How does her pose show off this ballgown?* Answer:
Modeling, whether clothes or other products, use specific moves and stances to make those products look good. All those various poses are actually ways to draw the eyes of potential customers. This has become so prevalent that people will often unconsciously pose when trying certain products (particularly women trying on fancy dresses).
What poses are done will depend on the product, and other factors. So when a Hood Ornament Hottie is posing, it will always be in ways that highlight the car. She may just touch it, lean against it, outright drape herself over it, or at the very least point to it in some way. When shows have certain products that fit in the hand, the model may hold it up while making gestures directly around the item to keep our eyes on it.
When it comes to being a fashion model, the poses may vary not only according to the outfit but also depending on whether they are posing for just one picture or more. If there are multiple pictures, or a Fashion Show, then the model will easily be able to show the whole outfit. If there is one picture, like an ad in a Fashion Magazine, then the poses will be more elaborate in order to highlight as much of the outfit as possible. This is also why store dummies are arranged in poses.
In fiction the purpose of these poses is often lost, and it's just fun to have people making silly poses, even when they are still modeling.
This frequently overlaps with other pose tropes:
- Badass Arm-Fold
Often to show surety of the quality of the product. - Boobs-and-Butt Pose
Usually when we see the back of a dress, particularly a Sexy Backless Outfit. - Captain Morgan Pose
If the product wants an impression of manliness. - Coat Over the Shoulder
Often for casual wear. - Contrapposto Pose
Projecting subtle but dynamic elegance. - Coy, Girlish Flirt Pose
For feminine outfits. - Dynamic Akimbo
For the heroic or excessively confident. - Finger Framing
For cameras and camera-including devices. - Foot Popping
For romantic products. - Girly Skirt Twirl
For skirts that flow a little, even miniskirts. - The Grace Face Pose
When a woman puts the backside of her hand underneath her chin coyly. May or may not be paired with Noblewoman's Laugh. - Head-and-Hip Pose
To draw attention to a woman's face and her curves. - Leaning on the Furniture
To show the product is for cool people. - Marilyn Maneuver
Or at least letting the Hot Wind blow the skirt around a little. - Rebel Relaxation
This product is for those too cool for anything else. - Reclining Reigner
To show your product may make you feel like royalty. - Supermodel Strut
Especially with one or both hands on her hips.
A Sister Trope to Notice This.
Compare Costume Porn, Rule of Glamorous, Sex Sells. See Stock Poses for an index of poses used in visual media more generally.
See also Model Couple (who often pose together, in addition to physically complementing each other).
Compare/contrast Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket (the actors visually try to make products look as bad as possible).
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Karamatsu Matsuno from Osomatsu-san pretty much always strikes at least one whenever he's on screen. Usually several.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Has a truckload of these in its promotional art pieces and cover arts. Hell, some of the poses the characters do are even borrowed from actual Western fashion magazines just to emphasize how fabulous this series' style is.
Art
- Alphonse Mucha's famous and much-pastiched poster women are often throwing some kind of shapes. Leaning on the Furniture (maybe invisible furniture)
◊ pensively is the most common, but there's at least one case◊ of a (stylized but unmistakable) Boobs-and-Butt Pose.
Comic Books
- In a Millie the Model cover, Millie is stuck in a pose as her dress needs repair and any further movement will wreck it. She hopes she won't get a horrible cramp, while an assistant in another room bemoans how easy it must be to be a model.
- In the first X-Men issue Jean Grey tries on the team uniform and does a pose in front of a mirror.
- In the pages of Adventure Comics #424, Linda Danvers does a Head-and-Hip pose in front of a mirror as she tries on a dress which she intends to use to seduce information out of an ex-gangster.
Fan Works
- In Risen, Jean Grey spends several hours performing model poses for a fitness and health magazine.
"Okay, now you can move," Roy decreed, his camera already clicking. "Stay on your knees. Get up on your toes...keep your feet straight. Hands right above your knees...lean forward. Keep your upper back straight...arch, keep your butt resting on your heels. Shoulders back. Tilt your chin. No! Look over there, don't focus on anything...Look dreamy...Damn it! Not sultry, distracted! This isn't Cosmo!" His voice sweetened as she achieved exactly want he wanted. "Lovely...now hold it."
She remained perfectly still as he shot a dozen more frames from various angles, relaxing only when he told her to.
Films — Animation
- Frozen (2013) spoofs this when Anna gets Kristoff a replacement for his sled, and Sven does a Hood Ornament Hottie pose on the front.
