Just don't mind the pointy ears.
A fashion model wears clothes of every kind, from some showing barely any skin, to others with nothing more than a bikini or a lingerie. This kind of model specializes in the latter, being Best Known for the Fanservice. The Fanservice Model wears swimsuits, lingerie and also goes for the fetish crowd with fanservice-laiden costumes. Also can apply to those going nude, but not necessarily the Full-Frontal Assault. This could be in the form of Body Paint without wearing anything, or being covered just with Godiva Hair or Hand-or-Object Underwear sessions. This is an almost Always Female trope, but there are also examples of male Fanservice Models, mostly with well-marked shapes for women's (and some men's) magazines.
In Japan, to be specific, there's a name for this kind of model: gravure idols – girls (yes, this is an Always Female trope there) that specialize in sexually provocative/suggestive photography of the playful/innocent kind (as opposed to aggressive sexuality), though not to the point of posing nude; that is what "AV Idols"note are for (though many AV idols started as gravure models too). Many popular female idols in Japan launched their careers by starting out as gravure idols, and some seiyuu and idol singers became or were gravure idols.
But, something that should be made clear: the Fanservice Model just makes provocative (or sometimes nude) photos but doesn't necessarily cross the line of sex or porn. However, as with everything, there are some exceptions, in which models started this way and later converted into pornstars, as well as pornstars that made sessions for some magazines during their porn careers or after retiring from them. Also some stars from various media (TV, movies, music, etc) made some casual sessions as Fanservice Models for some male (as well as female) magazines.
Compare Ms. Fanservice (and Mr. too), Lingerie Scene, Walking Swimsuit Scene, Shirtless Scene, Stripperiffic and Public Exposure. Contrast Costume Porn and Contractual Purity. Overlaps with Idol Singer, since some of them also are gravure idols; and Cosplay, depending of the kind of costume wearing (or almost not wearing), especially for private photosessions instead of crowded events. The Japanese Media Fictional Counterpart is the Ecchi genre.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Again!!, there's Taka, a famous Idol Singer and gravure idol who was a Gonk in High School until she met Imamura who changed her ways to the idol she's now.
- Booty Royale: Never Go Down Without a Fight! is a Slice of Life/Work Com series about gravure idols, though the first arc revolves around main character Haebaru Misora's agency trying to push her into AV after she initially fails to break out. After she acts in a hundred-man kumite scenario that was supposed to end in a gangbang but instead ended with the director admitting defeat after she kayoed fifty men and the other half ran away, her boss Sanada Hikaru realizes that Misora's karate skills are just as marketable as her looks and lets her stay in non-explicit jobs. She later becomes part of an idol trio called Japan KGB, after the members' cup sizes.
- In a filler Case Closed case, there's a beautiful young woman named Shouko Utakura and she's said to be an aspiring gravure model. She's one of the case's victims.
- Reika Shimohira from Gantz is a famous gravure idol... and she's still in highschool.
- In I"s, there's Iori Yoshizuki, a highschooler in the drama club that has found a sudden increase in popularity after posing in a swimsuit for a magazine spread. Also she's the Love Interest of Ichitaka Seto, the protagonist of the series.
- In Peepo Choo, there's Reiko, a a cynical teenage gravure idol who's fed up with her work and contrasts Occidental Otaku Milton about their visions about Japan.
- Koisome Momiji
, a 2012 manga, is about a Love Triangle between a ridiculously shy high school kid, a gravure idol and an actress.
Comic Books
- Green Lantern:
- Jennifer Lynn-Hayden, daughter of Green Lantern Alan Scott, more known as Jade, who also was a model and a photographer. Like the Tamaran, she's an extroverted person who hasn't afraid to show her Impossible Hourglass Figure (as seen in most of her Jade costumes), so it's implied her model career also has a lot of fanservice photoshoots.
- Another Green Lantern example with Arisia Rrab, who became a pin-up model for a short period of time, after she used her Green Lantern body to age herself and become an voluptuous young woman.
- Spider-Man: Mary Jane Watson is this while also being a model and an actress.
- Teen Titans: For a time, Starfire had a career as a fashion model (using the Earth name Kory Anders). Considering that she displays the traits of Tamaran's highly sensuous culture (and even showing herself naked in A LOT of official DC stories), it's pretty obvious to say she fits this trope all over.
- In one of the '80s comics, we actually get to see Starfire on a shoot for a thinly veiled comic book version of Guess jeans. Said shoot involves Starfire posing in said skin-tight jeans and nothing else in many more frames than is strictly necessary, and a lot of Toplessness from the Back.
- X-Men: In an early arc the team has to go undercover in New York, and Jean Grey gets a job modelling swimsuits.
