I only saw a small post about it so I thought I’d ask for a longer one: What do ya’ll think of Jack from Mass Effect. Compared to MOST of the females in that game is it right to say she isn’t sexualized?

Yes. No. I mean yes. Maybe.

Jack certainly is an example of a character where the core reason behind her exposure is largely explained by her desire to express non-conformity and brazen confidence.  She’s consistently portrayed as someone who has a grudge against society and it’s one of many ways she expresses contempt for it. (gif source)

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Ironically the more sexualizing aspect is the straps that seem to have been added after the initial design, presumably because we need to protect people from the terror of nipples (by drawing more attention to their existence and further fetishizing them, isn’t society great?).

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Unfortunately, when it came time for Mass Effect 3 – her costume seems to have been re-invented with similar focus on sexuality that Ashley’s was.

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Overall, Jack in Mass Effect 2 was a fairly good use of non-sexual exposure, Jack in Mass Effect 3 less so.  How sexualized each was would be a complex discussion involving things like her looks, structure of Bioware’s romance system, camera angles, etc.  

Not really something we can summarize in a blog post.

In comparison to other Mass Effect ladies – well she’s certainly better off (costume wise) than Samara!

– wincenworks

more Mass Effect on BABD

afallenwolf:

I only saw a small post about it so I thought I’d ask for a longer one: What do ya’ll think of Jack from Mass Effect. Compared to MOST of the females in that game is it right to say she isn’t sexualized?

Yes. No. I mean yes. Maybe.

Jack certainly is an example of a character where the core reason behind her exposure is largely explained by her desire to express non-conformity and brazen confidence.  She’s consistently portrayed as someone who has a grudge against society and it’s one of many ways she expresses contempt for it. (gif source)

image

Ironically the more sexualizing aspect is the straps that seem to have been added after the initial design, presumably because we need to protect people from the terror of nipples (by drawing more attention to their existence and further fetishizing them, isn’t society great?).

image

Unfortunately, when it came time for Mass Effect 3 – her costume seems to have been re-invented with similar focus on sexuality that Ashley’s was.

image

Overall, Jack in Mass Effect 2 was a fairly good use of non-sexual exposure, Jack in Mass Effect 3 less so.  How sexualized each was would be a complex discussion involving things like her looks, structure of Bioware’s romance system, camera angles, etc.  

Not really something we can summarize in a blog post.

In comparison to other Mass Effect ladies – well she’s certainly better off (costume wise) than Samara!

– wincenworks

more Mass Effect on BABD

micdotcom:

15 female video game protagonists that aren’t objectified or tokenized 

Unfortunately this list is not completely accurate.  A few of the characters within it are sadly objectified by the creators:

So yeah, while there are more heroines we could add to this list – it’s kind of a shame that 20% of those on the list have exceptions.

– wincenworks

* We should stress, the issue here is not Go-Go Dancing itself, but rather that this was awkwardly shoehorned into the for no reason other than they wanted to have a conventionally attractive woman in a fetish outfit dancing. Seriously – this is not a reasonable way to obtain a cat-burglary costume with security countermeasures inbuilt.

shattered-earth:

As excited I was about ME:A being announced, this (i’m sure very fast) concept art put a bad taste in my mouth. Just goes to show how silly poses for women are so ingrained into artist’s heads that they probably did it without thinking, not realizing how they broke her out of perspective (check her shoulders and feet against the man) just to achieve it too. I mean they were probably drawn separately but no one was like wait a second… lol

Happy space adventuring!

Even with equal amounts of body coverage, Mass Effect characters can’t escape the double standard.

I think kaaaaaaaaaaaaaldwin puts the problem with original picture really well in here:

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~Ozzie

Personally I am hoping that the E3 demo armor was chosen for conveying more dynamic motion and this is just a side effect of marketing people going overboard with it.  

It is good though that they’re now promoting the female option right away and I do hope that the rest of the armors will be more like what we saw last year.

– wincenworks