Proper Tights with a Skirt

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

So, you have a female character, and you want her to appear prim and proper, while still being feminine and fitting in with all of your other female characters. It would usually (with few exceptions) be improper for her to wear pants, but it would be difficult to have her fit in full dresses when all of your other female characters are wearing short, suggestive skirts.

The solution is simple - have her wear tights with a skirt. The skirt allows her to fit in with her fellow girls, but the tights ensure that she remains proper and well-covered. It retains that feminine quality, yet prevents the lady from in any way seeming risque.

This style of dress is particularly common in Anime with The Ojou and Yamato Nadeshiko. Compare with Skirt Over Slacks, which occurs when pants of some description are added to an already modest skirt in order to convey shyness or tomboyishness, and with Modesty Shorts, which ensures modesty for the Action Girl who wears a short skirt. Contrasts with Zettai Ryouiki, which are usually employed to instead enhance the fanservice of the outfit, upping the intended sexiness, and with Tights Under Shorts, which incorporates something more boyish than a skirt but is nevertheless used more frequently on girls than on boys.

Note that when it comes to children, and especially school uniforms (except where School Uniforms Are the New Black), this is so standard that no examples need to be given.

Examples of Proper Tights with a Skirt include:

Anime and Manga

  • Homura Akemi wears this with her outfits, including her Magical Girl uniform (which, to top it off, adds high-heeled boots incorporated into the tights), in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, except in her flashbacks in episode 10.
  • Sakura Kinomoto in Cardcaptor Sakura gets this with most of her CardCaptor outfits if they don't involve Zettai Ryouiki. Her friend and wardrobe designer Tomoyo does this with a few of her own outfits as well.
  • The female pilots wear the leotard variation with their combat attire in Dangaioh.
  • Mikuru Asahina wears this during the winter months in Suzumiya Haruhi (as seen in Disappearance with her school uniform).
  • Worn by Miyuki in Lucky Star, particularly with her school uniform.
  • Yui from K-On! wears this with her skirt. Subverted in that she's not what one would call a Proper Lady despite wearing the outfit.
  • Sarah Adiemus from School Rumble is the only girl in the series who wears tights with her school skirt.
  • Satoko in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.
  • Rare male example: Jun Watarase from Happiness!, particularly with his Sailor Fuku.
  • Mariya Shidou from Maria Holic wears black tights with his uniform and portrays himself publicly as one of the nicer girls. However, when he and Kanako are alone together, his sadistic side rears its ugly head.
  • Hideyoshi Kinoshita, from Baka and Test, also does this sometimes, including with a pink maid dress.
  • Some of the female Bureau mages wear tights with their uniforms in the Nanoha series, such as Shamal, who typically wears dresses or long skirts while off duty.
  • Onii Chan no Koto has Kondou and it become Shuusuke's primary fetish.
  • Umi from Magic Knight Rayearth as she's The Ojou and comes from a high-class school.
  • Masako Natsume from Mawaru Penguindrum.
  • Miki Aono from Fresh Pretty Cure.
  • Sakuya's winter uniform in Tenchi in Tokyo includes black tights.
    • Also Matori, Yugi's henchwoman.
  • Rei Miyamoto from High School of the Dead appears to be wearing this briefly in one episode, no thanks to a minor continuity snarl.
  • Jiisuri from Upotte!! wears black tights under her school uniform's skirt.
  • Aoi Sakurai from Rail Wars! - an Action Girl, not a proper lady - wears tights under her uniform skirt in order to avoid being a Panty Fighter. The one episode when she doesn't wear tights, her embarrassment at the possibility of her panties being seen limits her fighting ability noticeably (and it's lampshaded at the end of the episode)... thus playing with the trope in a way so rarely seen that we don't have a pigeonhole for it.

Fan Works

  • Both Meran and Korii in Shining Pretty Cure. The former is a rare male example, and both do this with tunics.

Literature

  • Samantha (the Victorian Era...oops, Edwardian Era girl) from the American Girl franchise wears this. She expresses dislike for it, especially as her grandmother insists on her wearing long underwear underneath them from September to June (in an attempt to prevent tuberculosis).

Live-Action TV

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Willow, particularly in Season 3. Still cute and geeky, but a step up stylewise from earlier years.

Video Games

  • Yukiko Amagi from Persona 4 (pictured above) is the poster child for this.
  • Also worn by Fuuka in Persona 3.
  • The soldier-like Weiß wears this outfit in Arcana Heart 3.
  • Yurika Kirishima, the resident Ojou of Project Justice, wears white pantyhose with her dress. The Pacific High School female uniform, which Tiffany Lords wears as her alternate costume in Rival Schools: United By Fate, has dark hose with a miniskirt.
  • Princess Alena in Dragon Quest IV. (Although it's less a skirt and more of a tunic.)
  • Street Fighter's own Chun-Li wears them with her trademark Qipao.

Western Animation

Real Life

  • Truth in Television; it's pretty much standard clothing for girls and is especially common among schoolgirls (especially those who wear uniforms) and some classes of athletes in Real Life.
  • This was an Unbuilt Trope in 1960s "Swinging London", when fashion designer Mary Quant either invented or popularized the miniskirt-and-tights look that became a way for teenage and twenty-something girls to scandalize their elders — hardly "proper", but using the same look that would become modest in the early 21st century.


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