Cleavage Window

Her windows to the soul are up there.
"You have a bullet proof fabric and you want to cut a hole in it right over your heart??? Are you insane?"
—Sahira, Spinnerette

A cut in a woman's top that shows parts of the top of her breasts. It doesn't matter the shape or the size (of the window or the breasts), as long as the window is completely enclosed. It also doesn't matter about the rest of the outfit, as this can be on a bathing suit, a sweater, a Leotard of Power, a Mini-Dress of Power or a grand Pimped-Out Dress.

Obviously a form of Fan Service, and likely Author Appeal.

Compare Most Common Superpower, Absolute Cleavage, Impossibly Low Neckline, Chainmail Bikini, Naked in Mink, Bare Your Midriff.

Examples of Cleavage Window include:

Anime & Manga

  • The titular heroine's outfit in Cutey Honey.
  • Melissa's clerid dress in Rune Soldier Louie.
  • The Dirty Pair had these in some of their appearances, when the character design included collars that buttoned up.
  • Tiara of Shamanic Princess.
  • Some of the Innovators of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 have these as part of their choice of dress. With them, it's kind of hard to tell whether any of them are female examples of this or not.
  • Arf's outfit in the first season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. There's also Linith, Fate's Parental Substitute before the series started, who wore an outfit that comprised an outer-coat with a Cleavage Window and a dress with another Cleavage Window.
  • Ran in One Piece.
  • Yin of the Darker than Black franchise costume contains a mild version of this. She's far from well-endowed but, the combination of her dress and throw create a patch of visible skin. [dead link]
    • Fittingly, her Expy, Golden Darkness (Yami) of To LOVE-Ru also has one, though in a diamond pattern and a single piece of cloth.
  • Mizuho in Please Teacher could, in her alien outfit, open up one of these by will, and did so in her attempt to seduce Kei.
  • A great number of Yuuko's costumes in xxxHolic.
  • Ah! My Goddess Belldandy. Yes, Belldandy. It's the only skin showing in that outfit besides her face and her fingers.
  • Most Arume military uniforms are like this in Blue Drop.
  • In the first season of Galaxy Angel, Forte and Ranpha had this. They were covered up in the second season onward for some reason.
  • All the adult female characters of Amuri in Star Ocean have this in their uniforms.
  • Stella's first dress in Interstella 5555.
  • In Red Photon Zillion the Tsundere has one of these - a blouse with a neckline that plunges at least three inches, with a tiny strap for a collar. The result is a teardrop-shaped window that shows a small amount of cleavage.
  • In one instance of Death Note, model/actress Misa Amane attempts to get Matsuda out of a jam with a roomful of shady businessmen by pretending to want to be a model/spokesperson for them. She is seen with a tank top with a heart-shaped cut that revealed her cleavage
  • Medaka's student council outfit in Medaka Box has this, as does one of her bikinis.
    • Amusingly, it becomes a major plot point because it violates the dress code.
  • Isabella from Beelzebub has one in her maid uniform.
  • As of 2016, cat-head-shaped Cleavage Windows now appear to be de rigeur for Cat Girls.

Comic Books

  • Power Girl, who Depending on the Writer either is upset when people look at it, or invokes this for a distraction.
    • Ditto her Expy Galatea from Justice League Unlimited.
    • DC once introduced a Joke Character named Power Boy who had the same cutout on his costume's chest for no discernible reason other than Self-Deprecation humor. Story-wise, he was a minion of Darkseid who defected after falling in love with Supergirl, but after he proved to be an abusive boyfriend, nobody found him funny anymore, and the writers killed him off.
  • Invisible Woman of Fantastic Four had one, shaped like the figure 4, in her 1990s outfit.
  • Talia from the Batman comics sometimes wears gowns like this.
  • In Marvel Comics, Dagger from the team Cloak and Dagger. Her costume has a cleavage window in the shape of a dagger. The "guards" on the dagger serve to expose side boob cleavage as well as belly.
  • Icon: Rocket's first costume, to Icon's vague disapproval. Her second costume, which Icon designed, eschewed this.
  • Taken to its extreme in Transmetropolitan, where one of the outfits a female character wears to a party is fairly normal... except for a small triangle of fabric exposing her nipple. For Bonus Points, she wears the triangle of fabric as a necklace.

