Our opinion is that cosplayers are people with their own agency, acting on their initiative and (hopefully) not putting themselves hence they’re entitled to dress as sexy as they like.
If the choices of cosplayers heavily influenced studios then Harley Quinn would still wear her full body outfit and mainstream media would have a lot greater diversity in character race (eg cosplayingwhileblack ), body types (eg chubby-cosplay ) and gender expression.
More important than telling the story. More important than making the character interesting and unique. More important than expanding your audience outside of straight white cis men. More important than making the character human or relate-able.
This mentality is upheld by myths such as sex sells, only boys play video games and that focus groups of straight white men can reflect everyone’s opinions.
The decisions are made by executives, marketers, creative directors and occasional auteurs who make these decisions on behalf of businesses that need to sell millions of units to stay in business. They’re re-enforced by media aboutfantasy art and loud groups who are dedicated to halting all progress.
Sexy cosplay ladies are not a big enough demographic to keep a AAA title in business and they’re generally not respected by society – they have no more say in what goes in mainstream media than slash fiction writers, furries, let’s players or anyone else who has a hobby related to popular culture.
Since convention season is in full swing, let’s remember that condemning female cosplayers (instead the costume designers and their higher ups) for perpetuating sexualization of women in media is just a derailment tactic. It shifts blame from the actual creators onto a vulnerable group of fans.
Instead of pointing fingers in the wrong direction, let’s question the complex issues behind the idea of “sexy” character design and problems cosplaying women face, as wincenworks expounds in this old post.
~Ozzie
As a follow up, I’d like to point out that if cosplay ladies got to decide the content of games – we’d see a whole lot more male empowerment.
Just out of curiosity, what is your opinion of female cosplayers that perpetuate the horribly designed costumes prevalent in comic books and video games? Now that I’ve been enlightened by your blog (thank you, btw), I cringe any time I see cosplayers that wear costumes that display the problems you discuss. I can appreciate the effort and craftsmanship that goes into their costumes, but I wonder if they think about the bigger issue.
Our opinion is that cosplayers are people with their own agency, acting on their initiative and (hopefully) not putting themselves hence they’re entitled to dress as sexy as they like.
If the choices of cosplayers heavily influenced studios then Harley Quinn would still wear her full body outfit and mainstream media would have a lot greater diversity in character race (eg cosplayingwhileblack ), body types (eg chubby-cosplay ) and gender expression.
More important than telling the story. More important than making the character interesting and unique. More important than expanding your audience outside of straight white cis men. More important than making the character human or relate-able.
This mentality is upheld by myths such as sex sells, only boys play video games and that focus groups of straight white men can reflect everyone’s opinions.
The decisions are made by executives, marketers, creative directors and occasional auteurs who make these decisions on behalf of businesses that need to sell millions of units to stay in business. They’re re-enforced by media aboutfantasy art and loud groups who are dedicated to halting all progress.
Sexy cosplay ladies are not a big enough demographic to keep a AAA title in business and they’re generally not respected by society – they have no more say in what goes in mainstream media than slash fiction writers, furries, let’s players or anyone else who has a hobby related to popular culture.
Since convention season is in full swing, let’s remember that condemning female cosplayers (instead the costume designers and their higher ups) for perpetuating sexualization of women in media is just a derailment tactic. It shifts blame from the actual creators onto a vulnerable group of fans.
Instead of pointing fingers in the wrong direction, let’s question the complex issues behind the idea of “sexy” character design and problems cosplaying women face, as wincenworks expounds in this old post.
~Ozzie
As a follow up, I’d like to point out that if cosplay ladies got to decide the content of games – we’d see a whole lot more male empowerment.
So, another E3 has come and gone and there’s been time for examination, follow up by developers, etc. As you may have guessed, there’s a lot going on and a lot to unpack.
For a general overview of gender and the theme of games, I recommend checking out the breakdown of this year’s E3 by @femfreq. The general gist, there’s a lot more gender incorporation than last year, but still more than three times with male protagonists as female.
For the representation of the female characters in the violent games, well as you’d expect there’s wild variation but way too much of it is still in the bikini armor or other worrying trope zone.
In the interests of not ruining your feed, the positive examples will be on the front post and the rest below the cut.
– wincenworks
I also highly recommend checking out Tauriq Moosa’s article at @ineeddiversegames:
While some of the civilian costumes seem a little worrying, however the core gameplay uses slick gender neutral armors that are engineered for efficiency. (Gameplay trailer) (Official Site)
Due to the history of the property and the nature of the game, there’s better odds of generally getting to play an adorkable robot with a gun than a woman in the multi-player. However, seeing Iden Versio as the single player lead was a very pleasant and welcome surprise. Also the multiplayer will allow opportunities to play as Rey. (Gameplay Trailer) (Official Site)
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider by Arkane Studios
Badass black lady assassin with a mechanical eye, mechanical arm and excellent suit! And Harvey Smith talking with @femfreq about how criticism helped Dishonored come so far. (Gameplay trailer) (Official site)
Unsurprisingly Absolver still looks amazing both with character design and the concept of being a fighting game where players benefit most from mutual respect and (Gameplay video) (Official Site)
Overland by Finji
Charming art style that provides great personality to the characters and treats the female characters with equal dignity. (Overland @ E3 2017 on Cliqist) (Official Site)
Ni no Kuni 2 by Studio Gibli
Adorable production from Gibli Studios that demonstrates how much personality, actual creativity and expression you can fit into a production when you don’t handcuff yourself to tired tropes born of old myths. (Developer interview and gameplay video) (Official Site)
A tentative status as a positive example. Samus’ armor is significantly more form fitting than it was in the original Metroid 2 – but it’s great to see her back in a game that’s about her kicking ass in her power armor, with a bunch of enhancements to the gameplay experience. (Game Reveal Video) (Official Site)
Announced it will use a character creator, but traditionally Far Cry games have shown you precious little of your player character since they take place entirely through first person perspective. But, it’s definitely worth mentioning Grace Armstrong, a woman of color who will aid you as a well clad sniper.
