Navel-Deep Neckline

aka: Absolute Cleavage

The dress that launched an image search engine.

"You know what's holdin' that dress up, doncha? A city ordinance!"

— Red Skelton

There are low-cut outfits... and then there is the Navel-Deep Neckline. This is when a dress or top is specifically cut to show the entirety of the wearer's cleavage and the top half of her stomach... or the bottom half if they really want to court tabloid immortality. Since it would only take one careless movement to cross the line of decency, these are bravura costumes; they hold the viewers' attention not only with their daring but the very real possibility of an embarrassing slip-up.

A Spy Catsuit is frequently one zipper away from this trope. 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 visible bra underneath, and sometimes there is an invisible one,^note There are special bras that create this look without getting in the way: either "plunge bras" where the central wire is bent in a deep "U" shape down to the navel, or ones consisting of adhesive cups with no bands. but generally there isn't. In any kind of real-world or live-action context, the latter case generally requires some form of adhesive to avoid a Wardrobe Malfunction.

A Navel-Deep Neckline can also be the unintentional result of a Wardrobe Malfunction. This can be Played for Laughs or for Fanservice or both, and is quite common in Real Life as well (where it is much appreciated by Paparazzi).

Compare Sideboob, Underboobs, Impossibly-Low Neckline, Cleavage Window. Any woman who ends up in an outfit like this is probably Ms. Fanservice. A man who wears an outfit like this is going for a semi-Shirtless Scene and perhaps showing off his Carpet of Virility; see also No Shirt, Long Jacket.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Delicious in Dungeon: The elf queen speaks with the other leaders in Chapter 82 wearing a cape-like dress with the front wide open. Even though it's a very serious meeting, one of the gnomes is seen thinking, "That's quite an outfit."
• Ginga Teikoku Kouboushi: Volume 2: Foundation: Commdora Licia wears a body-length black dress that displays a cleavage down to her midsection, with a cut along the side of her left leg that goes up nearly to the same point. The dress, thin body, and pointy shoulder/ear accessories are there to contrast against her fat bald husband, the Commdor.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has some male examples:
  • Noriaki Kakyoin from Stardust Crusaders is seen wearing pajamas in some scenes, and they expose a good portion of his chest.
  • Ringo Roadagain from Steel Ball Run wears an unbuttoned white jacket that causes him to show off a good portion of his chest.
• 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.
• My Hero Academia: Yaoyorozu's hero outfit has a plunging neckline that nearly reaches her waist. In this case, it's justified because her power is to generate objects from her skin, and so designed her outfit to reveal as much skin as possible without being completely indecent. Mind you, Momo is currently 16, making this trope uncomfortable for some people.
• In NEEDLESS, Riru has absolute cleavage so absolute that there is barely anything covering her boobs at all.
• One Piece: In Chapter 664, during his "Freaky Friday" Flip with Tashigi, Vice Admiral Smoker retains his habit of wearing his shirts open, much to Tashigi's annoyance. It has to be seen to be believed.
• Princess Kraehe of Princess Tutu has a dance outfit that really takes this to its logical extreme. Her bodice is entirely backless and sideless, with two narrow strips of black fabric rising from the waistline to cover her boobs. Now quick, without knowing another thing about her or her design, would you suppose she was a villain?
• Ranma ½: In "Nihao My Concubine", the girls get kidnapped and taken to the island of Togenkyo. But as Nabiki and Ukyo explain, instead of being treated as hostages, the guards treated them like royalty and even let them choose their own gowns. Nabiki and Ukyo's parted down the middle and had split seams showing plenty of leg.
• Pretty much all of the female characters in Rio -Rainbow Gate!- wear skimpy outfits. However, it is the main villain, Cartia, that walks around with not only the biggest breasts but a dress that showcases most of her cleavage.
• Merlin from The Seven Deadly Sins wears a long coat that is completely open and only covers a portion of her topless breasts.
• Kureha from Tokkô. Her standard outfit is an unzipped leather jacket with no shirt or bra underneath. Also counts as the top version of a Magic Skirt, since any forward movement should by rights blow it open.
• Jura in VanDread wears a slinky black dress that’s open to well below her navel, with the skirt split up to her waist on the left side.
• Mai from the manga version of Yu-Gi-Oh! wears a corset top with a gap in the front held together by laces. In the anime it's less revealing, though.

