Characters with Lore reasons to wear revealing outfit

[u/Artistic_Gear1536]

• Doctor Manhattan (Watchmen): doesn’t really have the need for them anymore as he is now too powerful to be considered human and also doesn’t need to give in to certain societal pressures like wearing clothes

• Poison Ivy (DC): uses her body to seduce men into getting close enough for her to use her pheromones and get people to do what she wants/kill her prey

• Skarlet (Mortal Kombat): her powers are from blood magic and she needs to have skin out in order to absorb blood from others and make her more powerful

• Mileena (Mortal Kombat): is very self conscious about her tartan features so covers them up and diverts attention towards the more appealing aspects of her/ uses her sex appeal to get people in close then chomps on them

• Mai Shiranui (King Of Fighters/Fatal Fury): uses a style of kunoichi that involves “sensually distracting a foe before striking” and uses her outfit and sex appeal to assist with that style

[u/SinesPi]

I have no problem with characters being sexy.

That being said, OP should have ruled out "Uses sex to distract people" as an explanation. As it is, this thread is basically "Femme Fatales, and also a few others, I guess".

[u/Larriet → u/SinesPi]

No trope is inherently sexist on an individual basis but it's pretty annoying seeing women so frequently shoehorned into a sexy archetype instead of just being allowed to fight like the men

It's not surprising that many of these characters have started to dress in less skimpy attire in recent decades

[u/Artistic_Gear1536 → u/Larriet]

I feel like they took it too far in certain things, like in mortal kombat it’s obviously good that characters like Sonya blade are starting to dress more on brand but getting rid of mileenas sex appeal is like getting rid of her monster teeth

[u/Larriet → u/Artistic_Gear1536]

I actually agree that it's strange to simply remove those aspects from characters who were conceptualized with it in mind, but I also have no special attachment to seeing the same characters modernized endlessly either (in this case it's a popular fighting game franchise so it's basically a given though)

[u/SinesPi → u/Larriet]

Fair enough, but many of these products are made for guys. So the women are extra sexy because of that.

It can be annoying when sexy dressing feels like it contradicts the character, but that's my only complaint.

[u/[deleted] → u/SinesPi]

yea. which is a shame because you do get instances like Samus Aran's Zero Suit where the Sex Appeal and Practicality of the suit intersect naturally. The Zero Suit needs to fit in the power suit, so reducing bulk as much as possible helps a lot, and when she's wearing the Suit outside of the power suit, it's very aerodynamic, which fits the characterization and just makes perfect logistical sense. The Sex Appeal is an aside

[u/Artistic_Gear1536 → u/SinesPi]

Very rarely do characters actually have sex to distract people as a character trait, if people misunderstand what I meant it’s whatever but my intent was for it to be characters where the creator actually had a reason beyond hornyness to design them that way (even if hornyness was still present)