it’s a constant that people will look at misogyny in video games and say ‘but look at all of the women fawning over this male character’ like having a cute boy with a nice face and all of his clothes on is somehow on the same level as bikini armor and things like jiggle physics.
if link’s face seriously makes men feel objectified i’m jealous let’s trade
I’m all about such trade! LET’S DO THIS!
~Ozzie
It has to be authentic “video game jiggle physics” though, so nothing like how real bodies jiggle. The whole crotch bulge should bounce and jiggle around like it’s a bag full of cats, making it impossible not to notice every time the character moves.
Only then will the trade be truly fair!
– wincenworks
‘political correctness kills creativity’ if you can’t create something without furthering the oppression of minorities, you aren’t a very creative person.
Exactly. It is funny how people say this and don’t realize the irony. As in, if you cannot visualize people different from you without using the same old stereotypes, you can’t exactly say you were the paragon of creativity can you?
RE: the insistence that when we ask for costume designs to stop recycling the tired skimpy armor tropes we’re somehow hurting the very idea of creativity.
Fun fact: adhering limitations to a project (like, I dunno, striving to not hurt feelings of large part of the population) actually helps to come up with something way more original than sticking to tropes that are offensive towards lots of potential fans.
~Ozzie
Invariably whenever someone claims that “political correctness” is killing creativity – it showcases a real lack of effort on their part. Even politically incorrect comedians like John Cleese will stress that you can’t expect your first idea to be your greatest idea, you have to refine it and be willing to let it go if it can’t be saved.
If you have an idea that you think is great, but you can’t use it because it’s “politically incorrect” then three possibilities exist:
- The core idea is great however the way you envisioned it is problematic – so you need to rework it until you have the core without the terrible stuff.
- The core idea is actually terrible, but some other aspect of it is good so what you want to do is ditch the core idea but keep the good aspect for another idea (or make it the core idea).
- The whole idea if fundamentally terrible and you need to examine why you thought of it in the first place to help you grow as a person and avoid problematic ideas like it cloud up your brain storming in future.
Regardless of which it is, it’s basically an opportunity to help you improve your creativity and yourself. Passing up on this opportunity just means you’re taking one step towards being more like many, many problematic creators of the past.
So why be an imitation of someone else when you can be a pioneer? Because plenty of professionals are calling for people to drop the use of harmful stereotypes and get creative instead.
– wincenworks
My Problem with Boobplate
I’m just gonna go ahead and say this now: I have a serious social-anxiety disorder that inhibits me from reading any of the comments on this Tumblr. My condition is a little complicated, so I’m not going to take the time to describe how or why, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. That said, instead of viewing your feedback and answering your questions directly, I’m going to view the feedback on similar sites and hope that they’re asking similar questions. If you find I answered something you were curious about, awesome. If I don’t, I apologize in advance.
Now then, onto the subject of boobplate. When I see images of women in boobplate being criticized, the most common defense seems to be that there simply isn’t anything wrong with it. It’s metal, it covers the woman’s chest; what’s the big deal?
Personally, I think of boobplate the same way I think of Spartan ab-armor (abplate? muscleplate?). It can be a nice design concept, and it certainly has its place in fantasy games, but it’s not necessary, nor does it have any real functionality. There’s no *need* for armor with built-in pecks, but if that’s what you want your character to wear, more power to you.
This, however, is exactly where my problem with boobplate begins. Everyone knows that male armor doesn’t have to have abs molded into it, and as a result we only see it depicted in games every now and then. Boobplate, on the other hand, is widely believed to be a necessary aspect of female armor, and you’d be hard-pressed to find many alternatives for it presented in fantasy games (there’s a reason why “Women’s Armor: Done Right” has so few images of women in platemail). It shouldn’t be seen as a woman’s only choice when selecting armor, and yet that is all too often the case.
