, and in some versions of the mod, changed her player model to give more detail to her anatomy). There was a print advertisement for a video game cheat device (Gameshark) based on this mod. In it, a (insinuated to be) nude Lara is seen walking off "screen", a bikini flying away from her, with the caption "Want the code?"
 * This got even worse in Tomb Raider Anniversary, where the updated graphics and animation allowed the developer to do the same game except with more fanservice--as Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw notes in his review, when she comes out of the water she's realistically wet and glistening, and if you leave the game idle for a while she does these shamelessly erotic stretches.
 * Any leftover modesty leaves in Underworld, where Lara dons a swimsuit-leotard for significant portions of the game.
 * Zero Suit Samus is introduced in The Subspace Emissary, the Adventure Mode of Super Smash Bros Brawl, with her dropping to the ground from an air vent followed by a slow pan from her legs to her face. Clad in a Spy Catsuit as she is, this is hardly surprising.
 * Of course, it does build suspension and makes it all the more powerful when she does show her face near the end of the clip.
 * The Smash Bros Brawl website plays Equal Opportunity with this, related to Metal Gear above. When describing Snake's Final Smash, one of the stills is of Snake (also in a Spy Catsuit, of course) as he's climbing down the ladder, and his ass pretty much fills the screen.
 * This Japanese ad for Metroid: Zero Mission has a Japanese glamour model as Samus, and takes great advantage of it, complete with a butt shot.
 * Mass Effect introduces Sha'ira, the Asari Consort, with a lingering shot of her behind as she walks upstairs.
 * And later, during a heterosexual sex scene, the camera lingers much more on the female partner in the relationship... even if you're playing her.
 * Mass Effect 2 has a scene with Miranda Lawson, a character who wears a skintight catsuit, in which she gives you a choice to take on a side quest. The choice menu comes up right as the camera holds on a view of her butt that takes up most of the screen. In fact, until the player makes a conversation choice, the camera stays on this shot.
 * Samara seems to have the camera more interested in her body than her face, as well.
 * Used in Dragon Quest VIII when Angelo introduces himself to Jessica.
 * And again when Prince Charmles's father tries to convince him that marrying a princess isn't so bad... by using Jessica as a visual illustration of "Va-va-VOOM".
 * Lampshaded in Shadow Hearts 3, where the end of the scene where Johnny and Shania meet has an actual, on-screen arrow pointing from Johnny's eyes to Shania's chest. Also the Transformation Sequence. Dear God, the Transformation Sequence.
 * As always, trailers are often the worst offenders. Anyone catch that new Final Fantasy trailer?
 * In Devil May Cry 4: As Nero approaches the drawbridge, he witnesses Gloria as she engages several mooks in badass combat. During the fight, she spams split-related attacks, and the camera never misses an opportunity to pan across the area between her legs.
 * In Halo, whenever Cortana's visible, the camera does it's best to show off her translucent assets. Taken to the max during Halo 3's campaign, when occasionally Cortana would flash up on screen, say something cryptic, and then disappear.
 * Sheva's introduction in Resident Evil 5 starts with a long closeup of her buttocks.
 * Rumble Roses has lots but the one that really stands out is when a character is ready to be finished off with a "humiliation move".
 * In the Play Station 2 survival horror game Michigan: Report From Hell, you are a cameraman whose job is to keep the camera rolling and keep on shooting a number of various sexy female reporters (if one dies another replaces them, though there is a set number) going above and beyond the call of duty in delivering their news reports. Even as Michigan City goes to hell (imagine this as the The Blair Witch Project meets The Mist). You can take pictures of anything, for which you score points, with "erotic" shots getting "erotic" points. If you score enough "erotic" points overall, you get the Golden Ending where whatever sexy female reporter with whom you scored enough erotic points with, will proceed to pose, parade, and pole dance for you in sexy lingerie whether she actually lived or died by the game end.
 * The "points for erotic photos" gimmick was replicated in Dead Rising, with the added Squick bonus that the women are zombies.
 * Dead Rising also includes a hilarious Lampshade Hanging when Isabella is revealed via a POV pan-up from the knees - only for a fat guy to jump in Frank's way.