Fan Works


Literature

  • In The Wheel of Time Ebou Dari dresses are described as having an oval cut out exposing the inner slopes of the wearer's bosom. On married local women, this is to frame the marriage knife, who's hilt nestles between the breasts.
  • For the Forgotten Realms novel Azure Bonds, the protagonist Alias is depicted in Clyde Caldwell's cover art wearing chain mail armour with a large gap between her breasts. This has been Handwaved as either ceremonial armour, or to allow those controlling her through the eponymous azure bonds to kill her easily if she showed signs of rebellion. The image has been used throughout Dungeons & Dragons media and the spin-off computer game, Curse of the Azure Bonds.
    • Another claim was that the armor was enchanted and either extended mystic protection to the open area, or that there was armor there that was made invisible.
    • The entire thing was lampshaded when Alias guest-starred in the Forgotten Realms comic book in 1989, and the halfling Foxilon Cardluck had the following exchange with her:

Foxy: Uhh... Doesn't that armor get drafty sometimes?
Alias: It's enchanted.
Foxy: (under his breath) Oh, I'll just bet it is.


Live-Action TV

  • Star Trek
    • From Star Trek: The Next Generation onward, the female Klingons are wearing outfits similar to their male counterparts, except with a cleavage-baring opening on the chest armor. Probably has something to do with the whole Space Viking motif. This is particularly silly, considering that Klingons attack each other with bladed weapons all the time. Even considering that Klingons have not one but two hearts.
    • Also Lwaxana Troi, more than once.
  • Captain Liberty of the live action The Tick (animation).
  • In season 2 of Babylon 5, Delenn experiments by exchanging her usual robes for a slinky black dress with a diamond-shaped opening over her cleavage. Everyone who sees her is stunned speechless.
  • Alexia from Pixelface.



Video Games

Web Comics

Spinnerette: [...] If you could just give it a lower neckline with some cleavage[...]
Sahira: What?
Spinnerette: Y'know. To distract the bad guys.
Sahira: You have a bullet-proof fabric, and you want to cut a hole in it right over your heart?! Are you insane?

    • Super MILF apparently justifies this in that her "venusian bust" generates so much heat that she requires air venting. At least, that's what she says.
  • Ms. Apple from What's Shakin' has an aptly cut shape.
  • Ferretina's, the Weasel Queen's outfit from this non-canon Girl Genius comic.
  • Discussed but Averted in Dumbing of Age with self-appointed superheroine Amazi-Girl. To Daisy's displeasure.

Daisy: Did. She have. A chest window?


Music

  • Nicki Minaj in her "Turn Me On" music video.
  • Hyosung from Korean girl group Secret. One of the few Korean idols able to pull it off successfully.


Web Original

  • Linkara of Atop the Fourth Wall isn't too fond of these, at least when it's clear that it's just about objectifying women. Then he calls these "Boob windows."
  • Crimson, who is at the Super-Hero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. She has a diamond shaped window larg enough that Phase thinks she's risking a wardrobe malfunction.


Western Animation

  • Galatea from the DC Animated Universe has one; granted she's supposed to be an Expy of Power Girl.
  • The Futurama DVD commentaries mention that the animators liked putting Leela and Amy in dresses with these whenever the plot required them to dress up. Lampshaded in one episode that had random time skips during a basketball game. Amy, wearing such an outfit, immediately brings attention to it as a possible explanation.
  • In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Ahsoka's new outfit in the third season has this. It used to be an outright Age-Inappropriate Dress, though.
  • Izzy from Total Drama has one in her signature outfit. In the second aftermath of Action, she uses hers to hold grapes, cheese and crackers, as well as the crumbs she spit out after realizing she was on the green room's TV.
  • Stan Lee's Stripperella. What more would you expect from a character based on Pamela Anderson?

Real Life

  • There are probably plenty of these at model shoots and show business events, but such an outfit can be very -- notable anywhere else. In May 2012, a model named Julia Orayén was hired to present some materials to the candidates at the start of a Mexican presidential debate. On camera for less than 30 seconds, her tight cleavage-window dress was an instant Twitter sensation, and news reports worldwide declared how she had upstaged—or even "won"—the debate
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