Because fictional characters do not have the capacity to make choices. Because they are not REAL people.
Power Girl and Starfire did not CHOOSE to fight evil in skimpy, revealing outfits. It is not their PERSONAL CHOICE to wear those clothes. They are fictional characters and their wardrobes are under the control of the author and artist.
Dumbledore did not CHOOSE to stay in the closet as a personal and professional choice because that was his right as a person. He is a fictional character. The fact that his sexuality was left at only vague subtext and only revealed through word of god was a deliberate decision made by the author.
Fictional characters are fictional characters. They do not make their own choices.
Addendum to the rule: for the same reasons, you can not argue that criticism “shames” a character for their appearance or behavior.
And just for the record, seeing what kind of responses this post received before we got to reblog it: NO, the fact that fictional characters tend to grow and take a life of their own still does not mean they have agency.
No matter how developed a fictional person is, they’re still written by a real person (or people) who have their own biases and rationalizations. Just because some “choices” feel natural to the author doesn’t mean they’re objectively plausible “choices” for a character to make within the given narrative.
Sometimes the choice, like (in case of what our blog critiques) decision to wear a sexualized costume to battle, can be explained by specific circumstances. But in most circumstances or with other explanations, the same choice can be plain silly and inconsistent with the rest of established story/worldbuilding.
Because fictional characters do not have the capacity to make choices. Because they are not REAL people.
Power Girl and Starfire did not CHOOSE to fight evil in skimpy, revealing outfits. It is not their PERSONAL CHOICE to wear those clothes. They are fictional characters and their wardrobes are under the control of the author and artist.
Dumbledore did not CHOOSE to stay in the closet as a personal and professional choice because that was his right as a person. He is a fictional character. The fact that his sexuality was left at only vague subtext and only revealed through word of god was a deliberate decision made by the author.
Fictional characters are fictional characters. They do not make their own choices.
Addendum to the rule: for the same reasons, you can not argue that criticism “shames” a character for their appearance or behavior.
And just for the record, seeing what kind of responses this post received before we got to reblog it: NO, the fact that fictional characters tend to grow and take a life of their own still does not mean they have agency.
No matter how developed a fictional person is, they’re still written by a real person (or people) who have their own biases and rationalizations. Just because some “choices” feel natural to the author doesn’t mean they’re objectively plausible “choices” for a character to make within the given narrative.
Sometimes the choice, like (in case of what our blog critiques) decision to wear a sexualized costume to battle, can be explained by specific circumstances. But in most circumstances or with other explanations, the same choice can be plain silly and inconsistent with the rest of established story/worldbuilding.
It seems a popular trend in trying to defend terrible costume designs with random pictures of female wrestlers or MMA fighters. Usually accompanied by some sort of rant about how anyone who questions the perfection of these costumes is the sexist one!
Yes, there are many sexualized costumes in women’s sports. It’s not because the costumes are flawless. Rather it is a sign that female athletes often suffer under the tyranny of Creepy Marketing Guy too.
At the end of the day, justifying sexist double standards in the media by pointing to more sexist double standards in the media only showcases how wide spread the problem is.
More under the cut.
– wincenworks
Showmanship vs Sportsmanship
It’s a public secret that WWE isn’t exactly about competing to see who has the greatest combat skills. WWE and those like it are about over the top stunts, fast paced drama and general entertainment.
If we accept that climbing up on a giant prop so that you can taunt your opponent, call for the crowd to cheer and then drop down with a body slam is not serious fighting behaviour, we should be able to accept they are not wearing serious costumes either.
For reference, compare any rebuttal outfit to what Saori Yoshida wore when she took Gold at the 2012 Olympics.
Rules of Engagement
Unsurprisingly in heavily regulated sports that have to adhere to regulations from sponsors, insurance and law enforcement – they have a lot of rules about what you can and can’t do to each other.
Even in more liberal fighting sports such as MMA or Ultimate Fighting, the opponents are not actually trying to kill or permanently injure each other – they’re trying to force a submission through allowed techniques. Certainly you can’t bring claw weapons, throw fireballs, use grappling hooks or rip their head off at the end of the round.
Weight Classes
This is usually more an objection when we talk about body types or lack of muscle, but there’s always no shortage of people rushing to post images of conventionally attractive young women who are professional fighters – thus insisting that all warrior women should conform to these standards.
