Someone likes her new toy.
"Ahh... it's been so long since I've had a body. Eat your hearts out, ladies!"
— Amazon Pandora, Kid Icarus: Uprising
The result of combining Grand Theft Me with sex appeal. Any villain who possesses the body of the heroine (or of any woman, really) is contractually required to spend time posing in front of mirrors, wearing scanty clothing, and sometimes even groping herself. This often occurs when the villain in question is herself female and has been without a normal body — or at least an attractive one — for an extended period of time. Especially if she’s a Vain Sorceress, using magic to do so.
Naturally, this is an opportunity for rampant Fanservice.
Compare Man, I Feel Like a Woman. This overlaps with Power Perversion Potential. Contrast Shapeshifting Seducer. Subtrope of Limb-Sensation Fascination and Reveling in the New Form.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Code Geass: Empress Marianne does this when she enters C's World, doing a little posing, spinning, and curtsying. Slightly different from the normal application of this trope, as she wasn't testing out a new body, but getting used to her old one, since she's been using a young girl as a Soul Jar for a long time, and only in C's World can her detached spirit manifest its true form. Did we mention she's very hot and... did this to her son, Lelouch?
- Excel♡Saga: In the last episode, the first thing that Excel does when she finds herself in the body of her partner Hyatt is to feel herself up while naked... And she promptly starts coughing up enormous amounts of blood and shriveling up into a mummy.
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Dante attempts to seduce her ex, Hohenheim, in this manner, after taking over the body of Lyra, her beautiful maid and student. When that doesn't work, she turns to his son Edward — or rather, she tried to preemptively seduce him by making him fall in love with Rose, the girl whose body she was planning on stealing next.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Following the events of Phantom Blood, which saw his original body destroyed, Dio Brando steals Jonathan Joestar's body in order to "live gorgeously forever". He then proceeds to spend a significant amount of time in said body wearing suggestive outfits (or just hanging around shirtless), feeling himself up, and having a crazy amount of sex.
- Macross Frontier: When Grace O'Connor downloaded herself into the new body of a combat cyborg, fondling her boobs (which were considerably bigger than her previous ones) was first thing she did.
- Makina-san's a Love Bot?!: Mimika is a robot girl who steals the voluptuous body of her "sister" Makina. She goes to hide in the attic, gets naked and checks herself out, including looking at her vagina with a mirror. But soon she realizes that the body comes with some defects like Easily Detachable Robot Parts.
- One Piece: This is Played for laughs in when Bon Clay transforms into Nami and flashes Luffy, Usopp and Chopper. Nami is not amused. It happens again to her when she and Sanji switch bodies thanks to Law's Op-Op Fruit; while Sanji takes great enjoyment in Nami's body, Nami freaks out and yells at him to stop fondling her body.
- Ranma ½:
- In the last OAV, a vengeful doll spirit swaps bodies with Akane and then tries to seduce/kill Ranma.
- The manga also featured a mirror spirit who, upon taking Ranma's female form, immediately barges out of the house in a tiny cocktail dress, ready to get it on with the next attractive guy she can find.
- In a bizarre instance of self-awareness, when female Ranma (posing as "Ranko") is forced to go bra-shopping with Nodoka and Akane, she gives up and tries on a few bras, posing to herself in the mirror and nodding appreciatively. Naturally, this is when the sales attendant at the store chooses to trip and send hot tea flying into Ranma's booth.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who: In "Cradle of the Snake", Tegan gets possessed by the Mara, which then decides to dress in skimpy black and flirt heavily with Nyssa.
Comic Books
- Dark Cybertron: Starscream, who's always been quite vain, takes some time to admire himself in a mirror after getting reformated into a new body (which matches his appearance from Transformers: Armada).
- Empowered: Sistah Spooky did this after getting the perfect body from a Deal with the Devil.
- In the Justice Society of America series from the early 1990s, the Ultra-Humanite was showing off his new body when he captured them and Wally West (The Flash).
- Les Légendaires: Anathos was planning to reincarnate in female, elven protagonist Shimy as a way to come back on Earth. After he fails to this and is forced to reincarnate in Danael instead, he makes a hint toward this trope when burning Shimy's eyes:
Anathos: Such a waste... I really wanted you to be my new incarnation, you know?
- Loki: Agent of Asgard: When Loki is reincarnated as the God(dess) of Stories with a new personality and physical form, the first thing they do upon arriving at their friend Verity's apartment is take their shirt off to admire themself in the mirror (much to the bafflement of Verity, who has no idea who this odd stranger is).
- Spider-Girl: An issue of Spider-Girl (2010), complete with mirror.
