Bringing sexy back, oh yeah!
Bikinis are usually shown on television as Fanservice when worn by women. However, men shown wearing them are likely to be done for Fan Disservice or Played for Laughs. One reason for this is that bikinis (like other midriff-baring outfits) are often seen as inherently feminine clothing that look silly or unappealing on a man.
Very occasionally they will be shown as Wholesome Crossdresser — type characters.
However, this is also Truth in Television: feminine/gender-nonconforming men, such as drag queens and crossdressers, do enjoy wearing feminine-style bikinis in spite of gender roles. Also note that the word "bikini" can also refer to skimpy swimming shorts, which are technically unisex clothing — but men wearing briefs as a swimsuit generally looks more than a little odd to North American audiences. See Briefs Boasting for men who proudly wear legless briefs to show off their bodies.
Examples:
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Advertising
- This Miller Lite commercial
advises against men wearing this kind of swimwear.
Anime & Manga
- The "Capitalist Pig" bondage slave in Detroit Metal City is a portly middle-aged man in a bikini.
- In Hentai Kamen, the titular hero's mankini is his weapon.
- Pokémon the Series is one show that likes using this trope, mainly for Black Comedy and Rule of Funny purposes. Most infamous is a Banned Episode featuring James wearing a bikini, complete with Fake Boobs.
- One of Rock Lee's signature moves in Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth, as a result of him trying to copy Naruto's Sexy Jutsu.
Comic Books
- Deadpool: Deadpool has worn a bikini at least once. When informed he has visitors offering mercenary work and advised that he change, he puts on his weapons, and greets them still wearing the bikini.
- Dogbert's Clues for the Clueless shows that a mummy ought to be dressed in bandages from head to toe, a woman can wear just a skimpy thong bikini at the beach. The final panel, under the caption, "However, a mummy should never wear a bikini," shows the mummy wearing a bikini over bandages, thinking, "Looking good..."
- New Mutants: In a Beach Episode, Warlock, due to his unfamiliarity with human society, shows up in a bikini. (He later changes into a speedo.)
Films — Live-Action
- In Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, on the beach of Doctor Evil's island lair, Felicity walks ashore in a white bikini recalling Ursula Andress in Dr. No — then so does Austin.
- Borat is quite possibly one of the more famous examples. The neon green mankini that Sacha Baron Cohen wears in the film has become popular on beaches.
- George of the Jungle: Lyle's henchman Thor mentions this to his colleague Max when they realize the "white ape" is George, a man in a loin cloth.
Thor: I told you there weren't no white ape. You dragged me all the way up here to look at some guy in a leopard skin bikini. If I wanted to see that, I could've stayed in Miami.
- The beginning of Millionaires' Express sees the protagonist, Chen (played by Sammo Hung) being subjected to wearing women's undergarments and a makeshift wig (made from a mop head) to perform a burlesque dance for a group of soldiers, as "punishment" for stealing from them.
- Not shown, but referenced in Remember the Titans: In an effort to increase team cohesion, the coaches pair up the white players and the black players and force them to learn things about their partner. One player reveals that his partner wears leopard-print bikini underpants.
Live-Action TV
- In one sketch on The Amanda Show, Drake loses a bet to Amanda and has to run down the street in a string bikini.
- Hollyoaks is also prone to this trope as well, and will be doing so more over 2011.
- On Impractical Jokers, Joe wears a bikini for his "car wash" punishment.
- Medium also did this in the notorious episode "Will the Real Fred Rovick Stand Up?" which featured Diedrich Bader as the aforementioned Fred Rovick, wearing a bikini.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus was the earliest example of this; with John Cleese sometimes wearing one for Rule of Funny purposes.
- Mankini is a recurring character on The Soup played by Nic DeLeo. He's mostly a Butt-Monkey.
- Because "Mankini" is not Joel McHale's intellectual property DeLeo became One-Piece Man for The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale.
- In one episode of MythBusters, a ballistics gel dummy had to be fitted with an underwire bra for a myth. Turned out Tory was close to the right size for it....
Music
- Yoshiki Hayashi did this for both a filmed apology for canceling an event in the 90s and for promotional photos and the album cover of the Jealousy album. And yes, he filled out the black lace very well.