My problem then deepens with the way boobplate is usually designed. There are ways to make boobplate that both looks good and doesn’t detract from the armor’s overall functionality, buuutt these ways are not the ones I see. Instead, boobplate is commonly designed to A) push and hold women’s breasts up like a metal bra (ouch), B) hug women’s skin like a latex suit or a metal corset (double ouch), or C) give women ridiculously large, metal breasts that look like they’d be awfully hard to maneuver in combat. There are also the problems of boobplate that shows cleavage, boobplate that exposes the midriff, etc. Really, it’s quite a big mess.
“Wait wait wait, Tragic, what do you mean boobplate isn’t necessary!?! Of course it is! Women need a special compartment for their breasts, otherwise they’d get squished!”
Yeeaahhh, from the top:
1) Regular breastplate gives plenty of room for the bust already. I’ve never met a woman with breasts so insanely large that they couldn’t fit into a suit of armor without special accommodations for their chest. And, yes, I’ve seen many a plus-size lady in armor.
2) Once you’ve donned all of your underclothes and chainmail, there’s hardly any boob left to speak of. I personally looked like a wooden board with all of my husband’s gear on.
3) Please take a moment to look at these images of real women in armor and just stop forever because the notion that women need boobplate is just ridiculous.
4) Joan of Arc.
In short, my problems with boobplate are that it’s horribly overused and most instances of it are extremely problematic. Hence, the #boobplate tag.
Great commentary on the problem of boobplate by a mod of a related blog.
As always, crucial parts bolded by yours truly.
~Ozzie
I’ve been trying to think of any good reason why someone would endure all the extra fitting sessions necessary to make sure a breastplate yells “I have boobs”.
Still can’t think of any.
– wincenworks
i am actually So Angry at the forum topic about female armor being “too concealing” lmfao
women don’t exist for you to ogle even in video games! shut the fuck up! 🙂
So… against my better judgement I went looking and I found this thread. In which the author proposes he’s not satisfied with the many existing options in clothing (even though you can literally just wear the armor on top and tell the game to make it invisible) and nobody understands what he’s asking for.
Probably because what he asks for shifts constantly as he gets more and more negative feedback from people pointing out how absurd his request is. The two pics on the left are early examples of what he’s asking for, the two pics on the right are modifications to pics of armor he’s done to illustrate what he means. See if you can spot any differences:
This is not to propose that he’s an evil mastermind that planned this all along, but rather that ridiculous armor, particularly ridiculously revealing female armor, has become so institutionalized in pop culture that people literally do not see the absurdity of these requests or even consider that maybe the whole premise if flawed.
So general unhelpfulness of thinking that not on the same level of Tera Online is going to reassure anyone; it’s pretty terrifying that we live a world where people genuinely think all armour should show off skin.
– wincenworks
Hey there! I’m a woman planning on cosplaying some Monster Hunter Armor next year. I am going to go with the Barioth Blademaster armor. Is it wrong of me to be planning the male version of the armor I like? I picked one with my favorite aspects of the two different blademaster female sets, as well as the fact it has more coverage. I know women cosplay as male characters all the time but I’ve never actually seen a woman cosplaying male armor that isn’t associated with a specific character.
There absolutely nothing wrong with wearing a the version that you like best and/or feel most comfortable in regardless of your gender.
Fev is an awesome female cosplayer and prop maker who we’ve featured on Bikini Armor Battle Damage wearing their cosplay of the male version of Nordic Carved Armor from Skyrim.
The 501st Legion has female storm troopers who wear generic (assumed male) costumes, and some members recently made a custom suit for a little girl who was being bullied over her love of Star Wars:
Cosplaying is about two things:
- Making/wearing something you want to wear
- Having fun
That is not to say there aren’t some definite no-nos (blackface, cosplaying inherently offensive characters, cosplaying something raunchy at a family event, etc), but I can absolutely nothing wrong with wearing a non-character specific costume intended for a gender other than your own.
– wincenworks