Araña: What do you think of my sexy new body, Miguel?Loki: Rrowwrr! I'm a hairy bear! Look at that. I'm shaving an "S" into that! Although... not sure about these ears. What d'you reckon? Good ears?
- The Ultraverse: When Thanasi takes over Eden Blake's body, he's much more comfortable in his new skin than Lukasz had been and takes great pleasure in showing off Eden's beauty, reshaping Mantra's already-revealing costume to be even skimpier, tauntingly flirting with Lukasz, opportunistically flirting with Argus, and bragging about how he's more than happy to run around in a comely female form if it means gaining so much magical power.
- Wonder Woman (1987): When Mogan la Fey takes possession of Helena Sandsmark's body she's so excited about having an attractive young new form she decides to wear a thong and corset as her outfit.
- X-23: Claudine Renko a.k.a. Ms. Sinister does this prematurely in the second arc. After capturing X-23, intending to steal her body in hopes that her Healing Factor will prevent Mr. Sinister (whose personality is dormant in her body though periodically surfaces to take control) from permanently asserting himself and taking control of her, Renko expresses satisfaction that she'll be receiving a very attractive new body in return. Fortunately for Laura, Mr. Sinister transfers his consciousness to her body first, but she kicks him out and Renko is badly wounded during the resulting fight.
Fan Fiction
- Fragments of Chaldea: Servants can absorb weapons and powers belonging to alternate selves by consuming their memory essences, the result of summoning the same Servant in different Classes or incarnations. Altria eventually gets the memory essence of the Lion King, her Lancer-class incarnation, and gains the ability to switch to her older, more developed body in the package. Altria Alter is furious when she sees this, blaming Merlin.
- Heroic Myth: A rare platonic male version occurs when Argonaut possesses Bell, becoming a Pseudo-Servant. Argonaut-as-Bell immediately takes off for the Dungeon to see how strong he is now and is delighted to find that he can slaughter monsters with ease even without the help of a Spirit.
Film — Live Action
- 13 Going on 30: A non-evil example. Jenna at one point squeezes her adult body's breasts, calling them "incredible".
- La Abuela: The film is about two witches (potentially also lovers) who stay immortal each generation by stealing the bodies of young women using a magic ritual. The film opens a up immediately after one of the witches takes over a young body and by the end the second witch does the same thing. In both cases the very first thing each witch does is stripping completely naked to enjoy her new young body. It is even heavily implied that once both of them transfer to new bodies the begin their new lives by having sex with each other in the youthful stolen bodies.
- All Cheerleaders Die: When Hanna finds herself in Martha's body, it isn't long before she starts flaunting her form in a way that the conservative Martha never did.
- Get Out (2017): While attending the Armitage's annual get-together party, Chris meets Logan King, the black husband of a much older white woman. The fact that Logan twirls around to show himself off to a group of friends at a party is taken as an indicator that something is very wrong. In fact, this is the central idea of The Conspiracy — a cult of well-off white people who "appreciate" blackness and want to claim it for themselves by hijacking black bodies and suppressing the true person’s consciousness.
- Ghostbusters (1984): Zuul takes a moment to leer at Dana's body once she’s been kicked out of it.
- The Hidden: The body-possessing space alien villain starts out only possessing the bodies of men. The first time it possesses the body of a female stripper, it spends some time exploring the differences.
- The Hot Chick: When Rob Schneider and Rachel McAdams' characters switch bodies, one freaks out and panics, the other gets a job as a stripper. Guess which is which.
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: Referenced for laughs when the main characters get trapped inside the Jumanji game world and Bethany, a teenage girl, gets the body of a male character. Offscreen, she's fascinated by the new anatomy:
Bethany: Oh my God, you guys, there is, like, literally a penis attached to my body right now. Martha, come look at my penis!
Martha: No thanks! - Lemon Tree Passage: A downplayed example happens when Maya is possessed by the ghost; the ghost comments on how stupid Maya's name is, but then adds that the body does have nice legs.
- Self/Less: A downplayed male example occurs after Damien is put in the body of a younger man. The ensuing montage of him learning to adjust to the new body is intercut with a scene of him slowly walking to a mirror and admiring his new, youthful appearance.
- The not-at-all-gratuitous "alien learns to put on a bra" sequence in Species.
- Stardust: There's a non-bodyswapping example where the witch Lamia is very happy with her youthified self, and strips off in front of a mirror to get a better look. Her elderly, non-youthful sisters are there too, looking on in envious admiration.