Comics

• The DCU:
  • Catwoman frequently wears very low v-necks or catsuits unzipped to her waistline. During her time as the "Kingpin of Gotham" she seemed to wear such outfits almost exclusively.
  • Starfire. Most versions of her costume are sling swimsuits with boots.
  • Wonder Girl: Donna Troy's v-necked black ensemble is often drawn with an incredibly low cleavage-revealing neckline, though it was originally much more modest like the v-neck of her red jumpsuit. This is probably the reason her outfit was changed to a sleeveless turtleneck instead.
  • The Warlord: Jennifer Morgan's sorceress outfit has a neckline that plunges to her navel and a skirt that is slit to her hip.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Volume 1: The second Cheetah, Deborah Domaine, wore a cheetah print bodysuit with a v-neck that terminated at her navel.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): One of Circe's favorite outfits is a slinky green dress with a v neck the lowest point of which is level with her hips and is slung with thin gold chains across the opening◊.
  • The more Totally Radical versions of Nightwing's costume include a v-neck that ends at his sternum or below to show off his pecs.
  • Vixen from the Justice League. Vixen’s costume has changed with the times but her most famous outfit is a yellow/orange body suit with long cleavage.
  • The memorably skimpy costume of Golden Age heroine Phantom Lady includes an opening down the middle of the flimsy top that shows off her cleavage and stomach, with the two sides only coming together at her belt.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes:
    • Dawnstar usually wears a yellow bodysuit that shows much cleavage by way of a neckline that plunges below her breasts.
    • Mike Grell's design for Cosmic Boy's outfit is essentially two very wide pieces of black tape that start at his nipples and go down to his matching Underwear of Power, leaving the center strip down his torso bare to his hips.
  • Livewire's usual design from Superman: The Animated Series has her wearing a leotard with a deep plunging neckline in the shape of a lightning bolt.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Black Cat. After years of poorly defined powers she, like most comic book Heroines/Villainesses, acquired the Most Common Super Power. 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.
  • Dagger of the duo Cloak and Dagger has a Cleavage Window in the shape of a dagger, the "blade" of which extends down to just past her belly button.
  • When Emma Frost first joined the X-Men, her costume was an unholy mix of cleavage and Impossibly-Low Neckline reaching down to her navel, due to being a few strategically-placed scraps of clothing that formed a reverse "X" with her exposed skin.
  • Lampshaded when Firestar joined The Avengers. She was utterly mortified◊ upon seeing the revealing new costume The Wasp designed for her, and stated that she could barely fit into it.
    • This lampshading was a wink and a nod to fan reaction to some preview art that first showed the costume. Fans immediately thought the costume was uncharacteristic for Firestar, who had always been shown as modest and a bit self-conscious about her appearance. Subsequently the gag panel linked was added to the story, and Firestar modified the costume by wearing a red turtleneck underneath.
  • Offset of the Shi'ar death commandoes from X-Men has metal armor (if it could be called that) that is made of plates of metal that only barely covers just the nipples and a thin strip beneath them, joining just a few inches above her...well, her hoo-ha. The rest of her torso and back is bare and it forms a thong...of metal...ouch (but her arms and legs are strangely covered) so this could also count as a boob plate and is just a few pieces of metal away from being a Chainmail Bikini.
• The Boys: After discovering that the Seven are super-pricks, their newest member Starlight is told that their corporate sponsors are redesigning her much-less-revealing outfit into this while Homelander draws the new neckline on her current costume with a Sharpie. While she's wearing it. Doubly creepy because the Homelander, among others, had recruited her via the Casting Couch.
• Satan's Hollow: The Devil's Queen is mostly covered by exoskeleton-type armor, except for her front, which has most of her body exposed from her clavicle down to her pelvis.
• In Lady Rawhide: Other People's Blood, Pirate Girl Scarlet Fever wears a yellow silk shirt that is open all the way down the front and knotted at her navel.
• Modesty Blaise: Especially in the later strips, Modesty frequently wears dresses with cleavage down to her navel, or has unbuttoned or unzipped her top down to her waist, sometimes with her trademark black bra underneath but usually (at least in the cases where the look is deliberate) without a bra.
• JumpStart in Wildstar wears an outfit that's open all the way down to her crotch.

