Dantos said:
Wait, if she breathes through her skin, shouldnt she be covering up with something breathable in a desert environment? I imagine, she might have difficulty with sunscreen, and sunburns could cause dangerous inflammation, especially over that much of her body, effectively closing off the pores shes using for respiration.
Here's the explanation in its entirety, I am assuming since this topic is about Quiet and people are throwing around the explanation sans spoiler tags that no tags are needed here, I will be spoiling things about enemy abilities here and why characters have certain powers in the game.
Quiet breathes through her skin with the aid of parasites throughout her body. She attempts to assassinate the main character at the beginning of the game and gets doused in flammable liquid and set on fire. This subsequently destroys her lungs so the breathing aided by the parasites in her skin is how she stays alive.
It's also how she eats, through photosynthesis, like a plant, and as the game calls out, specifically like another character from MGS called The End, an old man sniper that had the parasites that were eventually put in Quiet as well as the other Skulls units, which are bad guy super soldiers basically.
Now, you are right that this makes the bikini excuse basically a bunch of BS, plants can photosynthesize through airy light cloths covering them, as long as enough light reaches the surface, and air gets through just fine in such clothes. The kind of clothes many desert dwelling tribes wear should not interfere with either her breathing or eating. The explanation mostly just shows that Kojima has no idea how photosynthesis works, even if she couldn't photosynthesize, she only does that to eat apparently, her parasites are like Code Talker's, and Skullface, both who wear clothes just fine.
Their excuse for that is that the fire destroyed her lungs, of course it left her skin perfectly intact despite another character, Skullface also being burned by fire and being badly scarred even after parasite treatment, her parasites can apparently also repair burn scars for some reason. She also still has intact vocal cords despite being unable to talk due to another parasite she has that could kill people if she speaks English. Why she doesn't just write her messages down, or use Code Talker to translate for her since she can speak Navajo and so can he, is anybodys guess, but honestly, the whole plot is a mess.
Quiet could have worked as a character, but she's a mess of contradictions, plot holes, and her holding the idiot ball. There are a few other characters in similar circumstances to her, none of which have her restrictions, the basic justification isn't actually that she breathes through her skin, as other character like the Skulls, Skullface, and Code Talker do the same thing, the reason she wears the bikini is because she got doused in a chemical that set her on fire but left her skin and vocal cords in tact so it could strategically only burn her lungs and digestive system, despite another burned character that seems to suffer none of these drawbacks.
It also doesn't help that she gets two outfits later in the game that basically are clothes she can put on. One of which being Sniper Wolfs outfit from MGS 1.