- The Substance: Elizabeth, a once popular TV fitness trainer, gets fired from her job at her 50th birthday because the show runners are looking for a younger, prettier woman to replace her. Out of desperation, she buys a shady experimental drug called The Substance, which is injected to create a younger, prettier, clone-like version of oneself to act as an empty vessel (in Elizabeth’s case, she calls the clone body "Sue"). She is allowed to transfer her consciousness between the two bodies every seven days (the unoccupied body remains in a coma during that time), with warning of dire consequences if she doesn’t stick to the schedule. The first time Elizabeth occupies Sue’s body, she immediately starts admiring her naked reflection in the mirror and caressing her new, young flesh. She gets her old job back as "Sue", and begins wearing more suggestive and revealing training attire than when she was Elizabeth. Every week she occupies Sue’s body, she seems to spend her time at home half-naked and adopts a hedonistic lifestyle with lots of casual sex with young, athletic men. This is contrasted with the weeks she spends as Elizabeth, when she is constantly depressed, gets more isolated from society, and engages in binge eating. Soon, she decides to remain in Sue’s body for longer periods; things get ugly in a hurry.
- Suspiria (2018): Although an actual body take-over is interrupted before taking place, Susie is made to wear nothing except for a thin sheer silk gown which pretty much reveals her naked body in preparation for the ritual meant to let the very old and decrepit Helena Markos steal Susie's young body to live forever. This implies that Markos doesn't want to waste any time before enjoying her new young body.
Literature
- In I Will Fear No Evil, Heinlein posits a brain transplant from a 95 year old man to a 23 year old, very pretty girl. At least at first, he (she?) spends time in front of the mirror admiring his new, female body.
- The Vampire Chronicles: In Tale of the Body Thief, after trading bodies with Raglan, Lestat is equal parts disoriented and enchanted to have a living body again, particularly a young, attractive, and hormone-charged one — at least until he has to take a leak for the first time in 200 years.
- Wear Your Soul Round Your Neck: After becoming human, Thyssa spends a lot of time in the mirror, partly out of curiosity and partly out of sheer vanity.
- Aran'gar, alias Halima, alias Balthamel, from The Wheel of Time, a formerly male Forsaken who was reincarnated into a female body. S/he puts her cleavage to good use.
Live-Action TV
- The 100: In the sixth season, Josephine Lightbourne, one of the Primes who rule an agricultural compound on Sanctum, uses Clarke as a Body Backup Drive. The first thing she does upon getting her bearings is to admire herself, wearing a flattering dress, in a nearby mirror. She clearly likes what she sees, later comparing Clarke's body to a Ferrari, and grinningly whispering to Clarke, fighting to regain control, "I kinda like your body!"
- Altered Carbon: In "Rage In Heaven", Kovacs is treating Ortega's injuries while she's in a copper bathtub, when he realizes that it's actually his sister Reileen wearing Ortega's body as a sleeve. Reileen then makes a point of slowly rising from the water while checking out Ortega's body.
Reileen: I can see what you like about the sleeve. It's... nice!
- Bottom: Discussed in "Hole". Assuming that he'll die soon, Eddie converts to Buddhism so that he can reincarnate as a big-breasted supermodel. Sarcastically, Richie muses on coming back as Dannii Minogue, and becoming a topless go-go dancer in a bar full of mirrors.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Who Are You?, after body-swapping with Buffy, one of the first things Faith does is take a long bath just to check out her "new home", including groping her leg. Later on, she also acts flirtatious toward any male in sight. (Not that she didn't do similar things in her old body.) In the original script, it's implied she's actually fondling herself underwater.
- Charmed (1998):
- Occurred in "Coyote Piper", where Piper is possessed by an ancient evil spirit (one of several over the show's run). After modelling in front of the mirror in what's almost a dominatrix outfit, the spirit knocks Piper's husband Leo unconsciousness, then goes to Piper's High School Reunion she was holding at her club, and proceeds to do a sexy table-dance for the all men (and a few of the women) present on top of the bar. Barefoot. For about 5 minutes.
- In "A Paige from the Past", this happens when Phoebe is possessed by the spirit of a deceased convict named Lulu, who can't help admiring her new body's beauty and starts Shaking Her Hair Loose.
- And once again to Phoebe in "Freaky Phoebe", when a hideous demon cast a spell to switch bodies with her, who had always envied the attractiveness of others, and vanquish other demons who threaten her livelihood. Immediately after her soul replaces Phoebe's she makes out with her office's appointed shrink, is caught by Piper twirling in front of a mirror and switches into a more revealing and tighter outfit.
- Doctor Who:
- In "New Earth", Cassandra does it to both Rose, unbuttoning her top to show a little cleavage:
Cassandra: It's like living inside a bouncy castle!