Fan Works

• Duran And Kiyohime's Omake Theater: Shizuru, quite deliberately, in Chapter 120. She's attempting to invoke Intimacy Via Horror to cuddle Natsuki in her "skimpiest nightgown".
  It was, admittedly, difficult to watch the television when her face was covered with her girlfriend's bosom, which was both significant and underdressed.
• Harry Potter and the Four Founders:
  Neville: I noticed Lavender's dress too.
  Ron: Yeah, that was a nice dress.
  Neville: Didn't know they made dresses with bodice lines that low.
  Ron: Almost see her navel, I could.
• The Night Unfurls: Maia's outfit from the original version is implied to be identical to that of Kuroinu canon, being a red tunic cut to show her cleavage and her stomach.
• Pacific: World War II U.S. Navy Shipgirls: New Jersey's default outfit is a dress with a neckline plunging to her waist.

Films — Live-Action

• At one point in April Fools' Day, Nikki leans out of her window wearing nothing but panties and a shirt that is completely unbuttoned.
• 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.
• In the 1972 version of The Getaway, Ali MacGraw wears a blouse cut down right to the navel - it doesn't even have any buttons - when she goes to see the Sleazy Politician. Subtly remarked upon by two men in the waiting room to his office.
• In one scene in the softcore film Girl for Girl, Sara (Tracy Ryan) wears only panties and an unbuttoned shirt.
• In Horrible Bosses, Dr. Julia Harris wears an unbuttoned lab coat with nothing underneath.
• Modesty Blaise: In order to avoid the pursuing bad guys, Modesty impersonates a prostitute by pulling down the zipper of her catsuit to below her navel. She is not wearing anything underneath.
• No Time to Die has Paloma (Ana de Armas) wearing a very-low cut dress◊ that almost reaches her navel. It's also backless. And she goes to town wearing it, from flying kicks to going Guns Akimbo.
• Romeo & Juliet (2013): The handsome romantic lead, Romeo, is introduced sculpting away at some marble while wearing a billowing white shirt that's open all the way to his pants.
• In Revenge (2017), the skimpy dress that Jen wears to Richard's party with his buddies has a neckline that plunges almost to her navel.
• Spirits of the Dead: One of the many many sexy outfits that Ms. Fanservice Frederique (Jane Fonda) wears is what's basically a swimming suit that is cut in the front down past her navel.
• Theresa & Allison: Paisley wears an outfit which shows her cleavage and stomach.
• In Transylvania 6-5000, Odette (Geena Davis) wears a leotard (seemingly based on Vampirella's) with a plunging neckline that dips to her navel.

Jokes

• "Dear, do you think this dress' cleavage goes too low?" "Do you have hair on your chest?" "Of course not!" "Then it's too low."