Films — Live-Action
- Smarty: This 1934 film that is basically wall-to-wall Fanservice includes a scene where protagonist Joan Blondell goes to a lingerie store, and a series of models walk past her modeling various skimpy outfits.
Live-Action TV
- Amy Pond from Doctor Who was a fanservice model for a time before starting her adventures with The Doctor. But different from most of the characters on the list, she wore neither lingerie nor swimsuits, but Fanservice Costumes since she worked as a kissogram. By the time she saw the Doctor again after being a child, Amy was wearing a police officer costume.
- Various chapters in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit are dedicated to these kind of models and how they're victims covered by their unit. An example is a 2016 chapter in which a fashion photographer is accused of raping a model during a shoot, but his much more successful older designer brother tries to make the case go away.
- In the season 4 of That '70s Show, Michael Kelso was called to be a male underwear model, who appeared in diverse magazines, being mocked by his friends and causing a new split with his then-girlfriend Jackie Burkhart, who always wanted to be a model.
Pro Wrestling
- This is the point of Las Reinas/Diosas/etc del Ring in CMLL, the Nitro Girls, the nWo Girls and all similar groups. They entertain audiences between falls, or commercial breaks as two out of three falls became less popular in all regions not following Mexico's lead. This type of group was almost killed off in the US when Vince Russo got the idea to put the models into WCW's wrestling ring, to predictably subpar results(a couple good wrestlers for a lot of reluctant ones stinking up the ring or ending up out of work with medical bills to pay). Mixed martial arts companies such as UCF kept the "sign girl" and "two piece dancer" tropes alive.
- CSP/WWC used Dominican valets such as Amarillis, Destiny and Black Rose(who was actually a relatively well known Puerto Rican swimmer, dancer and body builder siding with Dominicans against her island) in this manner, and all but Rose faded into obscurity when WWC decided to push them as wrestlers(although that was the point with Amarillis, who was targeted by the jealous women's champion La Tigresa to keep Amarillis from taking her spot). Rose reveled in her fan service origins throughout her pro wrestling career and even served as The Face of a pole dancing class at one point with working for IWA PR.
- FMW was accused of signing Megumi Kudo solely to sell modeling photo books after she flunked the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling dojo. However, Kudo at first rededicated herself to training and became a legend among women wrestles, then went on to sell modeling photo books.
- Most women in ECW were valets who doubled as fan service models. The most obvious exceptions were Luna Vachon, The Prodigette and Jazz, while the most triumphant straight examples were Kimona Wanalaya (who actually took a break from pro wrestling after being booed for refusing to "show her tits" to a crowd with children in it), Beulah McGillicutty, Francine, Dawn Marie and Tammy Lynn Sytch (who thought women shouldn't be wrestlers before changing her tune in WSU and ROH). As a rule most didn't wrestle, but every once and while there would be a CAT FIGHT!
- Almost all (if not all) female wrestlers in WWF/WWE history, as well from other federations like WCW, made some fanservice sessions. The most escalated example is Chyna, who after retiring from wrestling, entered the XXX world as a pornstar. But she wasn't the only one or even the first: Tylene Buck (aka Major Gunns) preceded her, Candice Michelle proceeded her, Lizzy Borden was already involved with the porn industry when she tried her hand at pro wrestling. All of them also started with fanservice photosessions before their jump to porn.
- Promoting Jaguar Yokota after she became too old for All Japan Women's 'retire at 25' policy was the main reason Yoshimoto Pro Wrestling j'd/JD STAR even existed as a promotion. So when she opted to rely less on the company and do more freelance work, the remaining staff were at a loss for what do. They decided training girls with model type good looks, and getting them acting jobs for mainstream crossover publicity was the way to go. This was dubbed The "athtress" program, and wasn't enough to save JD. It did inspire World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM to train established models though.
- Jim Ross, drawing on his WWF/E work for relevance to this trope, is well known for his preference for collegian athletes when scouting for pro wrestlers, unless it's women wrestlers, which causes him to look for fitness models. When Ross lost his job as head of talent relations, the fitness part was dropped from company recruitment, leading to a lot of underwear and swimsuit models being instructed at OVW, Deep South and the FCW revival. The glut of underwear models WWE clearly cared most about the looks of actually lead to WWE dropping its women's wrestling division for the better part of a year rather than subject its fans to bad matches, but WWE discovered an initial ratings bolster when they put all the pretty women in a reality show style fan service segment called "the diva search"(key word being "initial", which is why they settled on bad matches later on, and eventually went back to scouting wrestlers and athletes).
