Absolute Cleavage



""You know what's keeping that dress on? Three city ordinances!""

- Red Skelton

If there is a low-cut outfit, then there is Absolute Cleavage. This is when a dress or top is specifically cut to show the entirety of the wearer's cleavage and the top bit of her stomach. Or the bottom bit, if they really want to court tabloid immortality.

A Spy Catsuit is frequently one zipper away from this Trope. Very slightly justified in that, if you're dumb enough to wear a tight-fitting catsuit on a spy mission, unzipping the front will give you a lot more mobility in the arms and shoulders.

There may be a bra underneath, but generally there isn't. In any kind of real-world or live-action context, generally requires some form of adhesive to avoid a Wardrobe Malfunction.

Any woman who ends up in an outfit like this is probably Ms. Fanservice.

Compare Sideboob, Underboobs, Impossibly Low Neckline, Cleavage Window.

Its Spear Counterpart can usually be found on the Walking Shirtless Scene.

Advertising

 * The female characters in Orangina feature both this and Sideboob.

Anime and Manga
"Saito: (Jaw Drop) Kirche! Saito's sword: Oh- Kirche: How do I look? Kirche: Hehehe. <3 Isn't this gown pretty? (points with a hand, almost groping herself) The chest area is specially adjusted. Saito: (blushing profusely) Wa- Ah- Ah! Very grand!"
 * In Ah! My Goddess, one of Urd's signature dresses features this, her being the seductress of The Three Faces of Eve. She apparently got her dress sense from her mother, demon queen Hild.
 * Blue Drop: Pretty much all of the Arume uniforms.
 * Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Precia Testarossa's outfit.
 * Sprocket from the Viewtiful Joe anime kept featuring this, despite how often she'd try to zip her suit up.
 * Bleach: Matsumoto Rangiku, who uses it to her advantage. Tia Harribel goes from showing the lower half of her breasts to everything but the nipples.
 * Kalifa from One Piece, and, recently, most of the residents of Amazon Lily (notably, Boa Hancock). Nico Robin also fits the bill in certain outfits.
 * Macross Frontier: A male example: Brera Sterne, whose outfit has a gaping hole from the collarbone to as low beneath the abdomen as one could possibly get without something popping out.
 * Several incarnations of Cutey Honey.
 * Character designer Uno Makoto:
 * Dragonaut: The Resonance: All female dresses.
 * Witchblade: all the female characters in their witchblade form. Of course, that is only being true to the original comics.
 * Gravion: Most of Mizuki's outfits.
 * Trinity Blood: Sister Monica Argento. Apparently in the post-apocalyptic vampire world, the dress code for nuns has loosened somewhat.
 * Princess Kraehe of Princess Tutu, whose outfit manages to be backless as well.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima! has Princess Theodora, who somehow manages to have both this and Underboobs on the same outfit.
 * Rosemon X-Antibody from Digimon, with the only thing covering her upper body being a tiny red vest.
 * Fasalina from Gun X Sword.
 * In NEEDLESS, Riru has absolute cleavage so absolute that there is barely anything covering her boobs at all.
 * Risty from Queen's Blade gains this after doing an Evil Makeover to the point where the only thing holding it on has to be magic.
 * Heroic Age: Nilval Nephew and Prome O. Prome's outfit is almost certainly reliant on Barbie Doll Anatomy to avoid indecency.
 * Cecile of Code Geass dresses up rather provocatively in one episode during a formal meeting. In the next episode, Milly dresses up like this during the pre-wedding ceremony between Prince Odysseus and the Tian Zi.
 * Early Inuyasha villain Yura of The Hair makes use of this trope.
 * Angel and Ultear of Fairy Tail like this. It's more notable with Ultear because up until she donned it she'd been wearing a gorgeous, tame kimono.
 * Mirajane also when
 * Erza sports this.
 * Lucy wears her spa robe in this fashion.
 * Gonk!Virgo has this as well, because she's just too fat for her blouse to hold it all in.
 * Nyuu/Lucy from Elfen Lied, though her breasts are much smaller in the anime.
 * Vorona from Durarara!! can't seem to find the energy to zip up her biker suit...
 * Kaolinite from Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon sports one of these.
 * In Urusei Yatsura, Oyuki usually sports a white Kimono, but for informal events she'll often take it off revealing an orange Absolute Cleavage swimsuit-type outfit.
 * Adelheid Suzuki from Katekyo Hitman Reborn has this after activating her Shimon Ring.
 * Kureha from Tokko. Her standard outfit is an unzipped leather jacket with no shirt or bra underneath.
 * Alao counts as the top version of a Magic Skirt, since any forward movement should by rights blow it open.
 * Some of Eriko's outfits from Dragon Crisis include this.
 * In the second Ranma ½ movie Nabiki was forced into a dress with cleavage like this.
 * Pirotess in Record of Lodoss War.
 * Inori Yuzuriha from Guilty Crown has a few outfits that provide this. Most notably: the skintight, red outfit she wears in the beginning, the black outfit of feathers in her Egoist music video in episode 1, and the skintight, white suit.
 * In The Familiar of Zero Kirche usually wears rather revealing outfits, as seen on the cast page. So when in volume 2 she tries to outdo herself, the cleavage stops a little shy of her navel and consists of two leaf-shaped pieces of cloth that stick upward providing more support than cover and made to look like they're peeling away on the inner edges...