This overlooks a rather critical aspect of the above rules of engagement – that in order to keep competitions within the many rules fair, fighters are sorted into weight classes. Professional fighters need superb discipline and go to great lengths to balance performance vs weight – because they need to in order to be allowed to fight in their weight class.
Unsurprisingly, height is also and advantage so in many of lighter weight classes the contestants tend to be of slim build and a few invariably fall within the conventional beauty standards.
Sponsorship
The lighter weight classes are particularly important, because for any combat sport event to get big tournaments with professional fighters, promotions, photo shoots, etc they need sponsors. The bigger the sponsors, the bigger the events. WWE’s sponsors include Disney and Mattel. And this is where the tyranny of Creepy Marketing Guy comes in.
Companies sponsor events and fighters in order to boost their image and promote themselves. That means the marketing department gets involved and so does the flawed mentality that sex sells – this effects both the events and the individual fighters.
Now before we continue – I need to stress here that the problem is not the women who benefit from these opportunities and/or enjoy these aspects of the sport. The problem is that the circumstances create additional barriers for women who do not fit or feel comfortable within the constraints.
Journalists and brodudes alike constantly try to justify this focusing on sound bytes or photos of successful female athletes who seem to be okay with it – that’s not fair to the women who dropped out because of these issues or the women who succeed.
The upper limit for the absolute heaviest weight class for women that receives sponsorship for national and international events is 66 kgs or 145 lbs. For men, it’s 120kgs or 265 lbs AND occasionally they experiment with super heavyweight – a division with no upper weight limit at all.
To put this in perspective: Fighter/actress Gina Carano was a champion fighter in the heaviest divisions of Mixed Martial Arts. She tended to weight 140 – 143 pounds during her fight career and once had to publicly strip naked to make her weigh in. This is her with regular sized, just plain actor, Ewan McGregor in Haywire:
This is her generously allowing The Rock to lean on her while he takes a nap:
On top of that, if you want to be a professional fighter you’re going to need a very rigorous training schedule, be able to travel, take time off to heal up after fights, etc. So it’s in your best interests to attract sponsors who will pay you to do all of that.
The downside is, marketing guys will tend to want you to pose for their promotions and fight wearing items of clothing that they pick for you to wear during promo shoots. It also means that marketing guys additional funding options such as interviews, cover shoots, etc tend to want to focus more on “isn’t she sexy!?” rather than “isn’t she a badass!?”
So long as society remains comfortable with this idea that women aren’t worth giving attention to unless they’re sexy, there’s never going to be any shortage of examples like this. That doesn’t make any one example okay.
It seems a popular trend in trying to defend terrible costume designs with random pictures of female wrestlers or MMA fighters. Usually accompanied by some sort of rant about how anyone who questions the perfection of these costumes is the sexist one!
Yes, there are many sexualized costumes in women’s sports. It’s not because the costumes are flawless. Rather it is a sign that female athletes often suffer under the tyranny of Creepy Marketing Guy too.
At the end of the day, justifying sexist double standards in the media by pointing to more sexist double standards in the media only showcases how wide spread the problem is.
More under the cut.
– wincenworks
Showmanship vs Sportsmanship
It’s a public secret that WWE isn’t exactly about competing to see who has the greatest combat skills. WWE and those like it are about over the top stunts, fast paced drama and general entertainment.
If we accept that climbing up on a giant prop so that you can taunt your opponent, call for the crowd to cheer and then drop down with a body slam is not serious fighting behaviour, we should be able to accept they are not wearing serious costumes either.
For reference, compare any rebuttal outfit to what Saori Yoshida wore when she took Gold at the 2012 Olympics.
Rules of Engagement
Unsurprisingly in heavily regulated sports that have to adhere to regulations from sponsors, insurance and law enforcement – they have a lot of rules about what you can and can’t do to each other.
Even in more liberal fighting sports such as MMA or Ultimate Fighting, the opponents are not actually trying to kill or permanently injure each other – they’re trying to force a submission through allowed techniques. Certainly you can’t bring claw weapons, throw fireballs, use grappling hooks or rip their head off at the end of the round.
