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"At male strip shows, it is still the women that we watch, the audience of women and their eager faces. They are more obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves."
Jean Baudrillard
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There's just something completely gorgeous about that one guy. The female protagonist just can't help but stare and drool over his gleaming smile, his sapphire eyes, or any other attractive features. Even if she's a Tsundere who loudly declares that she Does Not Like Men, expect her to be unable to stop herself from noticing how well-built that guy over there is, and how compelling his eyes are... Sometimes her inner monologue will devolve into Purple Prose.

This trope is usually identified with Love At First Sight. Some cases may result in Distracted by the Sexy, eventually leading to Longing Looks once romance enters the picture.

Male Gaze and Female Gaze are related, but distinct, as they are concerned with how a work is presented to the audience (i.e., presuming the viewer will come from a male or female perspective, respectively). Eating The Eye Candy refers to a character's interest (which can, however, carry over into framing and presentation). Gender-flipped examples exist for both tropes. Subjected to Double Standard since it doesn't carry the implications of Male Gaze: a woman who looks at a man sexually is more often than not written as 'cute' (blushing and swooning), whereas a man looking at a woman sexually is commonly written as 'vulgar' (making rude remarks and even hooting!). Can be used quizzically in combination with All Women Are Lustful, Bigger Is Better in Bed, Chippendales Dancers, Female Gaze, Male Frontal Nudity, Man in a Bikini, Shirtless Scene and Walking Shirtless Scene.

A cross between Hello, Nurse!, Ms. Fanservice or Mr. Fanservice and the Gaze tropes.

Examples of Eating the Eye Candy include:


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Anime & Manga[]

  • Monster: Johann's handsome features are frequently commented on and checked out by a lot of people.
  • One episode of Nagasarete Airantou has Ikuto taking a bath and being unknowingly watched by Chikage. She glances at his body, makes several comments about his attractive features and blushes while doing so.
  • In Basilisk, when Oboro and Gennosuke are crossing a very narrow bridge, we follow Oboro's gaze as she stares at Gennosuke's back.
  • In the anime version of Dragonball Z, Princess Snake first stares at Goku for his body; she keeps staring, though, because of his table manners.
  • In Ranma ½, Akane occasionally sees Ranma this way — broad shoulders, cute face, kind smile. In true Belligerent Sexual Tension style, it often immediately precedes Ranma himself making some spectacularly jerkish remark to her.
    • Ranma's other would-be love interests also do this; it's just much rarer that they get the chance to do so. Kodachi does this to Ranma the first time she seems him. Despite the fact he just, you know, knocked her out cold and almost caused her to fall off the roof.
    • When Akane sees a naked, male Ranma in the first episode/chapter, she can't help but let her eyes wander down there....
  • Sôsuke from Full Metal Panic is subject to this a lot by all of his admirers. His looks are enough to get everyone (and I mean everyone) to stop in their tracks and check him out. Even small part bystanders that never show up again (which is made especially obvious in the novels). One Lampshaded instance was with Nami (from the novels), where she pretended that she was only watching him change clothes because she wanted to make sure he was an AS pilot. Lemon teases her and notes that she was just checking him out. Oh, and the anime knows to show plenty of Fan Service of him being shirtless (complete with cute little scars all over his body). Including a scene where he's hallucinating, and randomly imagines himself being tied up, shirtless, and in obvious distress — for no real reason at all.
  • Violinist of Hameln: Shchelkunchik has a very... painful... take on this trope. Basically, during a divination class, Shchel's crystal ball shows the whole class a humiliating event in his childhood that ended with him pantsless in the school pool with a water scorpion pricking his delicate parts. Everyone comments on how big and swollen it became, the girls most of all.
  • Done with tongue planted firmly in cheek in Darker Than Black, where Mayu gets a little too fixated on Hei — particularly his "delicious collarbone" — after a late-night rescue.
  • Studio BONES spoofs it once again in Star Driver: apparently, Midori Okamoto's Cybody has a fanservice mode. It backfires, though.
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 "...did you seriously lose because you were watching him flex?"

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Comics[]

  • Marvel Comics' character Starfox causes this as a side effect of his powers, besides also being a Flying Brick. And he can turn the effect Up to Eleven to overload your pleasure center and incapacitate you by feeling too good. Well, if you've gotta be attacked, that's the way to go...
  • In Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, the reporter that Captain Marvel goes to for help takes a very obvious look at his crotch while standing right in front of him.


Fan Works[]

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 '"Honestly", Otacon thought ruefully, "At this rate, next I'll be thinking about how big and strong and manly he is."

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Films — Live Action[]

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 "You think it's only man turned on by striptease?"

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Literature[]