Comic Books

 * The DCU: Arisia, Starfire, Donna Troy, and several other characters.
 * Marvel Comics' Black Cat. After years of poorly defined powers she, like most comic book Heroines/Villainesses, acquired the Most Common Superpower. Naturally, this renders her Cat-Suit unzippable above the navel (that is, when she's drawn by Terry Dodson). When Tommy Ohtsuka drew her in the Marvel Mangaverse, the zipper (if there even was one) rests eight centimeters below the belly button.
 * The costume worn by Dagger in the Marvel Universe team of "Cloak and Dagger" has Absolute Cleavage in the shape of a dagger.
 * While we're on the subject of the Marvel Universe: Aleta from the Avengers spinoff Guardians of the Galaxy wore a similar outfit throughout most of the run of the series.
 * The Golden Age—later revived by Eclipse Comics—series Airboy included former villainess Valkyrie.
 * Lampshaded/double-subverted/played for horror/who friggin' even knows in The Boys, where upon discovering that Justice League of America analogues the Seven are super-pricks, their newest member Starlight is told that their corporate sponsors are redesigning her much-less-revealing outfit into this—via the medium of Superman analogue the Homelander drawing the new outline on her current costume with a Sharpie. While she's wearing it.
 * Jennifer Morgan's sorceress outfit from The Warlord.
 * When Emma Frost first joined the X-Men, her costume was an unholy mix of Absolute Cleavage and Impossibly Low Neckline, due to being a few strategically-placed scraps of clothing that formed a reverse "X" with her exposed skin.
 * Plastic Man, Vibe, and the more Totally Radical versions of Nightwing's costume, are among the few male examples.
 * Vixen from the Justice League.
 * Lady Lotus from the Marvel Universe WWII book The Invaders.
 * Wonder Woman villainess Dark Angel.
 * Vampirella's signature red outfit, bordering on the Stripperific.
 * The attire of Bêlit, the she-pirate that accompanies Conan in several stories from Marvel's Conan the Barbarian.
 * Durham Red, particularly in later strips.
 * Olga Lawina in the Dutch comic bookAgent 327.

Fan Works

 * My Immortal: Ebony wears dresses like this.

Films -- Live-Action

 * Arachnophobia - there is a shower scene where a well-endowed heroine is entirely oblivious of the sinister lethal spiders making their way into the house. One prolonged scene shows nothing but her cleavage in the shower - the whole movie screen shows nothing but the Absolute Cleavage between her breasts, (but without even a hint of nipple - on a cinema screen this must have been truly absolute). The result is one enormous canyon for a particularly adventurous spider to navigate...
 * Casino Royale: Vesper Lynd wears such a dress, which ends up ruined when she takes a shower fully clothed after a fight scene. Bond states earlier that the point of the outfit is to distract the other players.
 * Legend: Lily's "Bride of Darkness" dress.
 * Death Becomes Her: That one gown Lisle wears, the one held together by one sole button in front of her crotch. And this is just about the largest and least revealing piece of clothing she is seen in throughout the movie.
 * The Brothers Grimm: The sorceress' red dress.
 * Yesterday Was a Lie: The dresses worn by Hoyle and Singer in the art museum.
 * Ghanima's wedding dress in the miniseries of Children of Dune.
 * Down Periscope: "Lt. Lake, you're almost out of uniform!"

Literature
"YT: Make up your fucking mind."
 * YT from Snow Crash wears a zipper-front jumpsuit, and unzips it further than modesty would have suggested to discomfit a (slightly) Dirty Cop who's not sure if he's up for some Prison Rape or not.


 * Conan the Barbarian: The attire of Bêlit, the she-pirate in one of the most classic tales by Robert E. Howard, Queen of the Black Coast, is described as being only a "broad silken girdle", i.e. she is a rare case of a female Walking Shirtless Scene. This was obviously not carried over to the comics adaptations by Roy Thomas and John Buscema for Marvel comics, where she wears something similar to the description of this trope. Whereas in the Finnish comic adaptation by Petri Hiltunen, her attire is faithful to Howard's text.

