Mave said:
so.... I'm designing/writing something for a personal project , and I wanted to give this a try, to make sexualized characters, eye candy for the females. ... why you ask !??
NO I'm not trying to make a statement o anything like that, I just want to give this a try... really, I want to be able to make any kind of characters if I need to.
But ! ._. I'm having a hard time coming up with this with "sexy eye candy make characters for females", so I thought maybe asking for an opinion/helping hand here, now now I appreciate help from my fellow man , but I'm more interested in female opinion, or a honest gay man opinion ( I'm not sure if a female and a gay man have could consider attractive the same stuff.. so help me out)?
Before someone brings this up (because I'm almost sure someone will come up with this...) I don't the hawkeye initiative is a good source/help/example/whatever, why? ... well i don't want my male character to pose in a sexualized female way, I want them to be attractive to females..... I'm not sure but I think that the hawkeye initiative isn't eye candy for females..... is it?
In case you don't know the hawkeye initiative
http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/
anyway thanks for reading and hope to see some advices.
( yeah I kind of realized that this topic would be better on the advice forum ? if so can someone move it please? sorry -_-)
To be honest, most male characters are highly sexualized already. Your typical male character has lots of smooth, well defined, muscles and usually six pack abs. While a lot of people will argue this is a "power" fantasy, it's really not since those kinds of muscles aren't the strongest or most powerful. For sure body builders and sculptors usually tend to be fairly strong, but actual "powerful" men tend to build huge slabs and bands of muscle, and in many cases look like ridiculous fat boys. If you look at say "Mr. Olympia" with guys that look like super-heroes, they are generally competing for the way their muscles look, the shape, definition, etc... it's all about looking pretty. In comparison you watch something like "World's Strongest Man" or serious power lifting, and the guys aren't usually sculpted that way and can't show off the "comic book" look even with a ton of oil. Granted there HAVE been exceptions (especially when 'roids have been involved) but this is the general rule.
The thing is that most dudes don't really "get" what makes a guy attractive, and girls tend to be a lot less assertive about it. But if you watch who girls tend to go after, the body builder types, even if a lot of women will insist they don't find that attractive, tend to wind up with girls all over them. Things like "Chippendales" make huge bank by basically getting body builders to dance around in thongs for the ladies.
So basically, whenever you see some dude like Chris Redfield showing off this massive, well-sculpted arm, that's sex appeal for women as much as anything. A lot of guys don't really "get" that though, especially seeing as the trick to a successful character is to sort of create "a character guys want to be, and women want to be with", which also applies to female characters who are really sexualized as well, as they represent the ideals women create for themselves and kind of wish they were as well.
To put it into perspective, a lot of women or general critics might say "Chris Redfield looks ridiculous with those huge arms" or might say knock Marcus Fenix from "Gears Of War", but if you gave them dance lessons, covered them in oil, and put them up on a Chippendales stage, they would be headliners and probably wind up with straps full of bills.
Another point to consider is that one recurring thing for a lot of "geeks" is looking at all the "macho jerks" and "dumb jocks" that score with the hot girls. A lot of fiction is full of guys pretty much navel gazing about how these women would be so much happier with nice guys like them, and in fantasy it usually turns out that way eventually. In reality the thing is that that "macho jock" type is pretty much the equivalent of that hot girl for the girls. They are with them, because they are "pretty" and become tolerant of the failings and problems the same way how a lot of guys will talk about being tolerant of "hot crazy chicks" or whatever. He's the male equivalent of a sex bomb, and even if he's the equivalent of some insane person or semi-abusive (like a female ice queen/queen ***** type) it's all about the fun and the good sex.
Of course I think part of the problem in geek culture that helps fuel this (though not all of it) is that it seems counter-productive to lionize guys who are pretty much the ones who picked on the target audience. Some nerd like Peter Parker banging super-models is more of an empowerment fantasy, than say some male body builder doing it, because that's kind of just reality and the guys who wind up anything like that are the ones who traditionally malign comics, video games, etc... and those that play them. Of course with things changing there is some backlash when you see the so called "Frat Boy Crowd" becoming a dominate market force in an industry that's already pretty much lionizing them. Sort of making your hard core geek an increasing outsider in his own domain.
The point is that I think the parity already exists, even if people don't want to recognize it.
If you want a good example, let's look at the recent X-men movie. At the beginning they show Hugh Jackman naked, and some girl behind me exclaimed "OMG, he's built like a tank". I've seen similar things said about "Thor" and it's even a recurring gag about how ridiculously hot Chris Hemmsworth is to women (heck my step mother digs him big time). Both of these guys pretty well represent their particular characters for the most part, albeit Jackman is waaay too tall, but otherwise passes as the character fairly well (and to be frank doing fight scenes with a borderline midget isn't going to be easy, I mean heck, they haven't even been able to do Dwarf fighters well in the Lord Of The Rings movies... putting claws and a wig on say Peter Dinklage would look ridiculous live action even if he managed to buff out the build).
Since a lot of girls like to play coy about what they find attractive, or will say things that aren't popular, perhaps the best way you could make some kind of academic point would be to say find a picture of a buff hero, and see if you can find say a Chippendale that looks similar (I imagine it wouldn't be quite that difficult, I wouldn't be susprised if some Chippendales even use super hero gimmicks given the recent trends). Then point out the similarities and the fact that the Chippendale makes a living by using his build to whip women into a sexual frenzy and give him money for it.
