Jangles said:
*READ THE ENTIRE COMMENT BEFORE QUOTING ME
Along with the seemingly renewed vigor of feminists everywhere, writers of gaming articles have begun to pander to the push for "equality"in every single aspect of life
Yeah! How dare they try to ackowledge that this is the 21st century!
and have begun to ask "Why are females in games made to be extremely attractive to the vastly male majority of core gamers?" and "Why is Lara Croft wearing a tank top rather than a hoody? Wouldnt that be less sexist? Why are fantasy characters in fake looking armour?"
All reasonable questions, all of which have the one, and precisely ONE ,justification... that men find it attractive.
just because gamers like to see a sexy woman in a game does not mean they think of women as mere objects.
That is true. That said, the people who respond to every girl who enters an online game with 'tits or GTFO' don't really help our case.
Plus the fact that when game studios market female characters, they almost exclusively market the character based on her
looks and not her character in and of itself.
Plus not to mention, women's bodies get used as expoitive marketing material
a lot more often then with men.
Some examples below:
Another example is this catalogue article for the '2010 Gamer Girl gift guide' which proudly bore the tagline:
Gifts to your girlfriend, presented by girls you WISH were your girlfriend!
http://au.gear.ign.com/articles/113/1139121p1.html
I don't know what's worse, the fact that they used the same cheap male gaze pandering for a catalogue of gifts for
women, or the fact that said models are all dressed in bikinis for no reason at all... or the fact that I've yet to see a 'game gifts for guys' catalogue where they are all wearing leather jockstraps.
Point is, women have been used as cheap objects in marketing material for a
really long time now. The fact that blatant objectification is happening and we, the gaming public, aren't bothered by it does tell the rest of the world a lot about us.
However, what they are purposely overlooking is the fact that males are inaccurately portrayed as all being adonis like.
Seriously?
I'm just going to go ahead and quote myself about something I said once earlier tackling the same subject:
The thing is, while it's true there are sexed up male characters who are attractive that pop up from time to time, there certainly isn't an 'expectation' for them to be attractive.
By which I mean, for every one handsome charming hero there are about ten ugly muscle bound hate ridden psychos, faceless space marines in body concealing armor and non human aliens.
But meanwhile no matter what, female characters are always attractive and sexed up to some degree. There hasn't been an action game yet that I can think of where the female lead involved isn't some kind of sexual fantasy. In Mass Effect we never see any females of the aliens races that are very non human looking, and all the women are hot.
Implying that while MALE characters can vary in shape and size and be of all different alien races and robots and species, female characters can only exist if they occupy the 'hot girl spectrum'.
I dislike it because while we put a LOT of emphasis on making the female characters look sexy, the main mindset of making a male character is just to make him 'look cool' which isn't really the same thing. Grunt from Mass Effect looks cool, I wouldn't want to have sex with him. Masterchief looks cool but you never even get to see his face, Kratos from God of War looks cool but he's ugly as sin.
But female characters don't really get that. In their pictures they are always posing in a sexy way and they are always attractive to some degree. They aren't trying to look strong and powerful in design as much as they are trying to be made to look hot.
Hence why, even though it was really nice to hear that they were finally going to give femShep in Mass Effect her own trailer, it was ruined by Bioware proudly saying:
"And she's gonna be hot!"
Because, really? This is supposed to be a big moment for being much more accepting of your female audience and instead of saying she'll be AWESOME you just say that she'll be sexy. Which sounds like you are trying to use her looks as a selling point.
This trope isn't just in games either, you find it movies and comic books. Take X-men for instance, how many unnattractive aged female characters with very 'unsexy' powers can you think of? Not many I'd wager and I've certainly never seen any in the movies. They are all petite and young and hot women with perfect bodies and beautiful faces and their powers are always attractive on an aesthetic level.
But the men? Green guys with giant slimy tongues? Red scarred faced demon guys with pointed tails? Big blue furry guy with an animalistic face? Plus, some of them are a lot physically older like Magneto and Proffessor X. There are a few attractive male leads in X-men such as Wolverine and arguably Cyclops... but the fact remains that while all the female leads in the X-men movies are beautiful, that same rule doesn't seem to have to apply to the men.
In essence what this kind of jarring line does is create an unpleasant standard:
Male characters CAN be attractive from time to time.
Female characters MUST be attractive ALL the time.
I have nothing against the fact that there are attractive female characters out there, nor the fact that there are unattractive male characters. But it would be nice to see some reversal happening from time to time.
Next time have a male protagonist who is very handsome.
Then have a female protagonist who is unnattractive.
I don't mind having sexualized characters in games, but it really does bother me when practically every single character of a specific gender is made to be either a sexual fantasy or at least an attractive girl next door type deal, whereas male characters can be ugly and monstrous and faceless as much as they want.
All male characters are the equivalent representatives of their female counterparts.
I doubt it.
Most of the time, when developers are trying to make a male character he is based on the fantasy of what boys want to be, whereas females are often what boys would want to have sex with.