- Kanako Urai, most known as Kana and Asuka. Apart from being a professional wrestler, she's also a gravure idol among other things. She's released a series of photo sets with her Triple Tails cohorts Mio and Io Shirai, a "sexier" alternative to Apple Tale of Arch-Nemesis Syuri Kondo, who did music albums and concerts instead.
- Early TNA had rookie wrestler Lollipop and valet April Pennington as dancers in cages. Being a Russo booked company, they soon ended up in an in ring feud with Bitch Slap, a stable made of more experienced wrestlers, and everyone involved ended up going nowhere before being released from the company as TNA went PG on Fox Sports Net. Bitch slap member Traci Brooks did ironically stick around long enough for TNA to promote her in a playboy magazine photo shoot, but Brooks got knocked off for cartoon character Marge Simpson. The company's most successful example was Gail Kim, most likely because she did her best known photo poses independent of TNA, so no one associated with it could screw things up.(Angelina Love also did an independent project modeling shoes and her bare feet)
- La Morena had a Playboy Bunny gimmick, but since WWC, IWA PR and The World Wrestling League weren't willing to go that far, most of her non wrestling work was merely suggestive, making her qualify for this trope.
- Despite the criticism she had in her time, gravure idol Yuzuki Aikawa became a wrestler in World Wonder Ring STARDOM, thus inverting the trope. Aikawa's heat, and success despite it, allowed many other models to slip into STARDOM virtually undetected, although only Mayu Iwatani was even close to being as successful in the ring as Aikawa. Undaunted, STARDOM opted to just have the more traditional athletes pose for photos with Aikawa and Iwatani anyway. Contemporary Western examples are Kelly Kelly, also a Fanservice Model that became a wrestler for WWE brands, Reby Sky, a glamour model who entered into feuds with body builder Jayme Jameson, and Wrestling Monster Jessicka Havok, the latter of whom believed Sky's "smut" was a hindrance to a promotion Havok actually cared about.
Video Games
- Tina Armstrong from Dead or Alive series. Apart from a wrestler, she also wanted to be a supermodel. In DOA2 she aspires to be one, for which she bleaches her hair blonde and dresses in skimpy outfits. She ends up having to fight her own father in the competition, and emerges victorious. She gets her wish and begins modeling on a television show.
- Miu Hinasaki, one of the characters of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, is a gravure model and can be seen during the game when Miu makes suggestive poses every time she's in front of the camera.
- Fighting Angels is a relatively obscure, all-female 2005 Fighting Game released for the PS2. Basically a fighting game starring gravure idols, or girls who wanted to be gravure idols. A game full of Fanservice but nothing more than that.
- The Idolmaster: One of the girls, Azusa, made an audition to be a gravure model in the anime adaptation. This trope is invoked since her seiyuu is actually one.
- In No More Heroes, one of the high-ranked assassins is Holly Summers, a former model with a prosthetic leg.
- In PriPara, there's Chunky Chanko, who became a gravure idol in Season 2. This seems to be played more for laughs, as only Meganee is ever seen taking photo shoots of her.
- In Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, Maiko Shimazaki, the president of Fortuna Entertainment, used to be a gravure idol, and depending on the ending she can go back to it.
- In Yakuza 5, Saki Suzuki, a gravure idol who is also an avid gamer, appears as a waitress at Izakaya Hanako in Kineicho.
- In Yandere Simulator's 1980's Mode, Chigusa Busujima is a gravure idol with a huge following (including Senpai) who transfers to Akademi. This is a disadvantage since many of her admirers follow her around, meaning it'd be difficult to eliminate her without any witnesses. On the other hand, it's also an advantage cause it'd be easy to find a boy willing to court Chigusa so she's no longer interested in Senpai. This is in fact the 'canonical' way of eliminating Chigusa.
Visual Novels
- Soni Comi:
- Super Sonico, nitro+'s Mascot, between the many things she does, is also a gravure idol, possibly the main reason of her success between Japanese Media fans.
- Extra addition for cosplayer and fanservice model Jessica Nigri, who also made Sonico's English dub for the game and anime appearances, as well being the official Nitro+'s Sonico cosplayer for the USA.
- One of Sonicomi characters, Lumie, was a former gravure model who left the business to become an Idol Singer as Sonico. She comes back as gravure idol in one route.
Webcomics
- Funny Animal Hunter from Furry Experience is a Mr. Fanservice model in Furry Valley U's figure drawing class. Poor introvert Catherine can barely look at his naked self while sketching his poses, and even her brash roommate Rhonda had to bail on one class because Hunter "was ... well ... hot."
- Sandra on the Rocks is a very Fanservice-laden webcomic that takes place in the fashion industry, with the characters mostly wearing these kind of outfits as part of their job. The protagonist, Sandra, is initially shy to wear them, but she eventually gets used to them.