New Media
- There was plenty of discussion about this on The Other Wiki. Consensus was: it's unencyclopedic.
Newspaper Comics
Print Media
- Gender Inverted in this picture of Christie Brinkley wearing a man's speedo that appeared in the 1978 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
Pro Wrestling
- WWE: Santino Marella once wore a Borat-style mankini.
Theater
- Billis in the "Honey Bun" number from South Pacific is generally dressed in a coconut-shell bikini top and a grass skirt.
Video Games
- Dead Rising
- The Wii version has a bikini as an unlockable outfit for Frank West.
- Dead Rising 2 has a Borat-style "Mankini" for Chuck Greene.
- And likewise, there's also one for Nick Ramos in Dead Rising 3.
- Referenced in Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance in the description for the Bikini armor. (Like any piece of armor in the game, it doesn't provide a visual change)
- La-Mulana: The prize for beating Hell Temple is an all-too-revealing shot of Lemeza wearing a skimpy women's swimsuit.
- While you (unfortunately?) never see it, in Rune Factory 3 when you speak to Evelyn on the first day of summer, she mentions that by the end of the day she'll get someone to wear a bikini that she's made of turnip. Just so there's no confusion, she adds that by 'someone' she means Gaius. Gaius is the male dwarf. note
- One of the many extra scenes in Persona 4: Golden is a Beach Episode of sorts. Kanji shows up in a tiny speedo and is humiliated since the other guys are all wearing trunks. He first censors himself with Teddie, and then ends up wearing a bikini made of seaweed.
Web Animation
- In the Flash video S.M.B.3 Bloopers, Mario finds the wrong kind of Super Suit.
- According to Blow Fly in The Trash Pack webisode "Snot My Problem", Trash-A-Pillar has done this before, much to Blow Fly's displeasure and disgust.
Webcomics
- Bizarre Uprising: It's more like men should never wear cheerleader outfits. Relatively early in the plot, Toki gets into some shenanigans that had him end up joining the otherwise pretty cheerleaders. To clarify, Toki is an unattractive, paunchy, and extremely hairy teenager.
- In Black Adventures, N tries to wear one for the Beach Episode, but Black makes him change.
- Manly Guys Doing Manly Things teaches us the value of context with the help of Marcus Fenix.
Duke Nukem: Yeah, I can see people complaining about this.
Marcus: I'm complaining about this.
Western Animation
- Beavis and Butt-Head: In "Babes R Us", the duo prepares for wrestling with girls by fighting each other while wearing bikinis.
- An episode of Clarence (2014) has the titular character trying on clothes at the thrift store as he prepares for a date, one of which is a bikini.
- I Am Weasel once invented a "motorbikini" and tried it.
- It almost happened in Regular Show in "The Unicorns have got to go" when Rigby sees one in a recliner and claims the Unicorns got him a lady, to which Mordecai replies, "That's not a lady." But due to Executive Meddling, the man in a bikini got replaced with a burned-out biker with long hair in a recliner who looks like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin).
- Robot Chicken: During the first Star Wars special, one skit features George Lucas visiting a Star Wars convention and getting mobbed by rabid fans. One of them is a fat man in a Slave Leia bikini.
- A non-Fanservice, non-comical example occurs in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power episode 7. Bow wears the same bathing apparatus as the girls in the steam grotto, simply because Etheria's bathing clothes are unisex.
- The Simpsons: Homer Simpson, trying to "Think Unsexy Thoughts" while in an elevator with an attractive coworker, pictures fat drunken slob Barney Gumble dancing in a bikini while singing the I Dream of Jeannie theme.
- One of the weird field reporters in South Park is a midget wearing a bikini, who appears in the episode "Pinkeye", in the movie and in the video games The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole.
Real Life
- Actor Jim Carrey wearing then-girlfriend Jenny McCarthy's suit at the beach. Pictures.
- Truth in Television: male bikini-wearing appears to be a fairly common thing. It is not predominantly associated with gay men, despite stereotypes. Youths will do this during their college/university years as a joke.
- Note that the word "bikini" refers to the bottoms as well as the top. Any pair of shorts that bares the upper thighs is technically called "bikini briefs", and until the late 1980s it was not considered shameful for American men to wear them while swimming.
