The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: commentary
Posted on
Anonymous submitted:
So, I love Final Fantasy, I’ve played it since I could hold a controller. But in the final installment of FFVII You’re faced with the Deep Ground Soldiers, a syndicate of a sort, while you play as Vincent… shooting at them… But what bugged me was the fact that the females weren’t issued the nice sturdy functioning pants the dudes have, and those guys even get a nice little protective crotch piece! (because lord knows you gotta protect your junk from magic spells and bullets) Aside from that, they have some pretty good looking helmets and the chest plate is that a chest plate, not a dented boob plate. But still why the dang leotard? I sure as heck wouldn’t join an underground army with that uniform. But then one of their leader’s Rosso… *sigh* she falls as the stereotypical “sexy villain” with an insatiable bloodlust, but that’s it, the rest I’m sure has already been covered.
Bring out contestant number one! Sorry, I already forgot your name!
Firstly I (the straight cis man known as wincenworks) love the assumption that it’s only women who are enjoying our Sexy Male Armor Fridays because a fairly hefty proportion of them are made by and for gay or otherwise queer men. It actually takes quite a bit of work to find them even on video game mod sites and art sites.
Meanwhile all I have to do to see women being objectified is open up Steam or visit my local comic book shop. It’s everywhere. In everything. It’s the predominant image of heroines and strong female characters.
So to answer your question, when we ever start to reach a reality where male characters aren’t considered worthwhile unless they conform to a very narrow beauty standard then we can start worrying about objectification of men. If that ever happens and isn’t immediately backpedaled over.
And now for our second concerned citizen! Sorry I forgot who you are too.
Various media love spins of trying to excuse hypersexualizing women such as weaponized femininity, "she’s so powerful“ and a whole bunch of other things. But very rarely does it have anything to do female characters actually having power, doing what they want and not conforming to society’s demanding expectations.
James Bond gets to be powerful, sexy and use his sexual appeal to get what he wants too. But he also gets to do it while wearing awesome suits,having a charming personality and doing lots of things just because he wants to (as well as his super cool job). Not many female characters get this kind of opportunity.
So really it’s not that there’s not a relationship between sex and power, it’s just there’s a very limited relationship between hypersexualized female armor and power.
It just struck me that one of the best things about Carol’s Captain Marvel suit is how hard the starburst+gold fringing makes it for sleazy artists to draw her in boob socks.
The more I think about this, the more I think that maybe this should become an aspect of costume design that is emphasised and taught everywhere.
This also applies if your “commentary” piece requires the audience to participate in hours of extra content and then engage in a elaborate mental gymnastics in order to find the commentary. eg Metal Gear Solid or Dragon’s Dogma.
No amount of elaborate post event justification is going to undo the objectification.
Not really. Who even cares about objectifying Steve Rogers when he gets 3 of his very own movies and there isn’t even a SINGLE movie for ANY female character. Who cares about women on tumblr objectifying him prettyyyy much harmlessly when entertainment shows/sites seen by millions gush about Steve’s character development or Chris’ acting, while the only thing they say about the SOLE woman is her new hair/her weight loss or gain/how hot she looked. Sometimes, women are ONLY put in movies to be the token “eye candy”, (regardless of whether or not she’s underage) and this happens a lot. Look at the massive franchise that is Transformers.
It’s not the same thing… Men objectify women and it leads to real life violence against women—fuelled by already rampant misogyny. Women objectify men and it leads to gifsets of Chris Evans’ ass.
Yuppppp And no one respects sexy men less for being “objectified” if you can even apply the term the same way to a guy- if anything, being objectified is glorifying for men.
What’s that thing Joe Mangianello said about how he doesn’t feel like men can be objectified? Cuz women are viewed as sex objects, but men are viewed as power objects?
A guy who takes off his shirt and shows off his buff bod in a movie has power, he’s displaying his value and attractiveness
I mean, the culture isn’t NEARLY the same; I’ve been thinking lately about how no matter how much we “objectify” men, it’s always an empowering thing for the man.
He’s sexy: it’s an achievement.
And a lot of our attraction is also about fawning over the man’s personality, his expressions, the nuances of the character he plays- cute jokes about Doritoes….
I can go from posting ten close-ups of Chris Evan’s ass (accompanied by praise and self-deprecating jokes) To a picture of him in a sweater-vest, looking pensive and talking about his love of golden retrievers in the same ten minutes (with commentary about what a darling angel he is)
None of it is demeaning or objectifying in remotely the way female objectification is, and your point about Chris Evans starring in three Cap solo movies is really right on…. …while women can barely scrape past the damn Bechdel test half the time, and half the time are reduced to T&A and get assaulted or fridged or show up in their undies for no reason…
Some wise words about gendered double standards and false equivalence between objectifying male and female characters.