- ... and, in a rare example with a male body (but no unbuttoning of anything), the Doctor. Which leads to
the following memorable line.
Cassandra: Goodness me, I'm a man! Yum! So many parts, and hardly used!
- "Let's Kill Hitler": After regenerating, River Song immediately rushes out of the room to find a mirror. On discovering that she's got a great ass, River is delighted, declaring that she's going to wear lots of jodhpurs from now on.
- In "New Earth", Cassandra does it to both Rose, unbuttoning her top to show a little cleavage:
- Dollhouse: A non-villainous example occurs in "Haunted", when Margaret (a middle-aged woman) is uploaded into Echo's younger body. She briefly feels her own breasts and jokes to Adelle about how they're now "pointing at the sky".
- Quite an entertaining scene in a Farscape episode "Out Of Their Minds", in which all the main characters switch bodies, and John in Aeryn's body starts examining it rather closely. Of course, Aeryn in someone else's body walks in. He tries to excuse himself by saying "I'm a guy!", and Aeryn threatens to break his legs (never mind that they're hers) if he checks out anything else. The really funny part comes at the end of the episode where, when John apologizes, Aeryn implies she, too, experimented. In a rather hands-on manner.
- In one episode of Freddy's Nightmares, a con-artist medium gets trapped in a trance by Freddy during one of her schemes and he takes control of her body. He immediately strips her body down to her underwear, taunts her about it, and then spends the rest of the episode strutting around like that. He uses the partial nudity to distract a skeptic and a young model who came to speak to the con-artist and kills them both.
- In Grimm, this happens when Frau Pech transforms into Adalind. The first thing she does upon transformation is to drop her robe and admire Adalind's (now her) naked body in the mirror.
- Quantum Leap has a few more male versions. The "Evil Leaper" does this at one point; also, Sam looks appreciatively in a mirror when he is handsome hitman Frankie. Parodied in the MAD satire "Quandary Heap," when "Dam" can't see who he has leaped into and he asks the Al parody, who asks him how he feels about a big muscular guy with a tattoo and rugged beard, "Dam" likes it... but that describes who the woman who's he's leaped into is going to marry.
- Smallville:
- A rare male version happens in "Transference", when Lionel Luthor switches bodies with Clark, Lionel!Clark poses in front of a mirror shirtless while flexing his muscles.
- A more traditional example occurs in Spell when a gang of ancient evil witches possess the three lead females. The witch who gets Lois is very happy about her buxom figure.
Lois!Brianna: I'm gorgeous, look at these!
[Lois!Brianna fondles her own breasts] - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A variation when Sisko checks out Dax's new body, her symbiote having Body Surfed from Sisko's mentor, the "Old Man" Curzon, to Jadzia who is played by Head-Turning Beauty Terry Farrell. A couple of episodes later, Jadzia is shown strolling the Promenade and enjoying the admiration of passing males, saying she's forgotten how different being a woman was.
- This tends to happen to Sam a lot in Supernatural. Meg's reaction to being in his body is to dramatically flex her muscles; she then spends the entire episode enjoying her handsome new body, "fine packaging" and all. It then happens to Sam two more times in season five, once with a teenager who wanted Sam's life, and once with Lucifer
- The Thundermans Undercover: Hank and Barb are much more enthusiastic about using the Disguisealyzer to shapeshift into Max and Phoebe, whereas the vice-versa had Phoebe say "desperate times call for desperate bodies". Barb calls Phoebe's body "delightfully bendy" and starts testing Phoebe's ballet flexibility, while Hank finally understands Max's obsession with his "swoosh". Naturally, Max and Phoebe are mortified as they watch this.
- In First Wave, this happens when Mabus possesses Jordan's body. Given that she's played by Traci Lords, you can imagine his reaction. He not only enjoys his new vessel, but also has sex with Cade in order to get Jordan's body pregnant and make himself a new host.
- A male version of this is played indulgently in the episode "King's Crown", from the anthology Show Metal Hurlant Chronicles, which is adapted from a story from Heavy Metal Comics: in a certain land, a tournament is held every so often to choose the strongest man to be the new king. Entrants must be vital and free of diseases. Every winner becomes a cruel tyrant, but the hero of the story (called weak and frail all his life) wants to become ruler and end the reign of evil. He wins and is carried to the castle. He needlessly gets shirtless for his coronation, showing off his extremely muscular body. The moment he sits the throne he's bound, his skull is cut open by robot surgeons, his brain is crudely removed over his screaming protests, and the brain of the previous king is transplanted from his freshly-dead, used up, obese corpse. The previous king wakes up in the new body and is immediately satisfied with it, saying it is a “good fit” and hopes it’s going to have “more mileage” while feeling up the muscular chest and the six pack abs and flexing his muscles. A few young slave girls are then brought to him and he walks to them saying it’s time to “put his new body to the test”, obviously intent on having a lot of sex.