""You have some interesting... skills, for a reporter.""
 * In Dead Rising 2, Chuck and Hot Scoop Reporter Rebecca Chang come up against a locked door. Rebecca then bends over to pick the lock. Chuck, meanwhile, stares at her..."assets".


 * Wanna try something fun? Next time you're playing Oblivion, choose a female character, turn the camera around until it's facing the character's front, then zoom in. Guess where it ends up.
 * Jak and Daxter's Daxter takes a couple opportunities to check out his female friends' cleavage during the course of the series. At least he looks them in the face first, though.
 * Fallout 3 is a game in which the PCs sex is supposed to be determined by the player, however in many places the game subtly assumes that the PC is male; for example, friendly female NPCs are generally slightly flirtatious, whereas friendly male NPCs tend towards bluff camaraderie.
 * Borderlands has some of this in the Secret Armory DLC. There are wanted posters for the player characters and the pictures of Brick, Mordecai and Roland show their faces as usual, but for Lilith, her picture is focussed, uh... lower.
 * In games where you get to create your character's appearance, it's usually tough to design a woman, or even a non-human female, smaller than a C cup.
 * The prostitute in the single-player intro part of Age of Conan reacts to all PCs as if they were men.
 * No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: When Travis goes to the UAA office for the first time, he follows behind Sylvia, bending over low enough to put his face about 6 inches from her butt.
 * This trope is particularly blatant near the start of Prince of Persia Warrior Within, in which a female antagonist enters the scene and the camera spends several seconds focused on her thong-clad ass.
 * Fear Effect. We get several close ups of Hana's T'n'A (Tits and Ass) in both games. An in universe example is averted when Hana threatens to kill Deke for peeking at her.
 * Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is a huge example of this, since the game was supposely a romantic comedy with erotic overtones (though it failed horribly). Just as an example, the introductory FMV is just the female lead talking about the game as the camera zooms in to her breast.
 * Poison in Street Fighter X Tekken provokes this a LOT. Her versus screen, victory and win screen poses all focus on this, and her special intro with Hugo before a fight outright shoves this in the player's face.

Webcomics
"P-man-4: Boobs and monocle! That's her! Supervillainess: It's a different face! And totally different hairstyle! Gennaro: She had hair?"
 * Addressed in this strip of Cinema Bums in reference to the portrayal of Catwoman in Batman: Arkham City.
 * Discussed in the context of Satan playing video games in this strip of Dinosaur Comics.
 * Shown in this Loserz strip.
 * Sluggy Freelance:
 * Oasis seems to get more chest/butt closeups than anyone else during the big "Dangerous Days Ahead" battle. Like, for example, this strip.
 * Parodied later in the series when Sasha dresses up as the supervillainess Monicruel. While another female supervillain can see through the Paper-Thin Disguise, none of the male supervilains can because all they noticed about Monicruel's appearance was that she had big boobs and wore a monocle. Long as Sasha's got those, they can't tell the two women apart, even when they're right next to each other, having a catfight.


 * Ronin Galaxy: During the beginning chapter two conflict, Leona’s breasts manage to make it into just about every frame of every. Single. Page.
 * There is a huge amount of ass shots in Better Days. This was lampshaded fairly early on.
 * Silent Hill: Promise The comic often gives a nice view of Vanessa's large chest or butt. Additionally, her character portrait is never shown wearing the heavy jacket she always has on.
 * The Ciem Webcomic Series has plenty of shots of Candi looking almost Badass Adorable, and she gets naked a lot more than anyone else. By contrast, her male counterparts are almost never nude, and have flat personalities most of the time. Of the hundreds of pictures in the piece, only one of them that's even remotely Fan Service-oriented constitutes Eating the Eye Candy.
 * The one right before Candi and Denny have sex in chapter 18.
 * Unless the Attempted Rape scene turns you on, in which case you may have other issues.
 * Page 192 of Las Lindas has Miles give Sarah's assets a lingering gaze when he finds out shes turning 18. He quickly learns not to do it again.
 * Parodied in Hark a Vagrant's "STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS" and "Sexy Batman" strips. The Strong Female Characters are horrible people in outrageously Stripperific outfits and poses who insist that because they can inflict random violence on men that "sexism is over". Sexy Batman is just Batman done like a stereotypical female comic book character, making cartoonishly seductive comments towards Catwoman, Playing to The Fetishes and constantly posed to show his butt. It's stupid, the implication being that it looks just as stupid when done to girl characters.