Literature

• A Deal with a Demon: In the cover of The Gargoyle's Captive, Grace is shown with a dress whose cleavage goes all the way below her belly button.
• Ravirn: Downplayed in WebMage. When first seen, Cerice's outfit is described as a gown that "was very low cut, but a half-jacket prevented it from being indecent."
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades:
  • Downplayed with Headmistress Esmeralda, who customarily wears a wide-skirted blue dress with a close-fitted halter-style bodice. The neckline isn't quite cut to her navel and is closed at her bust, but has another opening showing some underboob and a sheer panel that exposes her navel in some images.
  • Ophelia Salvadori, in keeping with her image as The Vamp, wears a long slinky purple gown with a cutout below the bustline that exposes her navel. Justified, as her signature magic "births" the chimeras she grows and stores in her womb: they emerge through her belly.
• In Twilight (2005), Rosalie's prom dress has a neckline down to her waist.
  Her vivid scarlet dress was backless, tight to her calves where it flared into a wide ruffled train, with a neckline that plunged to her waist.
• A Spear Counterpart in the Village Tales series, Supreme Chef Teddy "The Hipster Chef" Gates, outside the kitchen, can hardly manage one shirt button. Which is just fine with his husband, retired Premier Leaguer turned activist Edmond Huskisson.
• The Wheel of Time, being rife with Costume Porn, often mentions this. In particular, the narration often comments that a woman looks like she's "about to pop out of her dress".
• In Roger Hall's You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger! he mentions a notary public who wore a dress so low-cut that one of his buddies referred to it as an "Umbilical Special."

Live-Action TV

• Coronation Street: Bet enters a pub wearing a dress with cleavage all the way down to her waist, with a black bra underneath. Thich makes the patrons stare at her in various combinations of shock and appreciation. It turns out the dress is supposed to have a bare back but she is wearing it backwards. "Bet‼️ You've got it on back—to—front!"
• Control Z: Rosa wears a dress which displays this for the last episode's party, as do other girls.
• CSI: NY: Many of Stella's outfits highlight her cleavage, but in episode 4.03, "You Only Die Once," she wears a scintillating black dress that drops all the way to the top of her stomach.
• Farscape: Commandant Mele-on Grayza's standard outfit includes a neckline that ends somewhere around her navel. The outfit earns her the nickname "Commandant Cleavage" from John Crichton.
• The page image is Jennifer Lopez and the green Versace dress she wore to the 2000 Grammy Awards, with its neckline plunging past her navel. The dress sent so many people to Google looking for pictures of it, the site released a new feature for searching just for images. And that's how Google Images was born.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): In "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self", when Lestat de Lioncourt attempts to make amends to his boyfriend Louis de Pointe du Lac after an argument, the former's robe is almost fully open, so much of his well-built torso is exposed. He presumably does this to try to tempt Louis into having sex with him.
• Lost Girl: In the first scene of the first episode, Bo (who is tending the bar at a posh hotel) wears a black shirt that is unbuttoned way below her breasts, with a black bra underneath.
• Manhattan Love Story: Normally conservative Dana wears a surprisingly revealing dress to a frenemy's wedding, looking more like extra-wide suspenders than anything else.
• 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 garment (such that it exists) must completely cover the nipple and areola, as well as completely cover the vulva and anus, plus pubic hair. Less/no hair, technically less fabric needed.
• Relic Hunter: In "Transformation", the heroes search the female villain, Turley, for a wire and find it hidden in her bra. Naturally, this requires unbuttoning her shirt, but she doesn't bother buttoning it again and spends the rest of the episode with her shirt open down to her navel.
• Rizzoli & Isles has an accidental example in a scene where Jane is sitting in her bathrobe, discussing with Maura what to wear to a party, and doesn't notice that her robe has fallen open to her waist (she is wearing a bra underneath).
• On Runaways, Morgan le Fay always wears gowns with cleavage that go below the breasts. After all, she is a Hot Witch who runs her own tech business, and using those dresses in ads is totally justifiable.
• In this Saturday Night Live skit, Andy Samberg and Ben Stiller compete with increasingly outlandish and low-cut V-necks.
• Tidelands (Netflix): Adrielle often wears dresses showing her navel or near there and thus also a lot of her breasts.

