Sexy Jester - TV Tropes
- ️Thu Feb 18 2010
Quite the foxy harlequin, ain't she?
"Awooga! I've got a bad case of clussy fever, and I wanna make whoopee with HER cushions!"
Ah, clowns, who likes those creeps? They're either scary as hell, or so silly you can't take them seriously. But what's this? A new character donning motley that's just a little too tight and Stripperiffic? Could this makeup-wearing joker actually be attractive? Might be a Cute Mute if she's a mime. Usually wears a Happy Harlequin Hat.
Usually a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or Plucky Comic Relief for the heroes, or a Perky Female Minion for the bad guys. Villainous Harlequin is when a Jester or Clown, who may or not be sexy, plays an antagonist role. Despite the page intro, this can actually apply to clowns as well.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Cardcaptor Sakura:
- This is one of Sakura's costumes. Of course, when your costume designer is madly in love with you, what do you expect?
- Also, several of the Clow Cards themselves qualify as this.
- Belmond, Universe 11's God of Destruction in Dragon Ball Super is a Monster Clown with a troupe of sexy jesters who sit feeding him grapes.
- Hunter × Hunter has the Bishōnen Monster Clown Hisoka as a male example.
- As usual (like every Fanservice trope), Negima! Magister Negi Magi's cast contains one of these: Zazie Rainyday is a clown/mime girl with an talent for acrobatics, animal training and juggling. Her outfit for doing these things was clearly meant to invoke this image.
- Pierrot from Yakitate!! Japan. The name gives it away too easily.
Comic Books
- Jewelee, one of of the Punch and Jewelee villain duo, in The DCU.
- Doomsday Clock gave her an Expy called The Marionette who is themed after a clown puppet.
- The DCU has had multiple villains called Harlequin (mostly foes of Green Lantern) who all fit this description.
- Harleen Quinzel, a.k.a. Harley Quinn, lady love of The Joker.
- The Joker's Daughter, one-time member of the Teen Titans.
- The Ame-Comi Girls variant of the above Joker's Daughter, a.k.a. Duela Dent, holds her own selective fanbase in this regard, being a Steampunk sexy jester.
Fan Works
- In Hail to the Jewels in the Lotus, Mirage is presented as this due to her lithe figure, tiny-heeled feet, and small hands. She even blows a kiss to a Corpus camera right before shooting it out.
Film — Animated
- Baberaham_linkin's Slaughter Race avatar in Ralph Breaks the Internet is a girl in Juggalo makeup.
Film — Live Action
- In The Demoniacs, the mysterious Clown who guides the girls to the priest in the cursed ruins is played by sexy French actress Mireille Dargent wearing red tights, a semi-transparent shirt, clown makeup and a red clown wig.
- The Terenzi brothers from Killer Klowns from Outer Space seem to regard the two female clowns as this but most viewers wouldn't agree.
- Batty Boop (Not that one), the only female clown in Full Moon Features Killjoy Goes To Hell.
- Mia dresses like this when performing on stage in The Seventh Seal.
- Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad (2016). She wears short-shorts the whole film, and there is also a scene of her changing her shirt that shows her bra.
Literature
- The androgynous, enigmatic, albino Fool, from Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy has this effect on many a female reader, as well as Fitz, the main character, later on.
- The antagonist of The Cannibals of Candyland is a sexy clown girl who comes from an underground society of monster clowns that comes to the surface to eat humans.
Live Action TV
- The New Avengers: In "Three Handed Game", Ms. Fanservice Purdey puts on clown wig, red nose and face paint.
Professional Wrestling
- Kanako Urai sometimes wears clown makeup.
Pinball
- Joker Poker is famous for its three curvacious female jokers on the backglass.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40,000 has the Eldar Harlequins
. They're Space Elves, a lot of them are female, and they're incredibly athletic and wear form-fitting jester outfits. They also kill people with horrific weapons, including a mono-molecular thin wire that melts people from the inside.
Theater
- Candy from Holy Musical B@man! is a straight Harley Quinn Expy.
Theme Parks
- Chance from Universal's Halloween Horror Nights, whose outfits seem to get more revealing with each appearance she makes.
Video Games
- AdventureQuest Worlds has holiday/Christmas jester outfits which look like cut-open leotards on female characters. The very first version had the stomach and most of the breasts exposed.
- Harle of Chrono Cross wears a mostly skintight outfit, and "pants" that cover her legs, but are completely transparent. The pseudo-French accent complements the effect.
- In City of Heroes, The Carnival of Shadows is mostly staffed with these.
- Dragon Quest III has Jesters as a character class. Male Jesters are clowns in pink and purple pinstripes, while female Jesters wear Playboy Bunny outfits. To top it off, the Personality system used in the various remakes makes it possible to have a literal Sexy Jester.
- Final Fantasy VI: Kefka is quite a Bishōnen in concept art. The game too. Remove the white/purple skin (or keep it if that's your thing) and he could be quite the looker.