Weight Classes
This is usually more an objection when we talk about body types or lack of muscle, but there’s always no shortage of people rushing to post images of conventionally attractive young women who are professional fighters – thus insisting that all warrior women should conform to these standards.
This overlooks a rather critical aspect of the above rules of engagement – that in order to keep competitions within the many rules fair, fighters are sorted into weight classes. Professional fighters need superb discipline and go to great lengths to balance performance vs weight – because they need to in order to be allowed to fight in their weight class.
Unsurprisingly, height is also and advantage so in many of lighter weight classes the contestants tend to be of slim build and a few invariably fall within the conventional beauty standards.
Sponsorship
The lighter weight classes are particularly important, because for any combat sport event to get big tournaments with professional fighters, promotions, photo shoots, etc they need sponsors. The bigger the sponsors, the bigger the events. WWE’s sponsors include Disney and Mattel. And this is where the tyranny of Creepy Marketing Guy comes in.
Companies sponsor events and fighters in order to boost their image and promote themselves. That means the marketing department gets involved and so does the flawed mentality that sex sells – this effects both the events and the individual fighters.
Now before we continue – I need to stress here that the problem is not the women who benefit from these opportunities and/or enjoy these aspects of the sport. The problem is that the circumstances create additional barriers for women who do not fit or feel comfortable within the constraints.
Journalists and brodudes alike constantly try to justify this focusing on sound bytes or photos of successful female athletes who seem to be okay with it – that’s not fair to the women who dropped out because of these issues or the women who succeed.
The upper limit for the absolute heaviest weight class for women that receives sponsorship for national and international events is 66 kgs or 145 lbs. For men, it’s 120kgs or 265 lbs AND occasionally they experiment with super heavyweight – a division with no upper weight limit at all.
To put this in perspective: Fighter/actress Gina Carano was a champion fighter in the heaviest divisions of Mixed Martial Arts. She tended to weight 140 – 143 pounds during her fight career and once had to publicly strip naked to make her weigh in. This is her with regular sized, just plain actor, Ewan McGregor in Haywire:
This is her generously allowing The Rock to lean on her while he takes a nap:
On top of that, if you want to be a professional fighter you’re going to need a very rigorous training schedule, be able to travel, take time off to heal up after fights, etc. So it’s in your best interests to attract sponsors who will pay you to do all of that.
The downside is, marketing guys will tend to want you to pose for their promotions and fight wearing items of clothing that they pick for you to wear during promo shoots. It also means that marketing guys additional funding options such as interviews, cover shoots, etc tend to want to focus more on “isn’t she sexy!?” rather than “isn’t she a badass!?”
So long as society remains comfortable with this idea that women aren’t worth giving attention to unless they’re sexy, there’s never going to be any shortage of examples like this. That doesn’t make any one example okay.
– wincenworks
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Well, I’ve been looking into all the official information on why Quiet has that ridiculous outfit. It’s been a wild ride. I can confidently say that I am not ashamed and have not changed my stance. The bingo above applies only to official information – with elaboration in the cut below.
For those already typing up a response to tell me I’m a terrible person, here’s a few quick preemptive responses for the people who will tell me I can’t judge the game without providing notarized proof of having played 400 hours of each game in the series but won’t bother to search the tags of this blog:
We are aware there are some cosplayers who love Quiet’s outfit, we are very supportive of cosplayers right to dress how they want – particularly since they are real people withagency and not on battlefields.
The existence of The Boss does not mean Hideo Kojima’s work is excluded from criticism. That’s not how reality works on any level, there are no Get Out of Jail/Criticism Free Cards outside of Monopoly.
Neither does his taste in music, status as an artist, situation with Konami, his talking about who he consulted with about military experts, etc.
Theories about how this might be a sneaky commentary on society also don’t protect from criticism as these are not responsible commentary.
Warnings: Due to this involving information delivered in the game, the following contains spoilers. Due to the nature of the game the following and the sources linked to will contain references and imagery relating to torture, rape, graphic violent, mutilation and (hopefully fictional) political rhetoric.
Men are sexualized too!
Kojima actually managed to take this a step further than usual by justifying his requesting a “sexy” design for Quiet claims that not only can we argue the guys are sexualized too, but so are the military equipment. Yes, tanks are sexualized too… apparently. (source – article)
This is particularly ridiculous since as the recent femfreq video pointed out – MGS games have a history of recognizing just one kind of person as “sexy” to the viewer – often to ridiculous extents:
She CHOSE to dress like that!
