Maybe if more people at big studios cared to do the research into lives of real female snipers, like Lyudmila Pavlichenko, they’d have second thoughts about introducing such “novel” concepts like breathing through skin or being brainwashed into killing people while having an absolute cleavage to justify having a gun-wielding woman in their story.
We recommend it as a great starting point to learn about many interesting (not necessarily good, but always fascinating) women who shaped the history by daring to break conventions. Really great source of reference and inspiration when creating a new, non-conformist female characters.
~Ozzie
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These images are taken from a novelty trading card set that was printed in 1902, imagining how women of the future might look in the roles that were exclusive to men at the time.
Now, it bears noting that there was no serious artistic intent behind these – they were not an exploration of the (then) future so much as they were a novel excuse to have photos of cute girls in costumes.
Yet somehow they remain far more convincing and charismatic than so, so many modern products that want us to take the notion of their “empowered” warrior women seriously.
While the arenas of Rome would certainly have been the place where you would have seen impractical armor and boobplates if they were to ever exist… however there is no evidence to suggest that ridiculous female armor was ever worn by an gladiatrix.*
Gladiator armor was made “impractical” in the sense that it didn’t protect their vital areas – but it didn’t impede their ability to fight or recover from a fight like a boobplate would. They after all, there to provide a great show (their lives literally depended on it) and boobplates and similar armor would have just reduced the chances for blood (and boobs!)
“Contestants” (to use that term as loosely as possible) in the Roman arenas came in two varieties: People who were being punished in a theatrical manner and people who were basically professional athletes (even if they may be slaves).
* Do not do an image search for “gladiatrix”, you will not find anything remotely helpful, but you will find a lot of stuff that is down right disturbing.
Re-identification of Viking corpses has revealed that half of their warriors were female.
“Researchers at the University of Western Australia decided to revamp the way they studied Viking remains. Previously, researchers had misidentified skeletons as male simply because they were buried with their swords and shields. (Female remains were identified by their oval brooches, and not much else.) By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons.”
Women have always fought. We have always been there, ‘contributing to history’. Our own, modern sexism contributes to the erasure of it.
(Bolding mine)
Sadly notcompletely accurate. They couldn’t confirm that half of them were warriors (it was a small sample size) – but it did confirm that the methods that had previously been used to determine the sex of the corpses were incorrect.
Specifically that even though it is well known that Vikings had great warrior women in their ranks, archaeologists frequently assume their remains belonged to a man unless they’re have only traditionally "female” items on them. This is because “history” as we know it is interpretation of evidence, and sometime the interpreters are both sexist and lacking in imagination.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that women in history didn’t fight and never, ever let anyone tell you that fiction shouldn’t include badass warrior women.