  • Take a sip for every mention Bella from Twilight makes of Edward's Eyes of Gold, marble skin that sparkles in the sunlight, or his overall beauty being comparable to an angel's. You'll be under the table in no time. Twilight: Causing liver failure worldwide!
  • In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy takes the breath away from every female in Hertfordshire just by walking into the room: "Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien..."
    • Taken Up to Eleven in the BBC miniseries adaptation, with lots of camera time devoted to Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy riding horseback/bathing/swimming/casting smoldering gazes around/etc.
      • You know how David Bowie was a lust object for a significant proportion of American females of a certain age, due to Labyrinth? Colin Firth was the same for BBC viewers due to one scene — "Mr. Darcy! Your britches!". It reached Memetic Mutation levels.
        • Brilliantly Parodied in this scene from Lost in Austen — [1]
  • A great number of Old Skool romance novels (that are in first person, from the woman's point of view) use this — and understandably so.
  • Night Huntress has several scenes with Cat commenting on how attractive Bones is.
  • In The Belgariad, most of the story is told from 3rd-person limited perspective, from the point of view of the hero, Garion. Every so often it switches to his romantic interest, who often spends time watching him. There's some descriptions of his sandy hair (usually tousled) and how his face is "nice enough".
  • Fate/Zero plays around a bit with this. When Saber and Irisviel first encounter Lancer, the prose takes an immediate turn from standard to totally purple as it waxes rhapsodic about his beautiful eyes, his elegant features, the small beauty spot on his face that seems to add even more charac--Wait, beauty spot? Yep, it turns out that Lancer is the Heroic Spirit of Diarmund Ua Duibhne (who has a supernatural ability that makes all woman who see his face fall in love) and the prose snaps straight back to normal once Irisviel realizes the mind-trickery and overcomes it with her innate magical resistance.
  • Narrator of The Hollows, Rachel Morgan, tends to get kind of distracted around attractive men. It even happens when she converses with the demon Midias.
  • The image for this trope page is the comic book version of the Anita Blake Vampire Novel series, in which the main character Anita often has problems with this trope seeing as about 99% of the people surrounding her are gorgeous supernatural men who want to get into her pants. That poor woman.
  • This actually saves the main character's life in one of the Ciaphas Cain novels, since pausing to admire the view makes an assassin's attack miss him.
  • In The Dresden Files, this happens automatically whenever a White Court vampire is in line of sight. Its not voluntary, either; the White Court exude a natural aura that draws everyone's attention to their physical beauty, both male and female. This helps them "hunt" their prey, drawing mortals to them so they can feed on their emotions (lust, fear, and despair being the big three). Its also deconstructed, however, when one of them, Thomas, tries to live a normal life without maliciously feeding on humans, as he can't hold down a job because his coworkers inevitably get drawn to him through his involuntary mojo and he gets fired when they jump his bones and his innate hunger for emotions takes over.


Live Action TV[]

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 Rory: Aren't you going to turn your back?

Amy: Nope!

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Music & Music Videos[]

  • The lyrics of "Amy Amy Amy" by Amy Winehouse are four minutes of this.
  • During the Post Show Wrap-Up to the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, Tabitha Soren said that she noticed that a lot of people bared their chests during the awards show. Soren went on to say that she thought En Vogue's 9 shirtless dancers were great to watch and that she found the Red Hot Chili Peppers' performance to be entertaining partly because they weren't wearing shirts.
  • Olivia Newton John in the video for her hit single "Let's Get Physical"
  • Tanya Tucker and her friends do a lot of this in the video for "Hangin' In".
  • During The Creep, Nicki Minaj is "oogling and ogling" a bunch of jocks from where she's hiding in a locker.


Print Media[]

  • Teen fashion magazines do (and induce) this all the time.
  • Playgirl magazine
  • Photographer Christie Jenkins' book A Woman Looks at Men's Buns which is a collection of pictures of men's butts, Jenkins calls herself a "connoisseur" of men's butts.


Sports[]

  • Soccer players are popular with women because of their muscular builds six pack abs and nice, tight asses. Also, they get all sweaty, take off their shirts and bare their smooth, chiseled chests as explained here, here, here and here.
  • Also popular with women: the men's swim team at any high school, college as well as during the Olympics because these guys are in speedos.
  • Don't forget basketball using old-style uniforms with the tight short-shorts, for the leg-women out there. And there's always bare, muscular arms. Some women like basketball for this reason, and this reason only.


Video Games[]

  • In the PC adventure game Laura Bow: The Dagger of Amon Rah, the main character Laura and many of the other female characters spend a lot of time talking about how attractive Steve is, from the moment you meet him on.
  • There's a moment in The Haunting Of Castle Malloy where this happens off-camera. When Nancy calls her girlfriends Bess and George for hints, they pause in talking to her, to savor the sight of a perfect poolside set of washboard abs.
  • Text implications suggest that the Handmaiden is doing this to a male player character in Knights of the Old Republic 2.
  • In Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark, at one point a Mimic steals your character's armor. If your character is male and Aribeth is in the party, some humorous dialogue ensues.
  • In Mass Effect 3 when a romanced Kaidan returns to the Normandy Shepard's gaze goes to Kaidan's butt. Shepard gives a smirk for good measure.
    • And in Mass Effect 2 Kasumi Goto's Shadow Broker dossier reveals that she's written Haikus about Jacob, the resident beefcake.
Cquote1

 Breathless, glinting skin

Muscles working in rhythm

Cloaked desire watches

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Web Comics[]


Web Original[]

  • Red vs. Blue: Shortly after meeting Crunchbite the alien, Tucker has a hard time pulling Tex's attention away from his... alien.. muscle structure.
Cquote1

 Caboose: (to Andy, horrified) You told me it was another arm!

Crunchbite: (happily) Blaaaaarrrrrrg!

Andy: Ha, ha! Hey Caboose, high five!

Caboose: ...I don't want to do that anymore...

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Western Animation[]

  • Code Lyoko: In the opening of Season 4 episode "Bad Connection", Ulrich is stuck in the hallway wearing just a Modesty Towel. When Aelita and Yumi walk in with Jérémie, the girls at first (weakly) pretend to be looking away, but spend pretty much the rest of the scene ogling.
  • On Family Guy, when Peter gets plastic surgery to make himself extremely handsome, Lois loses the ability to form complete sentences.
    • Lois also drills a hole in Stewie's room to watch Tom Brady shower.
  • In The Road to El Dorado, Chel gets Miguel and Tulio their ceremonial clothes for the celebration in their honor and then doesn't leave the room when they start undressing. Tulio notices this and promptly asks her if she minds, which she replies, "No." She eventually does leave, but not without taking a good long look at them first.


Real Life[]

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