Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

If you've seen a lot of fanart, you've probably seen at least one female character in this outfit:

It's the outfit worn by the waitresses at the (currently mostly defunct) Playboy Club, which was basically a higher-class version of Hooters from the sixties to the eighties. After the club chain disappeared, the outfit became popular as a fanservicey outfit in anime and manga, and went on to become popular in fanart both in Japan and other countries. It's often called the "bunny suit" be people unfamiliar with its origins.

Y'all think this warrants an entry? It's pretty similar in concept and spread to the Zero Suit, and that's already got its own entry.

I don't know. Something about it feels weird calling it a meme proper. It does kinda predate the internet, but looking at some of the other things that we have entries for, that's really not a reason to not have an entry for it. Part of me thinks that it would still have roughly the same spread it shows now without the internet, (which kinda makes it fall out of what we cover) but I'm not certain.

We have entries on memes with origins and significant spread outside the Internet, such as Flappy Bird (which mostly spread through word of mouth) , "bae" (an IRL slang term), and even feminism (which obviously predates the internet as well). Wouldn't significant spread on the Internet make anything fall under our purview?

Wouldn't that sort of fit in the rule 34category?

Even though I can easily argue it is a meme, we don't have articles on related outfits, such as maid outfits, which makes me hesitant to make an article.

We have articles on the Zero Suit and the keyhole turtleneck, so there's some precedent. Additionally, I feel like the PBB outfit could be considered a meme because a significant portion of its spread has been through internet fanart. The maid outfit, for instance, was well-known even before the internet, but the PBB outfit isn't as recognizable to people who don't watch anime or browse fanart sites.

Playboy Bunny outfits are pretty well known, and they most certainly were well-known before the internet. The reason you don't see more uses of it in Western media is because it's trademarked. You do make a good point about the other articles however, and I would be willing to help with both a PBB and Maid article.

While they aren't obscure, I wouldn't call them super well-known, either. Since the clubs are nearly extinct and the outfit is trademarked, most of the people who know of the outfit today saw it somewhere on the Internet. Most people who do recognize it don't even know what it's called, showing that the outfit has become distanced from its origin.

I'd be more iffy on a maid outfit article, since it has much more sizable offline spread, but it could work, too.

I went and made an article for Meido Outfits, so I guess someone is free to make one on Playboy Bunny outfits now.