Modesty Leaves
Modesty Leaves are a way to cover the naughty bits while still leaving a primal feel to a scene, or alternatively because they're the only thing available to cover the genitals.
This trope comes from the original Adam and Eve Plot: after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and became aware that their nakedness is totes taboo, they covered themselves with fig leaves. Also, snakes. This makes the trope Older Than Dirt. Modern people, of course, are more likely to use Fur Bikinis instead.
The Trope Maker is Pope Innocent X (1644-1655), who started the original fig-leaf campaign which chiselled the exposed phalluses off Roman statues and fit each sculpture with a more "modest" leaf instead. This systematic defacement of art for religion continued through the reign of Pope Pius IX (1846-1878).
This trope gets a lot of coverage in art, especially of pagan subjects that would have been naked in earlier depictions but needed to be somehow clothed for modern moral guardians.
A portable version of Scenery Censor. Compare Godiva Hair.
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Music
- The Yatta! video of ancient meme status has five grown men in leaf-covered loincloths.
Myths and Legends
- Adam and Eve from The Bible, obviously.
Western Animation
- Ashi from Samurai Jack has a dress of leaves in the later part of season 5, it's also counts as a (Garden Garment).
Visual Art
- In many religious paintings, including Domenichino's The Rebuke of Adam and Eve. (NSFW if your work hates art.)
Real Life
- As noted in the main text, Pope Innocent X ordered began two centuries' worth of systematic defacement and bowdlerization of art works.
- In 2011, the Vatican again brought up the topic, issuing a statement condemning the symbolic "depravity and nudity celebrated by the morally corrupt", and launched a campaign to clothe Michelangelo's statue of David.