- Fire Emblem:
- Fire Emblem: Awakening has the Trickster class
aka one of the promotions for Thieves (the other being Assassin); visually resemble jesters sans make-up. Of specific note are the beautiful redhead and series mascot Anna and the deranged but not that bad-looking King Gangrel both of whom the Player Character can recruit and marry. Other characters can be either promoted (Gaius or a Morgan fathered by Gaius) or reclassed and then promoted into Tricksters (Kellam, Lon'qu, the Avatar themself, and/or a Kid from the Future who gets the Thief->Trickster reclass option from one of their parents)
- Fire Emblem Fates renames the Thief/Tricksters to Outlaws/Adventurers and switches them from sword users to archers, but are basically the same. Anna can be again promoted into it and so can the Tall, Dark, and Snarky Niles and Niles' daughter aka the very cute Nina, while the borderline Silver Fox Shura and the potentially recruitable Funke and Candace are already there. At the same time the chance to reclass a character into Thief and Trickster is amplified: now a character can not only have the option from the beginning or, if a Second Gen character, inherit it from one of his/her parents, but some can use the upport System to either marry or befriend a Trickster and then inherit the class from him/her.
- Fire Emblem: Awakening has the Trickster class
- Gotham City Impostors' take on Harley Quinn stands out, notably for her green hair, dress, tights and bunny slippers, but more so for her clown grin and real life counterpart.
- Yuika from Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar wears an outlandish outfit, has heart-like makeup on her cheeks, and overall acts like a stereotypical clown.
- A good portion of the NiGHTS fanbase thinks this about Reala, and NiGHTS Zirself to some extent.
- Calypso from Twisted Metal resurrects Sophie Kane with a clown mask similar to her father's.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- In Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, circus performer Simeon Saint is noted as extremely handsome even whilst wearing his clown makeup.
- In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, Geiru Toneido wears a sexy version of the clown outfit. Unlike Simeon, she's not actually a clown, but instead a rakugo performer (a kind of Japanese comedic storytelling). Also, she's the murderer of her case.
- Soul of Sovereignty: Ysmé initially presents herself as a timid, sickly young woman in a fur cape, but when she ditches the act partway through the game's prelude, she casts a Glamour and reappears in a burst of sparkles with a performer's leotard, colorful greasepaint makeup, and a loaded handgun.
- Trapped with Jester: The titular Jester isn't sensual in appearance but rather in personality, as he blushes easily, refers to the protagonist's contempt-filled soul as a delicacy that he wishes to ravish, and enjoys getting slapped to the extent of begging to be slapped even harder.
Web Animation
- Helluva Boss:
- Robotic jester Robo Fizz is described on in-universe posters as being sexy, and having sexbot functions.
- More overtly, twin sisters Glitz and Glam are explicitly sexualised clown pop stars who are two of the antagonists in "Mammon's Magnificent Musical" where they perform the racy song "Klown Bitch" in Mammon's Clown Pageant. They're notably less-interested in the skills of actual clowning like their rival Fizzaroli and more in just playing up their clown-themed sex appeal (although to their credit they do have some genuinely impressive skills in traditional clown acts like juggling and shaping balloon animals).
- hololive's Polka Omaru is a circus-themed VTuber whose default outfit is quite colorful and rather revealing.
- In the Ace Attorney parody video "Disgraced Attorney"
, Geiru Toneido from the Spirit of Justice entry in the Visual Novels folder above is exaggerated to wobble violently whenever she snaps her suspenders, and Edgeworth, typically uninterested in romantic pursuits, develops a clown fetish as a result. This is funnier when you know her breasts are actually tiny, and what she passes off as "breasts" are literal balloons.
Edgeworth: Awooga! I've got a bad case of clussy fever, and I wanna make whoopee with her cushions!
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: Harley Quinn. Batman may not notice, but The Joker sure does (or at least pretends to, being essentially Asexual). The Joker himself occasionally counts, especially when Heath Ledger (and to a lesser extant Mark Hamill) played him.
- Daphne's short-skirted clown outfit in Big Top Scooby-Doo! certainly qualifies.
Real Life
- Typically averted with Commedia dell'Arte. In contrast to all the sexy female "Harlequins" alluded to above, the original Harlequin (or Arlecchino) was a man, and one usually portrayed as romantically hapless.
- Being the clown girl has transcended cosplay and inspired by current media trends and evolved to an actual lifestyle for some girls. Typically associated with the goth lifestyle, these persons wear the look for more than show, and live the character and subscribe to ideologies matching the clown as well, naturally, qualifying for this trope as this is seen in some circles as a form of sexiness, in some cases a taboo. As well, the introduction of the DC Comics character Harley Quinn has inspired many girls to be just like her and present themselves in such a way daily. Especially in the case of many well known cosplayers, whom get in costume and face paint for daily outings and not just the event floorshows. The cosplayer for the game Gotham City Imposters version of Harley Quinn has become somewhat of an icon at this time of writing as a pin-up girl, transcending the actual video game character in popularity as well. Art imitates life, and life imitates art, or "Don't dream it, be it" as the Rocky Horror Picture Show would imply.
- Clown Couture is a form of fashion that specifies itself around artistic interpretation of the clown, the circus, and the clown mentality and outlook on life. Clown Porn is the generic label for an entire sect of the adult entertainment industry that is specifically clown and or circus themed oriented. Generally attached to the porn sub-genre Pornomedy, it covers a wide range of media, from film to photographic studies to the more celebrated live performances and combined with Clown Couture, stands aside the industry as its own eclectic art form. Adult film star Lexi Belle is noted for having indulged in craft, as well Apnea is a modern star. The genre's noted pioneer is the late Hollie Stevens, whom herself was an actual licensed professional clown having followed in her brothers footsteps, performing the art in all of its media, and was dedicated to accelerating, promoting and evolving the entire genre while using her notoriety and proceeds to aid in the fight against cancer, herself being a sufferer, and has inspired fellow performer Ginny Blossom to follow her in driving the clown girl craft.