Live-Action TV
"Will: "What are you dressed for? Open-heart surgery?""
 * Commandant Mele-on-Grayza in Farscape There was a reason Crichton nicknamed her "Commandant Cleavage" after all.
 * Supreme Commander Servalan of Blakes Seven.
 * Grace from Will and Grace has an outfit or two like this. Except her lack of, er, endowments come up.

"Elvira: "If they ever ask about me, tell them I was more than just a great set of boobs. I was also an incredible pair of legs!" Elvira: "It's me again, yours truly, Elvira, the gal with the enormous...uh...ratings""
 * Elvira


 * Unsurprisingly, Manswers once asked how skimpily a woman can dress before she's legally naked. The absolute limit consisted of two vertical ribbons in front and one slender thong in back; the ribbons' elongated-vee arrangement constituted this trope.
 * Specifically, the garmet (such that it exists) must completely cover the nipple and areola, as well as completely cover the vagina and anus, plus pubic hair. Less/no hair, technically less fabic needed.
 * Look up a Google image search for "sling bikini."
 * Trillian wears a top with this in The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer pulls this on the DVD even before the pilot episode, with a seductive and dangerous looking Sarah Michelle Gellar crawling towards the viewer.
 * Merow. Sold.
 * Sherlock: Irene Adler has an outfit like this.
 * Margaery Tyrell in Game of Thrones on her first appearance in Renly's encampment wears a dress which leaves very little of her cleavage to the imagination.
 * Serena "Ms. Fanservice" van der Woodsen airs said cleavage rather a lot on Gossip Girl.

Music

 * Quite a few female musicians favor this outfit. Kylie Minogue is a clear example with her massive cleavage in the "Can't Get You out of My Head" video. Other examples include Britney Spears' Elvis suit and Lindsay Lohan's loose dress.
 * The white one-piece Britney Spears is wearing in the video for "3".
 * Celine Dion (yes, Celine Dion) wears a futuristic outfit that features this in the music video for "Then You Look At Me", the Award Bait Song from Bicentennial Man.
 * P!nk has one in the start of the video for "Just Like a Pill".
 * Lady Gaga wears these a few times, and in the case of her "Telephone" video, it's questionable if they even count as shirts.
 * Trina in the music video for "Pull Over".
 * The dress worn by the "beauty" in the Beauty and The Beast-inspired video for Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" is a full-length dress which is gaped open in the front and just barely held in place with lacing, to give it this effect.

Newspaper Comics

 * Morticia in The Addams Family Newspaper Comics. Adaptations tend to raise her neckline.

Professional Wrestling

 * This is played very frequently in WWE and TNA.
 * Of all people, Stephanie McMahon did this as frequently as any other WWE Diva.
 * Lita, after she hooked up with Edge, started wearing this sort of tops. Even her "wedding dress" was made this way.

Theatre

 * Elisabeth: Frau Wolf, the brothel madam, in the Essen and Stuttgart productions wears the lacy-bra variant with an otherwise Victorian dress.

