Bikini Bar

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Yes, they exist in Real Life.

Where does a single (or sometimes married) man go on American TV when he wants to see some female flesh? Why, he goes to the Bikini Bar, where he can see young ladies dancing about in their lingerie, swimsuits, or wet T-shirts that suspiciously lack nipples. "Go-go dancer" cages are optional, as are Playboy Bunny outfits in countries where that outfit isn't trademarked by Playboy.

In case you haven't realized, strippers never go topless (let alone fully nude) on American TV shows, even though such practices are commonplace in Real Life. Even the dance moves are practically ballet compared to what real strippers do to "pay for college." Post-Watershed British TV has no such problems. Some characters are rich enough to have this as Paid Harem.

One common term used for this kind of establishment is "titty bar".

Compare with Host Club.

For the less bowdlerized version of these stablishments, see Strip Club.

Examples of Bikini Bar include:

Advertising

  • The 2008 commercial of Orangina is a Bikini Bar... of animals.

Anime and Manga

Film

  • Just because Lindsay Lohan played a stripper in I Know Who Killed Me doesn't mean she has to take her clothes off or anything.
  • Appears in, of all things, The Movie of Frank Miller's Sin City: the comic featured nudity (both male and female); the movie left out the some of the nudity, notably the nudity in the strip club. And the male nudity of the comic was right out.) The reason for the stripper being not nude is that Jessica Alba refused to do nudity.
  • The Catscratch Club in Rent, where Mimi works. What's strange is that it was the movie's idea to show the club to begin with, whereas the play only alluded to its raunchiness. Understandably, the filmmakers probably wanted to avoid an "R" rating.
  • In The Man with the Golden Gun, the Bottoms Up Club, although Godiva Hair was in place.
  • Averted in My Best Friend's Girl. In it Tank (Dane Cook) takes a girl to the trashiest strip club he could find all to make the girl want to go back to her previous boyfriend. The strippers are naked from the top up and give Tank graphic lap dances.
  • In Independence Day Jasmine works as an exotic dancer, but leaves her bra and panties on during her dance scene. Hey, the film was a PG-13 summer blockbuster, after all.
  • In Armageddon Rockhound decides to spend the night before the mission getting lap dances at a strip club. Seeing that this film is also a PG-13 summer blockbuster the dancers leave their underwear on.
  • Mohini in Happy New Year works in a dance bar, which are this version of the trope in Real Life.

Live-Action TV

  • MacGyver featured what must be a family-friendly version of one of this: women dancing around in tight leather.
  • Seth finds his aunt working at one of these in The OC.
  • Smallville featured this, with Lois Lane going undercover.
  • CSI (yep, the one in Las Vegas) features an episode involving a strip club. Not a single top is removed in the club and the only person who ends up completely naked in that episode (bar the corpses) is Warrick Brown. A man.
    • Hell, there's an entire sub-plot about a BDSM brothel that pops up every few episodes and no one is depicted naked, just a few comedic scenes of guys getting spanked on the butt.
  • Al Bundy is fond of going to these. It was supposed to be a "nudie" bar, but of course, no real nudity was ever shown, although there was at least one scene where, from the POV of the stage, a bra and a pair of panties hit Al in the face.
  • When Titus was having money troubles Erin ended up working in one of these, running into Ken and Tommy. Even though she was only a waitress, this didn't stop Titus imagining the worst via "Worst Nightmare Cam".
    • Titus' fears may not be completely unfounded. Many, many girls who work as dancers at strip clubs started out as cocktail waitresses there. There's even a saying that goes "If a girl works as a waitress at a strip club, it's only a matter of time before she ends up on the pole."
  • Friends: Monica, Rachel & Phoebe take Chandler to one. Monica persuaded the hottest stripper there to go back to teaching the 3rd grade.
  • Tracy takes Liz to one in the Pilot of 30 Rock.
  • Feature in several episodes of Law & Order shows, especially SVU.
  • The Bada Bing in The Sopranos changed from a Strip Club to a Bikini Bar when the show was Edited for Syndication.
  • The Bill, being (on the whole) a pre-Watershed show, sometimes features this. There was one episode where Cathy Bradford went undercover at a gentleman's club and had to take her top off in front of Nick Klein (another police officer) to maintain her cover since she was on camera, but we didn't see any nipples.
  • The "Charlie Gets Crippled" episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
  • Averted on Parks and Recreation: the strippers in the Glitter Factory, the strip club/bar favored by Tom Haverford, do take off their tops, with Pixellation making the episodes with scenes there safe for broadcast. Also a kind of Fridge Brilliance, as the show is a Mockumentary.
  • Amusingly enough, Family Matters featured a male equivalent, given the hilarious name of "Club Buff." Needless to say, none of the studs go anywhere near the full Monty.
  • Not only does the Super Force feature them, but one of the bad guys explicitly refers to them as such.

Theatre

Video Games

  • Chora's Den in Mass Effect.
  • Afterlife in Mass Effect 2.
  • Saints Row has several of these, including some in your cribs.
  • Strip clubs in the Grand Theft Auto series.
  • The Mile High Club in Just Cause 2.
  • Gomorrah in Fallout: New Vegas. Though some of the models wear nothing but electric tape over their nipples.
  • Desele's House of Earthly Delights in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Due to the lousy textures on NPCs in this game and the fairly ridiculous-looking animation for the dancers, it comes off as weird more than anything else.

Web Original

  • Broken Saints features the "Mars" club. Aside from the ladies, it features colorful strobing lights.

Western Animation

  • In the Batman/Superman crossover "World's Finest," the two superheroes first meet in a gentleman's club in Metropolis. Batman gets extra points for throwing one of the (caged) women at some goons.
  • Avoided in the Spawn Animated Series. Although the performers are shown only in silhouette, we see enough to deduce that the "entertainment" at the bar one of the bad guys is hanging out at is a live sex show.
  • Family Guy: Joe complains about being taken to strip bars since he's paralyzed below the waist. He spends his time there yelling at his crotch in anger.
  • Superbabes is a restaurant in Gotham seen in Batman and Harley Quinn, the waitress' skimpy outfits being heroine and villain themed. It's even implied Nightwing has frequented the place at least once; he was looking for Harley and decided to take a break and get a Reuben, only to find the real Harley working there.

Real Life

Please limit this section to bikini bars and their equivalents in general. Mentions of specific establishments are more appropriate on travel-guide websites and wikis, such as Wikivoyage.


Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Bikini_Bar?oldid=1969983"