Pantsless Males, Fully-Dressed Females

In some cartoons and video games with funny animals and other non-humans, the male characters are often either pantless or naked save for accessories, but the female characters are more or less fully dressed, whether Barefoot Cartoon Animal or not. In a few instances, the male characters are shirtless.

Some societies of anthropomorphized animals have their own gender-based double standard dictating who is allowed to wear what clothes. The most common result is the females being held to a higher standard of dress than the males; which makes less sense when you realize males have a bit more to hide from the waist down. One possible answer could be that once one is a funny animal, it's less about modesty and more about accessorizing.

This trope is about the trend in some works to show male characters wearing less clothing than females.

Subtrope of Appropriate Animal Attire. See also Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal, and Humanoid Female Animal.

Examples of Pantsless Males, Fully-Dressed Females include:

Comics

• In a variant, the males of Fish Police are pantsless, while the females wear swimsuits or bikinis.

Film, Animated

• Most of the female Robin Hood characters are fully dressed and most of the male characters are pantsless.
• The talking mice in Cinderella fit this trope, but the cat, the dog, and the horse wear no clothes. The birds are a bit more ambiguous.
• The male aliens in Planet 51 are pantsless but the female ones are fully dressed.
• Once Upon a Forest does this, Russell the hedgehog being the only male character who wears pants but no shirt. Abigail wears tomboyish overalls while Michelle wears a little dress.
• Inverted in The Rescuers where Miss Bianca actually wears less clothing than Bernard.
• Inverted in the first segment of Fun and Fancy Free: Bongo wears a shirt, bowtie, and hat, but without pants, and Lulubelle wears nothing but a flower on her head.

Film, Live-Action

• In the vast majority of peplum (Italian-made sword and sandal flicks like Hercules and the Captive Women) the heroes run around basically dressed in nothing but leather diapers, while the women are generally dressed in togas that cover them from neck to ankle.
  • "Joel, I hate movies where the men wear shorter skirts than the women!"

Literature

• In Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Peter just wears a blue jacket (and loses even that). His mother wears a dress and an apron. His sisters, however, avert the trope by just wearing shawls.

Video Games

• In the Sly Cooper games, most of the male characters are routinely pantsless, but almost all the female characters are fully dressed. The exception is The Contessa from Sly 2, but she's a spider-centaur-thing with no humanoid legs.
  • In a behind-the-scenes unlockable in Sly 2, one developer comments that Sly is "a universe in pantsless-ness".
• In the Sonic the Hedgehog game series, all but two (Charmy and Ix) male non-human characters wear nothing but shoes and gloves, and all females are fully clothed.
  • But in the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons and comics, a sort of flip-flop in dressing code happens between the genders. With little exception, young male characters are mostly naked and young female characters are almost always fully dressed, but as they mature, the males start wearing more clothing, while the females start wearing much less. Amy Rose and Cream the Rabbit, for example, are not yet into their teens, and wear full dresses and panties, while their much older counterpart Sally Acorn wears only boots and a vest; similarly, Knuckles is almost completely nude in his teenage years, while his much older family members (and eventually himself, as revealed in the latest "25 Years Later" Story Arc) all wear some form of full bodysuit or cloak.
• In the third Spyro the Dragon game, Spyro: Year of The Dragon, Hunter wears nothing at all, whereas Bianca wears a robe.
• Crash Bandicoot is always shirtless, as most male animal characters: Tiny, Dingodile, Crunch... Coco, a female character, on the other hand, wears full clothing.
  • And Tawna from the first game wears a blouse and a miniskirt.
• Seen in the Donkey Kong games, at least with Donkey and Candy Kong. Candy wears a normal amount of clothes (well, "normal" might be pushing it a little, but she's covering the essentials), DK wears nothing but a tie.

Web Comics

• In Ozy and Millie, Ozy wears a top hat and vest as his default outfit, while Millie's is overalls (albeit without a shirt). Averted with the secondary and minor characters, where there's little to no correlation between amount of clothing and gender.
  • Though whenever Ozy is shaved he has to wear pants, was actually the subject of one mini-arc. And there are numerous occasions where Millie dances naked in the rain.
• Invoked in this Dork Tower comic.
• Inverted in Dragon City where male dragons usually wear a loincloth or shorts, but females are almost always stark naked. Partially justified as their genitals are differently arrayed (and Non-Mammal Mammaries is completely averted).

Web Original

• Homestar Runner. Lampshaded multiple times as he goes berserk when it's pointed out he's not wearing any pants and that whenever he loses whatever one might call the red-starred article of clothing he wears, he's covered in a censorship mosaic.

Western Animation

• Bugs Bunny from Looney Tunes is completely naked save for White Gloves, but Lola Bunny is more or less fully dressed.
  • In an older cartoon, Hare Splitter, Bugs and his romantic rival only wear gloves, while Daisy, their love interest, is in sweater and skirt. What's more, she lives in an above-ground bungalow, and they live in holes in the ground. Perhaps she just has more style.
  • Porky Pig is pantless, but Petunia Pig is fully dressed.
• Buster and Babs Bunny (no relation) from Tiny Toon Adventures wear a shirt and a blouse and skirt, respectively. But, Babs doesn't wear anything underneath it...
• In Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, all the male rangers wear shirts but no pants (actually, Chip doesn't even have a shirt, just a coat). Gadget wears a full jumpsuit. While this is partly justified normally since she's a mechanic, even when the rangers wear something other than their usual outfits, Gadget is always fully clothed.
  • There was a bit of Lampshade Hanging in one episode: When Dale and Gadget swap bodies, she says, "Is it drafty in here?" and quickly makes a skirt out of a toothpaste cap.
• In The Backyardigans, all the male characters except Austin are wearing less clothing (Tyrone is pantless and Pablo is almost completely naked) than the female characters (Tasha and Uniqua), who are more or less fully dressed.
• Rebecca and Molly Cunningham from Tale Spin are fully dressed, but Kit Cloudkicker and Baloo are pantsless. Averted in that most male characters in the show are fully dressed.
• Mickey and Minnie follow this trope in more modern appearances like in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, where Mickey Mouse remains shirtless but Minnie is wearing a full dress.
  • In House of Mouse and in Kingdom Hearts this is averted for Mickey Mouse having him wear full clothing. Donald still wear no pants though.
  • Also averted in the early Classic Disney Shorts, where Minnie was every bit as shirtless as Mickey.
• On Tuff Puppy, Kitty Katswell is fully clothed, but Dudley Puppy wears only a shirt.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants, Squidward seems to be the only one that doesn't wear pants, and this is often lampshaded.
• In Regular Show, Mordecai and Rigby are naked, while Margaret and Eileen are fully clothed.
• Minor reversal in Darkwing Duck; while most of the women follow suit with this (Morgana, Binky, Sarah Bellum all full; Darkwing, Honker without), Gosalyn herself is as dressed as her father (plus shoes), while Launchpad is fully dressed including boots.