If the player chooses to take Quiet captive, it is advised that even though she somehow has no problem with being tortured and kept on display in a cage – she responds violently to anyone who tries to put clothes on her.
More information on why in the next two points. (Source – video)
Her strength comes from her uncovered skin…
During the same section, it is discussed that Quiet eats (via photosynthesis), breathes and drinks through her skin – so she could suffocate if she wore clothes. (No explanation is given for her latex glove, fishnets or why her bikini is so ridiculous).
Later you do see Quiet struggling to breathe while wearing long sleeves and long pants, but she and is able to access all the air she needs to do a wuxia-esque grindhouse revenge killing sequence when her pants are removed and her shirt is ripped open. (The scenario is at least as terrible as you’re imagining, actually probably worse)
Also, anyone with a basic understanding of clothing or science knows that there’s a wide variety of fabrics that “breathe” and hence wouldn’t get in the way of her skin getting access to air. Certainly not any more than say a shower or rain would. Speaking of…
It’s just fantasy/scifi! Magic/science protects her!
You were probably thinking it sounds pretty weird that Quiet uses her skin for everything we have specialist organs for, and you’d be right! Quiet is first introduced as a normal human (and spectacularly incompetent) assassin who is sent to kill Snake but ends up on fire instead. She is then given “parasite therapy” where some sort of insect microbe things transform her body in a way that conveniently preserves her sexiness and forces her to show it off.
This makes so little sense that basically nobody can agree if it’s scifi or supernatural – it just works because they say so. Oh, and in case you’re wondering – yes there are men in the game who’ve been “enhanced” with parasite therapy – this is what they look like:
According to Kojima, part of this design idea was he spent a lot of time thinking about how characters might be effected by early life, fashion, etc. Yes, apparently he thinks this is how Russian women her age in the 80s would have been thinking of dressing.
Another early reasons given by Kojima himself to explain that sexy costume is that he wanted to encourage cosplay of the character. He also admitted that the character might not be cosplayable – so female cosplayers are supposed to automatically gravitate towards the most over sexualized costumes even if they’re not possible.
That’s the best way of marketing to men…
Kojima also stated that the heavily sexualized design was there to promote figurine sales. I’m not sure if he’s aware there’s really no shortage of heavily sexualized figurines or that some people may find this one a little awkward to have around the house… just like he was surprised to learn that Metal Gear Solid has a large female fanbase.
It fits her fighting style!
Kojima stated that his core concept for this one was a “naked sniper” – as opposed to the previously just boob flaunting female snipers…. and the fully dressed male snipers (who also use photosynthesis)
When not sniping though, Quiet simply uses her super powers to dodge bullets, throw people like dolls and leap spectacularly into the air.
She’s indestructible, she doesn’t need any protection!
Right when the character was first released, Kojima himself confirmed he understood that it would be ridiculous for someone to be dressed like that in the desert and that he wanted the player to wonder why. The reason of course, as covered above: Quiet eating breathing and drinking through her skin somehow makes her immune to the hazards of exposure.
(Never mind that baking in the Sun would mean she’d need to be guzzling water constantly for all the carbohydrates she’s producing. That’s a minor detail)
She’s so badass that she needs no armor!
When Quiet is first introduced she is wearing BDUs, has no super powers and fails in her assassination mission. Upon gaining her super powers, she suddenly dresses in… that, and becomes incredibly effective against… everyone in every way.
Great story makes up for those ridiculous designs!
Kojima started with a bold, assertive stance. Later he would state that he understood why people have concerns but they just wait and experience the game it will explain everything. Complete with reassurances!
(ht: petrichor-rains for reminding me The End used photosynthesis too)
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Why do I have a feeling this sentence makes just as little sense in the context as it does taken out of it?
~Ozzie
A few people claim that Bikini Warriors is critical and makes fun of bikini armor, however based off the various screencaps like this that I’ve seen… it appears it’s more the standard issue “invent women who like bikini armor, ridicule and objectify those fictional women”.
So basically rather than just admitting that it’s softcore porn, they want to pretend it has an important message – that it and everything like it is terrible, but that’s the fault of fictional women who by definition lack agency.
