Girl Watching

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Looking at the ladies, all of them fine
 All of them so lovely I can't make up my mind
 But I'm looking at you from the corner of my eye
 I can see you now, you're stepping so high!

—Slave, "Watching You"

Two (or more, or not so many) men look at a bunch of women and discuss them. Or vice versa. An old, old trope, but given that guys do this every day, likely to continue till mankind goes extinct or at least until men do.

Super-Trope of Outdoor Bath Peeping and The Peeping Tom.

The common subversion is to make it look like guys are girlwatching, only to reveal that the "exquisite curves" they were talking about referred to something non-sexual, like a pizza, a car, or a rare Brancusi arm chair.

Examples of Girl Watching include:

Advertising

  • An ad for... toothpaste, or something, had a bunch of nursing home residents admiring the new arrival. "Are those real?" "Yup. They're her own teeth."
  • A famous Super Bowl ad had two boys looking at Cindy Crawford and admiring the shape of... the can of Pepsi she's drinking.
    • Ambiguously Gay or dangerously thirsty?
      • Or had they not hit puberty yet?
        • All highly unlikely (especially the first option), since Cindy has stated that in reality the "can" the two boys were interested in was not of the Pepsi variety.
  • Gender Flip in the "11 o'clock" Diet Coke ads.
  • This promotional short for Phillips 66 from the the early '60s


Anime and Manga

  • On at least one occasion in Inuyasha, Miroku and InuYasha have sneaked peeks at Kagome and Sango while bathing, not counting the times they accidentally get an eyeful and then soon after a bash on the head.
    • InuYasha tries to be a good boy. Miroku, however, is incorrigible. And our good boy's efforts to deter his peeping usually result in him ending up an Accidental Pervert.
  • Kazuharu Fukuyama from Girls Bravo is the master of this trope, as well as the unwelcome grope.
  • In the Beach Episode swimming pool episode of My-HiME, the girls complain that the boys do this all the time. And the boys are in fact doing this, shown discussing Natsuki's appearance seconds later.


Comic Books

  • An issue of Green Lantern (third volume) featured Guy Gardner taking Kyle Rayner and John Stewart out for a little bit of girl-watching.
  • Archie often did this lots of times.


Film

  • The movie M*A*S*H had them discuss whether Hot Lips was a real blonde or not. So they decided to find out...naturally bets were placed on the issue.
  • The opening of the film Gregory's Girl.
  • This leads to the discovery of the Nash equilibrium in A Beautiful Mind, although as pointed out by Xkcd, it's not a true equilibrium.


Live Action TV

  • Mad Men—through a one-way mirror. Joan is aware of their presence and bends over in a tight skirt. The men decide that is worthy of a salute.
  • In a Chappelle's Show sketch (making fun of the movie What Women Want) about a woman who hears men's thoughts, she enters an elevator full of men. Hilarity Ensues. It's actually pretty hilarious, though. At one point, even a little boy is heard thinking about how hard he would hit that.
  • Frasier: Once a telescope was installed in Frasier's apartment, everyone got to use this gag. One notable variation was when Frasier and Niles tell Martin to calm down, 'cause they're admiring a foreign range/stovetop, not a naked woman. Martin says that he knows, and that's the disappointing thing.
  • Seeing as how it takes place in the offices of a fashion magazine, the male characters of Just Shoot Me indulged in this pastime often, much to the dismay of Maya. In one episode Jack catches the guys looking at a blonde woman bent over and joins in. To his horror it turns out to be Maya (his daughter), who had dyed her hair.
  • Subverted in Merlin, where Arthur and Lancelot are talking about... different girls.
  • Inverted on How I Met Your Mother, where Barney and Ted appear to be talking about his architectural sketch, but are actually discussing a nude picture of Princess Leia.
  • Power Rangers Ninja Storm: They're really talking about the new motorcycles.
  • There's a 21 Jump Street episode with a group frat boys watching (and rating) girls.


Music

  • Jeff Blumenkrantz's duet "Moving Right Along" (a Cut Song from Fits and Starts) is about two guys in a gay bar checking out and dismissing the clientele. ("Too square". "Too Fair". "Too self-aware... moving right along".
  • Andy Williams, "Music to Watch Girls By". "Eyes watch girls walk, with tender lovin' care..."
  • "I'm a Girl Watcher", by the O'Kaysions
  • "Pretty Girls Everywhere" by Eugene Church
  • "Girls, Girls, Girls" by the Coasters (covered by Elvis in the film of the same name)
  • "Watching Girls Go By" by Ronnie McDowell.


Theatre


Web Original


Western Animation

  • Gender Flip: In an episode of Family Guy, Lois and Meg Griffin fight about who gets to look through the peephole at a showering Tom Brady. Only to be interrupted by Stewie.
  • Bender in Futurama and his frat house climbed up the ladder to watch a desktop computer being used by a bunch of girls in their underwear. The robots were ogling the computer.
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