Girl Watching

"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. Not that women are above it all, though.

Supertrope 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.

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Examples:

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. Though 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 & Manga

• In Asteroid in Love, Moe's confessed hobby is "collecting the girls' info," which boils down to this trope. As shown in Suzu's Research and even in the main series, she enjoys seeing the girls' Charm Points, as well as being curious how they act in different situations (especially Mira and Ao).
• In Castle Town Dandelion, the activities king's 9 children were being constantly tracked by surveillance cameras and aired on TV so as to prepare for the upcoming royal election. However, it seemed quite a bit of the commoners used the chance to girl-watch the several teenage princesses on imageboard-like fansites.
• Kazuharu Fukuyama from Girls Bravo is the master of this trope, as well as the unwelcome grope.
• One of the Running Gags in Inuyasha; both InuYasha and Miroku have gotten some really good looks at Kagome and Sango while bathing. The difference is that InuYasha tries to be a good boy whereas Miroku is incorrigible, and our good boy's efforts to deter his peeping usually result in him ending up an Accidental Pervert; cue "sit" command and boomerang bashing.
• In the 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.
• In Welcome to the NHK, the main character does this...except that the girls he's staring at are preteens. (He is fully aware of this.)

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 Comics often did this lots of times. One issue inverts this, with Archie getting upset that Betty and Veronica are watching boys on the beach.

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.
• In Turning Red, this is Gender-Inverted. Mei and her friends stare at and discuss the physical features of Devon early in the movie as well as some male classmates later.

Literature

• The La Vita Nuova is all about a few times Dante saw the most beautiful woman in the world from a distance and wrote poetry trying to capture her beauty.

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.
• Once the 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.
  • For now...
• 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, although based on their tone Cam briefly worries they're doing something illegal.
• There's a 21 Jump Street episode with a group of 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...")
• "Music to Watch Girls By" by Andy Williams. ("Eyes watch girls walk, with tender loving 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.
• "Peaches" by The Stranglers.

Theatre

• In The Most Happy Fella, Herman and his three pals watch the local girls strolling by in "Standing on the Corner" (made famous by The Four Lads).

Visual Novels

• Defied by the protagonist of Daughter for Dessert whenever Mortelli comments on one of the girls who works at the diner.
• A version (and subversion) of this appears in Double Homework. Dennis shows the protagonist nudes of their classmates... and even one of Ms. Walsh. The protagonist can tell that some of them are fake. Also, he talks to Dennis to find out if he has any pictures of Johanna and Tamara, not to discuss girls with Dennis.

Web Original

• Gavin does this on his own while talking to a camera in the KateModern episode "Birdwatching". "I'm just brushing up on my ornithology!"

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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