Music

• David Bowie: The UK cover for The Man Who Sold the World features Bowie in a tailor-made satin dress, the upper area of which is unbuttoned to bare his chest and upper abdomen, tying in with his longtime affinity for playing around with gender norms.
• Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil:
  • In a Halloween photo shoot◊ from 2017, she poses as a Morticia Addams-like vamp, wearing a dress with cleavage that goes down to her navel and exposes most of her chest (though she’s wearing a bra that covers her breasts) and stomach.
  • In one of her many cover images from "Kerrang!", she wears a white dress shirt unbuttoned so far that you can see not only her black bra, but also part of her bare belly.
• Then You Look At Me, by Céline Dion, has Dion in tight metallic coveralls with the zipper down to her abdomen.

Pinball

• Jinni Zeala features a male example, as Zeala has a shirt that is open from the collarbone all the way down to his waistline.
• The Evil Sorceress of Ruiner Pinball wears a bustier to emphasize her cleavage... which is then cut down to her navel for further emphasis.
• The female warriors of Laser War wear breast-separating jumpsuits that leave their centers exposed.

Print Media

• Kim Cattrall appears on the cover of the April 2003 issue of FHM wearing only a pair of black panties and a white dress shirt that's totally unbuttoned. Some variation on this is very common in most men's magazines, and even many women's as well, though the men's are more openly fanservice-y.
• Humorama: Many of the women in the gag cartoons showed off lots of cleavage. When not wearing Stripperiffic outfits, many wore low cut tops and tight-fitting sweaters.

Video Games

• Echocalypse Kiki, who was already showing a lot of her skin, has the neckline of her outfit extend from her cleavage to past her navel which is more apparent in an artwork featuring her lying down in front of Raeon and Pan Pan.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • The Daedric Lords Azura and Nocturnal both wear robes split from shoulders to navel. While Azura is only depicted through statues, Nocturnal appears in person (if you complete the Thieves' Guild questline). Her robes are unobtainable barring console commands.
  • Ancient Nord Armor, when worn on females (Aela the Huntress has a set as her default), is comprised of a deep-V halter-top and no back (or sides for that matter).
  • For Fan Disservice, Draugr who were female in life wear this armor.
  • The female version of Hide Armor also has cleavage that extends to their stomach.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Artemis' strapless white dress showing her cleavage in her first two forms is probably one of the more striking aspects of her design. In stages 3 & 4, as well as when she uses her Noble Phantasm, she switches it for a skimpier red dress that shows her cleavage all the way past her navel.
  • Saint Martha has a cross-shaped cutout in all of her outfits for her Rider form, which shows her cleavage and plunges all the way down to her navel.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte provides a Rare Male Example in his first form, where his shirt and vest are both unbuttoned to halfway down his chest to show off his muscular torso. He does button them up in later forms, and one of his Ascension comments is how that kind of look is best left to the ladies anyway.
• Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light: The Nintendo DS remake added Nagi, the avatar of the Divine Dragon (see Awakening below). In her human form, her dress has a large strip going down the middle made of transparent material; so it covers her chest completely, while still showing everything between her neck and her navel.
• Friday Night Funkin': Mommy Mearest's Sexy Santa Dress in Week 5 exposes her cleavage from her neck to her stomach.
• Zyra, the Rise of Thorns from League of Legends is "dressed" only in an arrangement of large leaves which expose her torso all the way down the middle of her body to below her navel. However, this raises the question of why she even HAS a navel, considering she's actually a plant who constructed herself a humanoid body to live in. Nami's default skin is also a textbook example of this.
• A rare male example but one of the DLC costumes for Rean in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II has him wearing a long coat that's buttoned right at his stomach, leaving a large V.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mineru's outfit is two halves of a corset that don't meet in the middle, meaning Mineru's neckline goes all the way to her legs. The only thing covering her modesty is a loosely-hanging loincloth.
• 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.
• In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, the devil's daughter Satana runs around in a halter-top outfit that shows cleavage from her neck to her navel.
• Mortal Kombat: In Mortal Kombat 3, Kitana, Jade, and Mileena wore an outfit consisting of a leotard with two sides held in place by straps across the bust.
• 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.
• Red Ninja: End of Honor: the titular kunoichi, Kurenai, is almost naked under her red robe that's completely open at the top and goes to her stomach just above her brown obi. The cover of the game shows just how much she's flashing.
• In the first Risen, Patty Steelbeard wears a cleavage and midriff-bearing vest.
• Rumble Roses has Rowdy Reiko after the Proud Warrior Race Girl's Face–Heel Turn has cleavage almost down to her crotch.
• In Senran Kagura, Katsuragi wears a completely unbuttoned shirt that somehow manages to cover up her lady-bits as she's kicking people.
• Super Off Road: The woman standing by the third-place racer on the podium dons a one-piece attire that bares her cleavage and goes straight down beneath her navel.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt lampshades this when Ves, who wears a very open silk shirt beneath an undone padded jack with little bits and bobs of plate here and there, gets chewed out for rushing into combat by her superior officer Vernon Roche without any proper armor.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Many armor pieces have necklines that extend down to the navel or even further. Sometimes this is only true for the female version, while the male versions are more modest. Even though all female player characters wear bras when "naked", the bra magically disappears as soon as they put on a top.
  • Some cloth chest armor is in the form of jackets or vests that are open in front, only held together by straps in a way that lets the region between the wearer's breasts as well as a strip of their stomach show through. This tailor-craftable low-level item doesn't even have anything holding it closed.
  • In the matriarchal night elf society, both men and women show off their bodies to display their power. One aspect of this is that, at least in vanilla and the earlier expansions, almost all female night elf NPCs wear tops with cleavage down to their navel (or lower) and no bra, the exception being those wearing full armor (though even some plate armor has low necklines). Later expansions tone this down, with more "normal" tops for the female NPCs.