Web Original

 * In Echo Chamber, whenever Porn Girl or Shannon enter a scene, they immediately steal the focus away from whatever was in frame beforehand. Of course, this is an in-universe example, since Zack, the cameraman, is a character, and Zack likes boobies.
 * Controversial Lonelygirl15 episode "Girl Tied Up" features a pan over Emma as she lies tied up on a bed. Suspiciously, the thumbnail for this video on YouTube is of the moment where it passes her cleavage; consequently this is the most watched LG15 video on that site, but one of the lowest rated. Particularly disturbing since the film is supposed to be being shot by the adult Dr. Hart, and Emma is 15. Surprisingly enough, the Creator responsible for this video was Amanda Goodfried. When fans asked her about the episode, she simply replied, "I know what sells."
 * Parodied in the Kate Modern episodes "Birdwatching" and "Much, Much Worse". In both cases it is implied that the cameramen - Gavin and Toe respectively - are perhaps enjoying their camerawork a little too much.
 * Parodied in the web show The Guild. The opening theme features a close-up of each character in turn, and when it gets to Clara (a character with considerable 'assets'), the camera stops on her breasts, then just gets a very quick shot of her face before moving on.
 * There's a lot of cleavage in The Black Legend episode of EPICMEALTIME. Also in the Maximum Mac and Cheese Recap Special.
 * Tobuscus has a Catch Phrase specifically for occurrences of this in his videos: "Hot hot hot", said at Motor Mouth velocity and frequently a distraction from whatever he was talking about at the time.
 * While all pervs, the ladies and gentlemen of That Guy With The Glasses will always point this out in a disparaging way when they review something. Regarding their own Fan Service, the Female Gaze is much more common.