The new game was announced but there’s not enough info to know how many of their costumes will be great and how many will be terrible. Particularly since they only showed gameplay with a male character.
Games that depicted amazing action with no female protagonists:
God of War: Be A Warrior
Spider-man
Assassin’s Creed: Origins,
Unfortunate Surprises
Beyond Good and Evil 2 by Ubisoft
The original Beyond Good and Evil starred Jade, a heroic, well dressed woman of color with a pig as her sidekick. The trailer for the sequel has no Jade, but rather a trend of women as the decorative sidekick to animals who seem to parody cultures. And well, this happens in it.
I was really hoping to be able to include this one as a positive example, but honestly it’s hard to given that the extended gameplay trailer features a nonsensical twist that results in a minute and a half sequence of an Indian man glorifying human sacrifice while, in the background, a pair of generic guards beat on Nadine and hold her down like she’s a generic civilian in the background. No gif because I very, very sincerely hope none of our followers want to watch a black woman beaten and humiliated for cheap dramatic effect.
The pants and t-shits combinations of the protagonists are uninspired at best and seem to be trying to hedge in on sex appeal. Overall though, I’m not in any way convinced this is going to give either character the same opportunities that Nate and Sully got in every previous Uncharted game.
Vampyr by Dontnod
The trailer looks so good for the first three minutes, Victorian vampires without any detours into the male gaze or manipulation of the setting to get more skin in… then this shows up on the screen:
No female combatants in the gameplay displayed. Given the female character that does appear and Dontnod’s history, I can only assume this was a concession to the publisher.
Seems to be drifting away from being a gender-flipped love letter to the Castlevania and looking more and more like a cheap game hacked together with generic store-bought assets and all the creative focus on sexy outfits and sexy scenarios for the female characters.
Agents of Mayhem by Violition
The standard issue fair of the guys get big coats, body armor, etc and the female playable characters get weird harnesses to frame their boobs. Combine that with your demo target is a male performer who incorporates his sex appeal and this is pretty generic nonsense in denial.
You may be surprised at this mention since there is quite a bit of buzz about how the Multiplayer will allow character customization that incorporates race and gender etc. Well that’s because the only way we know about this is 2nd hand reports from people who got to trial it and a tweet.
Blade Strangers was already featured on BABD as perhaps the worst game, though perhaps we should have proposed an alternative title: “Did ANYONE ask for this?” Sadly it appears we were optimistic in this assessment.
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash by Tamsoft
Okay so a game about young girls in bikinis running around shooting each other with water guns is kind of questionable to begin with, but when one of the bosses is defeated by blasting bubbles off her nude body and the trailer highlights a “soak their white bikini” mini-game you’ve gone past “I can’t believe it’s not porn” and into “disturbing and creepy” territory.
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Every time I see someone say, “Who cares?” about either my own posts or those of other tumblrs on the subject of female representation in comics, I want to point out to them the over 5000 people who’ve subscribed to lesstitsnass (holy crap over 5000?!), the other thousands and thousands of people who follow eschergirls, all the other blogs that do redlines, The Hawkeye Initiative’s slew of participants, the multitudes of articles and comments on all the online magazines that discuss the subject, and say, “Them. They care. There’s a whole lot of them. So get your head out of your butt and try to see what they see.”
Well, the most obvious differences between Conan and Jacob is that Conan was what his creator, Robert E Howard (who struggled his entire life with the pressures of society and toxic masculinity) not-secretly-at-all yearned to be and Jacob is the Stephanie Meyer’s idea of semi-exotic potential boyfriend.Check out this classic depiction of Conan by Frank Frazetta and try to remember the last time you saw a guy like this on the cover of a romance novel.
What makes guys sexy to women (physically)?
Well, it turns out since women are not a monolith and women don’t get to dictate beauty standards for men there’s no real standard.
Research has shown that men in general overestimate how much muscle women find attractive. They also tend to overestimate the importance and the preferred size of penises. (Seriously guys, don’t send unsolicited dick pics and don’t expect bragging about ridiculous endowment to help you)
Honestly though, the notion that you have to adhere to beauty standards in order to make a character attractive is kind of ridiculous. I mean, butts are sexualized across genders. Feeling comfortable pressed up against someone and kissing them is usually a plus. Looking like they may find you interesting as a person or want to impress you are definite help.
When designing a sexy male character: Leave the books about primary and secondary characteristics alone and forget about what manly men say a man should be like and ask, “What’s she going to like in this guy?”
Nothing is genuinely universally attractive, but at least this way you have a chance that the audience will see the appeal even it’s not for them.
Time to bring this back, as discussions about what all women find attractive in all men continue, despite this being essentially unanswerable question. And a wrong thing to ask regarding equality in sexualization of genders.
~Ozzie
And because, apparently, it needs to be said:
If you ever find yourself tell people that the female characters are just as sexualised as not just the men but also the bears, genderless robots (it still terrifies me I have to clarify the genderless part) and/or skeletons with a ecotoplasmic pompadours then it’s well past time to just…