Visual Novel

• Major/Minor gives us Dazz, a female wolf who wears an open coat top with no undershirt, but somehow manages to keep it positioned so it doesn't slip. No wonder Acheron was distracted by her.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: Agatha briefly appears in a mostly unbuttoned white shirt that shows her ample cleavage when she wakes up after the events in Sturmhalten.
• Grrl Power: Referenced in the second-to-last panel of "Grrl Power #770 – Reactions are… mixed", with a magazine cover showing a woman with a neckline that goes all the way to her belt, and the only other thing covering that area are two thin straps that presumably are to hold the left and right sides of her suit to her body. The caption is:
  Decolletage: Full-V or high and tight
• Kill Six Billion Demons: General Zaid's casual outfit includes a long-sleeved shirt worn unbuttoned to the waist, showing off the muscle he's put on over the Time Skip.
• Twisted Tropes: Destro asks the Baroness if the cleavage is too revealing, then clarifies he means his.

Web Original

• On Miami T.V. this is Jenny Scordamaglia's trademark. She leaves her blouse totally unbuttoned and closes it by tying the bottom front into a knot.
• In Pixiv community, this is denoted as "下ろしチャック" ^note Zipped down. The tag is for characters wearing zipped down catsuits which show both their chests and stomach.
• Whateley Universe: Valley Girl of the West Coast League was seen in "a shimmering purple ‘fuck me senseless’ minidress with a V neckline that came all the way down to her solar plexus.", as reported in Ayla and the Grinch (A Christmas Story).
  • Greasy once derails a ranting Peeper by telling him that Attributes' new costume has a neckline which "goes down to about here." The ever-classy Peeper immediately asks if she needs to give herself a Brazilian wax in order to wear it, and demands pictures.[1]

Western Animation

• The Venture Brothers: Molotov Cocktease's Sensual Spandex assassin outfit is split down to the waist (slightly further than that in the back...). Dr. Mrs. The Monarch also sports this in her themed costume.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Daughter, living embodiment of the Light Side of the Force, wears a dress cut down to just above her navel.

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