Theatre
- Variation in Into the Woods. The witch had been transformed into an old crone body for a while, and after that curse is broken, she has a whole song in which she shows off her actual appearance, which is youthful and good looking.
Video Games
- In Fate/Grand Order, the goddess Ishtar possesses Rin Tohsaka in order to be summoned as a Servant, though according to her it's more like she's 70% Ishtar and 30% Rin. Ishtar says besides Rin's small breasts, she's gorgeous, and shows off by wearing a skimpy outfit.
Ishtar: My original self was more glamorous, but this body is also not bad.
- Pandora does this in Kid Icarus: Uprising after she becomes Amazon Pandora, although in her case it's more like "Showing Off the Old Body" because this is what she used to look like before an accident in her backstory cost her it. Sufficient to say, she's very happy to have it back.
- There's a G-rated version in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice when Tahrust Inmee is channeled by Maya; the bald Tahrust clearly enjoys playing with Maya's long hair. Since a spirit channeler's body temporarily changes to mostly match that of the deceased's and he's only been summoned to testify, nothing much else happens.
- Undertale:
- Mettaton, when he turned into the flamboyant Mettaton EX after an upgrade, just in time for the premiere of his new TV show. During the fight against him, he constantly dances and poses JoJo-style, even when he loses his limbs.
- There's also an inversion from Alphys, the creator of his EX body, when she mentions in her diary that she kept "[getting] really sweaty" for some reason when she was building it.
Webcomics
- In Eerie Cuties, this is Nina's first action after borrowing Layla's body.
- Girl Genius has the Other doing this to Agatha, starting around here and continuing intermittently through the end of Volume 6. (Consider that this is a mother *ahem* appreciating her daughter's body and wince. Judging from his expression, Tarvek agrees.) Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess has Lucrezia-in-Agatha go a step further and actually be naked in that scene.
- When Torg and Zoe switch bodies in a Sluggy Freelance filler arc, Torg shows off Zoe's body to the entire Internet via webcam. Zoe, upon getting her own body back and looking in her closet: "Care to explain why none of my clothes have been worn?" This filler arc was also done by Phil Foglio.
- The "Be Somebody" storyline in Times Like This has Matt controlling a female robotic body and Bethany a male robot. Matt's thrilled about his newfound womanhood... Bethany, not so much.
- El Goonish Shive:
- A non-villainous example is discussed in this strip. Since Magic doesn't understand why Elliot hates his Sex Shifter spells, Grace suggests that he turn into a girl and pose in a mirror so he can move past that obstacle and start getting different types of spells again. When Elliot actually goes through with it however, he's too much of a goody-two-shoes to actually enjoy it and just ends up feeling guilty.
- A similar situation happens when he and his girlfriend Ashley switch bodies (kind of, it's a long story). Ashley starts freaking out and the only way she can calm down is by pretending she's in a hackneyed transformation story, so Elliot poses in the mirror for her. Like before though, his heart just isn't in it.
- A non-villainous example is discussed in this
Western Animation
- In Gargoyles, after being placed under a spell that causes her to turn human (rather than to stone) during the day, Demona takes a moment to preen outrageously when revealing this fact to Elisa. Considering how much Demona despises humans (and her reaction to having the spell placed on her in an earlier episode was initially one of rage and horror) this mostly seems to have been a way to mock Elisa rather than taking genuine pleasure in her new body, however attractive it may be.
- In a "Freaky Friday" Flip episode of TaleSpin, Rebecca and Don Karnage end up swapping bodies after encountering an idol. After the swap, Karnage notes that he looks fabulous.
- Totally Spies!:
- In one episode, the Monster of the Week's contraption is something that allowed people to change their physical attributes by switching their own with someone else's. A really hideous older lady tries it out with Alex, and then walks away, checking out her new reflection in a mirror.
- In another, the Monster of the Week runs an agency that kidnaps supermodels and uses a contraption that switches her body parts with other women's. First we see Clover's long, slender legs replaced with stout, muscular legs complete with wide-childbearing hips; then the brace-faced owner of the large legs gets her freckled complexion and frizzy red hair switched with Alex's sleek, raven bob and Sam's peaches-and-cream complexion and smile. Guess who walks off with a smug smile?