Video Games

 * Metal Gear Solid: Sniper Wolf was dressed this way. (Lampshaded and Justified in The Last Days of Foxhound. It turns out that her then reasonable jumpsuit shrunk in the wash (which may or may not have been done on purpose by Decoy Octopus). She was pissed because they were at Shadow Moses and she was freezing with it on. Later, there was The Boss during the final battle in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and EVA during almost the entire game. Though in the case of The Boss, her open suit wasn't meant to emphasize her cleavage, but rather Also, Naomi and Big Mama in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (though since Big Mama was, this somewhat makes sense).
 * Dragon Age: Morrigan's outfit, consisting of an oddly patched-together skirt and a wide scarf draped over her shoulders.
 * Rayne in BloodRayne II. A little more cleavage and the rating would have gone up.
 * In Tales of the Abyss, Natalia has an alternate costume that's cut as low as the page image. The rest of the party comments on this. Natalia herself doesn't seem to actually realize it, as she's too excited about wearing the Spy Catsuit of a popular Classy Cat Burglar character she read stories about when she was little.
 * In the Japanese Play Station 3 version, Judith also has an alternate outfit that is an evening dress with this. The difference being that she knows the effect she has.
 * The fan-made Neverwinter Nights module "Aribeth's Redemption" includes an item (female characters only, not that you are allowed to play one) entitled the "Armor of Impossible Cleavage." It consists of an ordinary suit of gold chainmail with a foot-wide strip of nothing down the entire torso. The person who wears it is a priestess of the setting's goddess of physical beauty and sex.
 * Linda Vermillion from Killer7 had an outfit like this.
 * Silvia Christel from No More Heroes. Appropriate, as she's named after a porn star.
 * Cammy Meele from Ace Attorney Investigations sports this.
 * Tomb Raider Legend: Lara Croft wears a slinky dress like this in one level.
 * The DJ MAX series has Elle, the mascot of DJ MAX Portable 2. And in DJ MAX Technika, when you play the "First Set" course, you are, before each song, treated to a very nice shot of her.
 * Ultimecia of Final Fantasy VIII wears a dress rather like J. Lo's example at the top.
 * Jazz Jackrabbit: Eva Earlong in the opening screen.
 * Arcana Heart: Lilica Felchenerow wears one with a sports bra underneath.
 * Kasuga of Sengoku Basara has this as part of her Stripperiffic outfit, which actually defies the laws of physics by staying on her.
 * Rumble Roses has Rowdy Reiko after the Proud Warrior Race Guy Girl's Face Heel Turn has a cleavage almost down to her crotch.
 * Final Fantasy X-2: Yuna's default outfit has this, but the best example is the Lady Luck dressphere, as well as the NPC Leblanc.
 * Rufus from Street Fighter IV. Especially considering that it goes to the point where you can see his pubic hair.
 * A straight example is Hakan's wife, in Super SFIV.
 * Gloria's outfit from Devil May Cry 4. To a lesser degree there's also Trish  and Lady.
 * Catwoman gets one of these in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and Batman: Arkham City.
 * Every Female Character gets one of these in Mortal Kombat 9. It gets a little ridiculous how their vast tracks of land can stay in those costumes when there is more cloth in their mask than their tops.
 * In Fable II, if you're playing a female hero and put on the Bandit Shirt, you get this.
 * In Mass Effect 2, the Justicar Samara's "combat armor" features this.
 * Mai Hem in Perfect Dark Zero has this in mission 4, with a wraparound top that shouldn't be able to stay on.
 * In Neptunia, Nisa dresses like this despite being flat-chested.
 * In Catherine, the host of the Golden Playhouse, Midnight Venus, wears an extremely low-cut suit jacket with nothing underneath.
 * Darkstalkers character Morrigan's iconic outfit technically "only" possesses an Impossibly Low Neckline and a cut-out right below said neckline that, combined, reveal her entire cleavage and the top part of her stomach.
 * Two Worlds has this in the case of Kira. The odd part about this is that Kira is the male protagonist's sister, making her an odd choice for the obligatory Fan Service girl.
 * Drakensang has this on the Big Bad Malgorra, in an extreme variation.
 * Fear Effect. Hana's green party gown in Fear Effect 2. As Rain said, "You're wearing that?! Why don't you just walk in there naked."
 * Azura's statue in Skyrim has this. Which is a bit odd, considering the two previous games followed her appearance in Daggerfall and had her statues show her topless, and her actual appearances in Morrowind had her dressed more modestly. Nocturnal wears a robe that shows off her cleavage, split down to her waist.
 * Lost Odyssey's Ming has a leather corset-thing under a cropped top that features a wide expanse of her cleavage almost down to her navel. How her cleavage doesn't pop right out is a mystery. We even get a cutscene that could be an excuse for a closer look.
 * Players have many ways of achieving this look in City of Heroes.

Web Comics

 * Looking for Group: Benny sports this sort of outfit all the time. How does she keeps it from slipping? A Wizard Did It. Probably Benny.
 * Erfworld: Resident Ms. Fanservice Wanda once showed up wearing this. Later, her evil sorceress outfit qualified too.
 * In The Order of the Stick, Haley being persuaded to sport an Absolute Cleavage was taken as proof by Sabine that Nale intended to sacrifice her.
 * Monette in Something*Positive once wore an Absolute Cleavage shirt in support of the Boobquake campaign.
 * In The KAMics when Gertrude & Brunhilda got some "space suits", Gertrude's outfit demonstrated this trope.

Web Original

 * Obligatory Gaia Online example in Sam's old outfit, a set of coveralls unzipped in the front to show her bra. Handwaved as "They didn't have any in my size."

Western Animation
"Sideshow Mel: "The collective will of every man in this room!""
 * Vixen wears this kind of outfit as her superhero uniform (true to her comic book origins, as mentioned above) in Justice League Unlimited.
 * Dr. Mrs. The Monarch in season 3 of The Venture Brothers; also Molotov Cocktease.
 * Ma Skinner wore Lopez's outfit in The Simpsons roast episode. When asked by the host whats keeping that dress on, Sideshow Mel answers in her stead.


 * Miss Bellum from The Powerpuff Girls was supposed to be dressed this way... until Cartoon Network complained and she had to be re-designed.
 * Occurs when Catwoman zips down her catsuit in DC Showcase: Catwoman.
 * In the King of the Hill episode "Hanky Panky," Debbie Grund is seen wearing an extremely low-cut dress (and death-defying boobs) to the formal dinner at which Hank accepts his Blue Flame of Valor Award.