Western Animation

 * Constantly spoofed and played straight with Foxxy on Drawn Together, especially when she's been soaked with liquid.
 * Used on the various Stripperiffic female villains and superheroines in Justice League. When the The Royal Flush members were being introduced one by one, Joker gave a "Hmm..." when the camera panned to Queen's legs before rising to display her face.
 * Spoofed in The Powerpuff Girls - we never see Ms. Bellum's face, so when she speaks, the camera cuts to her chest.
 * Loonatics Unleashed - we come back from a commercial to a shot of Lexi Bunny's tail and her backside as she Sexy Walks away from the camera toward Ace.
 * A.T.O.M - The suiting up shots of the team show the guys putting on helmets and gloves, buckling seatbelts. Lioness? We get a worm's eye view shot from behind of her straddling her motorcycle, or a close shot of her zipping her battle outfit over her breasts.
 * An episode of the early '90s X-Men animated series, in which Rogue is blasted by Apocalypse so hard her normally-indestructible bomber jacket is burned away (though her even-more-indestructible tights, hair, and flesh are not), she collapses to the ground, the camera positioned behind her...and you are suddenly very aware that she is wearing indestructible spandex.
 * An episode of Animaniacs the Warner siblings annoy an airline passenger who calls for the stewardess, the original Hello, Nurse!, to escort them away. She bends over to talk to Yakko and Wakko, who howl and drool over her. Their eyes are obviously focused on her breasts, even though this is (arguably) a kid's cartoon.
 * In Totally Spies about half the camera shots are focused on the girl's breasts as they are about to speak or when they crash into each other the camera is often focused their butts as they are lying on the floor.
 * Relentlessly spoofed in these captions
 * Kim Possible has her fair amount of close up butt shots.
 * In one episode of Winx Club, one scene cuts from a close up of a supporting character to a shot of Stella's rear as she is trying out a skirt. The transformations are full of these, especially the newest ones.
 * In an episode of Inspector Gadget Gadget meets his favorite actress Lana Lamore he begins to examine her with gadget goggles he noticeably stops on her breasts at one point and shouts his catchphrase "Wowzers!", even though this was a kid's show.
 * Tex Avery often played this for laughs (same as everything else). In Who Killed Who, a flashlight spot scans a wall full of hanging pictures, including one of a scantily clad woman with a fur coat, but when the spot returns to the picture, the woman is covered up. Similarly, in Wild And Wolfy, the camera follows a mug of beer past a nude painting covered up by the bartender, who, when the camera comes back, states that he doesn't move for the rest of the picture. (When he does, however, )
 * Both main girls in Iron Man: Armored Adventures get a few of these throughout the series, especially the beautiful Action Girl Whitney Stane, whose skirt provides plenty of 'interesting' angles for the camera to play around with.
 * Used Up to Eleven on Ty Lee in the Beach Episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not to mention a scene where Azula leaps right over Sokka's head as they're going through opposite ends of a crevice; it's pretty obvious what his eyes travel over. Just a coincidence? Then why does it happen in slow motion?
 * Because a depowered Azula just avoided a fully powered Aang and Toph. And being a non-bender, Sokka had to manually climb up and through a giant rock wall, so seeing Azula fly past him just as he was getting to the battle, his eyes only looked her over because she jumping over him to the other side, and his reaction, like the audience's, is suitably 'Did she just do that? Are you serious?!'
 * In Justice League Crisis On Two Earths, our first sight of Wonder Woman is a shot centered on her ass.
 * In Wolverine and the X-Men, there are a few shots where the camera angle is so that about 1/2 of the shot is a female character's ass, the other half is the background and the other characters in the scene.
 * Similar shots appear in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Black Widow's behind in particular got a lot of screentime during the first season.
 * Interestingly on Captain Planet and the Planeteers, both the first shot of Linka in the first episode and the first shot of her in the opening of every episode is a pan up her legs...
 * Happens in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends the first time Iceman and Firestar are introduced to Storm. The view cuts to Iceman's POV who is looking her over from her legs upwards, whilst proclaiming "Wow". When he gets to Storm's face, she looks a little annoyed, prompting Iceman to stutter; "Uh, I mean, hi!"
 * In the Direct-to-Video Wonder Woman movie, her "suit-up" sequence includes a close up of Diana's uncovered chest as she pulls her one-piece up.
 * In the Star Wars the Clone Wars episode "Heroes on Both Sides", Ahsoka asks a Separatist boy around her age if she looks bad (as in the good/evil sense) to him. Cue slow pan from legs to head, and the obviously flirtatious response of "not bad at all." Ahsoka lampshades it on the spot.
 * The "Spider-Baby" skit on MAD featured infant Peter Parker meeting his new babysitter, a full-grown Mary Jane. The camera (assumingly from Peter's POV) slowly closes in on her chest for two seconds as she asks "is somebody hungry?"
 * In the opening theme of Generator Rex, Dr. Holiday shows up after the camera pulls away from...you guessed it, her chest.
 * Happens all the time on Archer, sometimes with Archer himself.
 * (Probably) Not in a sexual manner, but Razzaroo's had many pictures involving shots of her friends asses in the first My Little Pony special.
 * Also (probably) not intended in a sexual matter, but My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has a surprisingly high amounts of pony ass (referred to by the Periphery Demographic as "plot").
 * During the Regular Show episode "Slam Dunk", Margaret rides by the boys, and we are treated to a lingering gaze of her ass, complete with appropriate male gaze music.

Other

 * According to Sarah Palin Newsweek's cover is this in context that they used a cover from Runner's World and added a new caption!
 * A New York magazine article discussing flash mobs and other public pranks showed a picture of one of them, where a group of people all simultaneously took the Subway wearing no pants. Despite the fact that there are at least a half-dozen men in the picture, the camera is looking up the subway stairs at the one woman in lacy lingerie, naturally centered and in-focus.
 * Professional women's beach volleyball.
 * According to this interview, Inoue Meimy has a Male Gaze. She says she likes females, but specifically through a Male Gaze and not a Female Gaze despite being female.
 * This footage of The Runaways begins with a five-second close-up of Cherie Currie's backside.
 * Happened to Peggy Bunker on The Daily Buzz while she was reading a story on breast implants, with some Tempting Fate beforehand and exasperated reaction afterward.
 * A cameraman at a 2012 National Hockey League playoff game between the Flyers and Penguins accidentally broadcast a fine example.
 * A Slate.com article about Alien chose as the header picture a shot of Ellen Ripley bending over in her panties. Amusingly, the text of the article notes how the film is over-analyzed as a piece of feminist art.