- Rarity in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls movies. It seems to be second nature for her to adopt poses that show off her clothes whenever she tries a new outfit. Especially prominent in the short "Life Is a Runway".
Films — Live Action
- In Batman Returns the lady playing Ice Princess does a few poses before and after she lights the central square tree. Even though she is wearing a Sexy Santa Dress outfit, she's not actually modeling anything, but it makes her look good.
- Singin' in the Rain: During the "Beautiful Girl" number, a bunch of contemporary outfits are shown, and the models are each in a pose typical for the garment (such as the sportswear model holding her tennis racquet as though she was in mid-swing).
- In Shock Treatment Janet is made a TV celebrity, and after being given a wardrobe makeover she ignores her husband while posing for pictures.
- In True Lies Helen is on a spy mission (sort of) and after she does some Rip Tailoring to make her dress look sexy, she poses in front of a mirror.
- In Zoolander Derek has a couple poses that he treats as his signature moves (though the villain argues they are the same move).
- In My Man Godfrey, Irene is called out by her heartless older sister Cornelia when she does this for Godfrey's benefit, with the elder sister even pointing out this is pose no. 8 from their drama class.
- Throughout Paris Is Burning as various transgender and drag queen people strike modeling poses in the Balls. There is also a discussion of vogueing, the dance, and how it grew out of the dramatic poses that models strike on the runway.
Live Action TV
- Our Miss Brooks: In "Acting Director", Miss Brooks makes several quick poses for the camera as a Warner Bros. photographer takes snapshots.
- In America's Next Top Model the girls often have to create poses for their photo shots. In the show, the girls must avoid stereotypical modeling cliches and instead find new and interesting poses that highlight the clothing, the theme of the session and their natural assets. This puts the focus on skill over looks, as judges have stated even when they think some contestants are better looking, their modeling abilities aren't good enough compared to others.
- Firefly: In "Shindig", the crew are in the shopping district in a town. Kayle admires the frilly dresses in the windows, which are worn by live mannequins who move between different poses every few seconds.
- How I Met Your Mother: When the audience is introduced to Barney's brother James, the two do an impromptu "fashion show" where he does a fake model strut including poses.
- In an episode of Room 101, Katherine Parkinson consigned modelling poses to Hell, quite reasonably asking how any normally jointed woman could hold one particular pose for longer than five seconds without falling over, and pointing out that these things are treated as normal and reasonable to the point where women have been conditioned to view them as something to aspire to, even in casual family photographs.
Music
- Madonna's song "Vogue" is about the dance of the same name. In the videos and performances, she and her backup dancers all do modeling poses like the dance.
- The Pipettes' "Pull Shapes" is a song about ... pulling poses. See the video for illustration.
- Cat Hairballs: During the line "hey let's make a three piece suit/of this freshly hwarfed up hair" a woman strikes this pose, touching her huge hat and her hip, to show off her dress.
Stand-Up Comedy
- In a Howie Mandel special he talks about how when women try on clothes, they always want to do a pose (namely both hands on hips and sticking out their leg). The audience tries to justify why the pose is actually a good thing, but Howie keeps pointing out how the pose wouldn't work in real life.
Theatre
- In Cactus Flower, Toni poses for Igor with the mink stole from Julian, just to prove it's not her style.
Video Games
- In Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 the Nimbasa gym is largely a fashion catwalk, and most of the opponents, including the Gym Leader Elesa, are models who do poses as every battle starts.
Web Video
- In the final Atop the Fourth Wall and The Spoony Experiment crossover video for the comic by the Ultimate Warrior, one of the alternate universe opened up was where Spoony and Linkara were models, and they ended their skit on a bunch of fashion poses as the cameraman took their pictures.
Western Animation
- Beverly Hills Teens: The opening sequence includes some shots of the girls doing flashy poses while modeling clothes.
- In the episode "The Cat Who Laid the Golden Hairball", of Ren & Stimpy, a model is seen on TV striking this pose while showing off a dress made out of hairballs.
- In a Daria episode where Quinn and other students are competing to be models, the recruiter gives them inspiration (such as haughty glee at seeing a rival getting an emergency amputation) for to how to do their catwalk moves, so the girls capture the proper tone as they strut on the catwalk.
- In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) episode "April's Fool" April O'Neil does some modeling poses while showing the turtles and Splinter the dress she's wearing for the king's ball she was invited to.
- In Wild Kratts episode "Flight of the Draco", Martin finds himself performing as a (albeit unwilling) runway model for Donita's fashions.
Real Life
- The dance "Voguing" is about moving from pose to pose like a model (and was named for the magazine Vogue).