The effort is generally to make male characters look 'cool'. And 'cool' is not the same as 'hot'.
This is because there is no male rights groups to pander to.
There actually ARE men's rights groups out there.
The hard questions to ask are no longer about why women are being "subjugated", "exploited", or "sexually harrassed",
I'd argue those are still very relevant questions. In a world where people claim that feminism has 'taken over' and women now 'own the world', not much has changed.
but why are fake problems being brought up
Objectification isn't a 'fake problem', it's a very real one. It's a problem because it still implies that women exist as little more then eye candy for male audiences.
and why is all common sense, not to mention the other side of the story.
Because the 'other side' of the story doesn't have the same problem! Like I said there are LOTS of male characters in games, movies, comic books and television programs who are not designed to be attractive. Some who are even distinctly unattractive, but it doesn't matter because they still get to be 'cool'.
Similarly, I've yet to see Mario pose topless in pictures in magazines or be advertized in a sexually exploitative way. And yet it seems every female character at some point, does.
Also in the real world it's rather jarring to see various male celebrities who are overweight (Alec Baldwin, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill) continue to have successful careers without anyone criticising their weight, but the second an actress has even the slightest bit of wieght gain, the media goes nuts with frenzy and hate.
Again, a man CAN be attractive in movies.
But, a woman MUST be attractive in movies.
Now, to all those griefers, trolls, and close minded people who think subjugation only happens to females I would like to answer questions for both genders.
I agree that subjugation happens to men as well, but speaking as a man myself, I think it's much less common and not as bad as it is for women.
---> Just like in movies, developers do not put average, ugly, or plain people in their games because if commander Shepard was 20 pounds overweight, if he had bad acne, or if he was too skinny and short, then no one would be immersed in the story Bioware creates.
Sure we never see any overweight male characters in games. But then again, Kratos is
hideous, Masterchief never shows his face and almost all the distinctly non human aliens in Mass Effect are male.
--> Just like in movies, developers do not put average, ugly, or plain people in their games becuase if Lara Croft were 105 pounds, had glasses, wore sweat pants, and had a eating disorder, no one would believe that she is an ass kicking,well, tomb raider.
People might also think it's unbelievable that a woman with breasts like dual coconuts can jump around like an acrobat.
Plus, again, she was still made to be sexed up.
Interestingly, according to Hollywood an 'average looking woman' essentially just looks like a supermodel in a baggy jumper.
--> They do, however, use obese, weird, or deviant people to create comedy, or sentimental stories that break away from the norm..like the TV show "Mike & Molly" a show about obese people being happy
I've never seen Mike and Molly so I'll have to take your word on that.
But for the most part, even in comedy, both on television and in movies I rarely see an overweight woman. In fact, often when I do, the entire joke of her in the movie/TV show is that 'she's fat and that's gross'.
Also, a quote from Seth Rogan:
Seth Rogan:
If 'Pineapple Express' had been about two girls, they wouldn't have made it. And if I were a woman I wouldn?t have a career.
Also, I will say that there are numerous definitions of "happiness" and "beauty", but we are obviously discussing physical beauty here.
Of which there is an inordinate amount supplied to female characters over male characters and done in a much more exploitative way.
Games are simply pandering to the crowd that makes them the most money. Period
The fact that they are doing it for money doesn't make it 'not sexist'.
In fact, the fact that they are using women's bodies for sex appeal in advertising and marketing and more to the point, that it's actually
working is actually pretty compelling evidence to suggest sexism.
just because gamers like to see a sexy woman in a game does not mean they think of women as mere objects.
This is true, I myself own a few old burlesque paintings and a fairly raunchy Catwoman statue and I've still got a schoolboy crush on Cortana from Halo. I don't have a problem with beautiful women.
I have a problem with how they are marketted and how it is blatant exploitation, both of the women and of the men buying said product.
Also for what it's worth, the way gamers sometimes respond when women do complain about this is
really shocking. Seriously, some of the stuff that gets said about women or feminism or whatever as an attempt to defend gaming's image really just helps bury us down further.
Seriously, it doesn't help our case if there are people yelling at the 'feminazi sluts!' for trying to take away our boobs in games which are somehow our rightful property.
To put it simply, we may LIKE it, but that doesn't mean we are ENTITLED to it.
You pander to the crowd that makes you the most money. TV shows, businesses, banks, games, movies are beginning to pander to the increasingly "outed" homosexual population because the sight of a man kissing a man is becoming more accepted.
True, but if I recall, there have been a LOT of girls kissing girls in media that had nothing to do with accepting lesbians as much as pandering male sex fantasies.
By comparison I've heard of very few movies that specifically target girl fantasies (apart from the obvious).
Therefore, there is more money in it.
Yes, there is more money in it. But there would be even MORE money if we started marketting games to appeal to women, as that's literally HALF the population of the world. If we can ditch the booth babes, nude stars in game magazines holding game parraphenalia and just drop all the overdone sex appeal in games and just try to level it out a bit.... maybe games could have a bigger audience and thus, more money.
