: Note your use of words there. "Sticking them in costumes designed to titillate" This is the main problem. I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but it's a very common convention to, as

@Yeniel532

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Note your use of words there.

"Sticking them in costumes designed to titillate"

This is the main problem. I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but it's a very common convention to, as you said, stick women in these costumes. To take a stripperriffic fashion sense and impose it on the women of their world, globally, and almost completely without regard to the individual personalities of the women in question, as if they don't even dress themselves and are quite literally dressed by the author and magically made ignorant of what exactly they're wearing. Trying to design outside circumstances to justify why serious, professional women (and only women) would walk around wearing ridiculous, impractical chainmail bikinis with thigh-high stocking greaves and not bat an eye about this as if it's completely normal is pretty much always going to prompt eye-rolling, because you're not even addressing the biggest problem. Even if it were practical, no woman would dress like that unless they wanted to. To truly justify women going into battle dressed to titillate, you'd have to explain why these women would value doing this, or at least, bare minimum, why they would be so cavalier about brutal, violent combat that the more "outgoing" among their population would see it as a perfectly natural occasion to show off.

And that isn't to say it can't be done. It's just that such societies aren't generally going to be the most "serious" of societies.

For example, my story, which is about the aftermath of modern day humans being given access to a variety of supernatural runes on a weekly basis, has a group of cultists who believe that humanity's sole purpose for being created is for the entertainment of a pantheon of old-school, bloodthirsty, psychotic, hedonistic, incestuous pagan gods who brought the magic into the world as a last-ditch effort to make us stop being so complacent and boring, and will destroy us if we don't shape up. Their entire religious morality revolves purely around being entertaining to their perpetual cosmic observers, rather than being noble, stable or practical. When society inevitably collapses due to all the magical shenanigans, they get even crazier and turn into this stark raving mad warrior-raider culture led by a power-mad prophet who can predict upcoming magical powers, determined to spread violence, excitement and chaos to all who would dare subject the gods to the tedium of their mediocre existences. They devote huge amounts of time to becoming, as best as they are able, warrior-artists, cultivating personas, aesthetics and fighting styles with which not to best achieve victory, but to best please their gods, and cherish these things as the most important things they've ever made or will ever make.

Now, the entire rest of the cast of this story rightly views these people as out of their gourds, and their primary narrative purpose is to be a source of comedy, senseless conflict, and in the case of the stronger members, entertaining and memorable fight scenes. But let's ask that same question of this wretched hive of hedonistic madness: "Why are some of these women running into battle with half of their bodies exposed?"

The answer: because they want to. They are religiously, zealously obsessed with living lives worthy of their own show. Their entire lives are meant to be performances for the gods, and they, personally, as individuals, have decided to please their gods with their sex appeal. They believe their gods would be far happier with them if they fought in sexy underwear and with a chainsaw, screaming and cackling like a lunatic, than if they put on actual armor and fought with an actual weapon. Even if it would mean the difference between victory and defeat. They see caution, pragmatism and boring, sensible dress as a coward's way out that would doom them to the deepest depths of Hell should they dare resort to it to win.

So I guess my point is that if you really, really want to "justify" sexy armor in an otherwise serious story, it's not enough to create a way for it to be a practical combat choice. You have to make us believe that the characters who are wearing it are the sorts of people who would actually want to, whether on an individual or cultural level, and let everyone else dress the way they realistically would. That in and of itself will do wonders for suspension of disbelief, but keep in mind that there's always going to be an air of tastelessness, campiness or absurdity hanging over the whole thing depending on how far you go. Not that there's inherently anything wrong with it, but keep in mind that some sacrifice to seriousness will have to be made pretty much no matter what you do.

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