The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: throwback
Posted on
things that don’t break white male gamer’s immersion: dragons, magic, made up metals, impossibly large weapons, eating 50 potatoes while in combat, riding a horse up a 90 degree cliff
things that break white male gamer’s immersion: realistic armor for women, black people
~~~
The recent dudebro meltdown over new Star Wars game having female protagonist called for this Throwback. It’s additionally important since apparently someone even took issue with the character’s perceived ethnicity.
~Ozzie
When there’s a cultural “normal” in media, seeing anything that diverges from it becomes too obvious (for better or worse). That’s why questioning that “normal” is so important.
-Icy
You have men yelling: “yay! Boobs in games! Bigger boobs! More boob! Naked boob!”for decades. When female gamers finally got enough of a voice to say: “hey, I kind of wish there were women in video games who weren’t 80% boob by body weight”: those same men utterly flipped their shit.
This whole “why complain? You can’t tell designers what to do!” only seems to come up any time anyone but straight, white men dares make their opinion heard.
Sadly accurate.
Note how whenever cishet white audience members demand changes, those demands are met, or at the very least acknowledged. Whenever anyone else does that, it’s gonna be called “whining” or “entilement”.
Emphasis mine.
~Ozzie
Video game has a single gay male character who flirts you? Riot against the developers. Protagonist options do not include a white male? Riot against the developers. Age of Conan reduces bust sizes on female characters? Riot against the developers. Didn’t get the ending you wanted? Riot against the developers.
Women who have been gaming for years point out obvious problems?
– wincenworks
It still baffles me that wanting women in games to be designed appropriately for their job/setting is a controversial opinion to have, apparently.
Okay, yes, baby steps, Blizzard has got a long history of being terrible and a lot unlearning to do. But they could at least try to show some self-awareness of this.
And it’s not only body diversity which seems to be a challenge for female Overwatch characters, so is their AGE!
D.Va is actually the youngest in the whole ensemble (19). Female characters don’t get older than 34 (Mercy), while male ones range from 20 (if you count Zenyatta, a robot) or 25 (Junkrat) all the way up to 61 (Reinhardt).
The overall design of D.Va is perplexing on so many levels, too. What new is she supposed to contribute? Yet another young, thin, conventionally pretty woman in a catsuit… something the game (and the industry as a whole) so totally lacked before! Even her silly pseudonym rubs in that she’s a diva. The idea of a Korean professional gamer-turned-mecha pilot is very cool (even if the backstory rips off Evangelion/Pacific Rim), but why make her look so generic… and paint her mech pink?
My most optimistic guess: one of many Blizzard’s CreepyMarketingGuys saw Zarya and said “So, we’re doing female tanks now? Okay, but next one is gonna be the SEXY tank! And make her more PINK!”
Remember when Blizzard was doing female characters better in Overwatch?
Yeah, me neither.
We will be doing a full post about the new Widowmaker skin, but until then, we just wanted to throwback to this post about all the effort Blizzard is putting into their diversity. It still doesn’t make sense for Widow to wear those clothes because,
a) she is a sniper and that top just screams nip slip; and
b) she’s a sniper, who’s she going to be ‘distracting’ exactly from 2 miles away?
It also just looks really ugly? It really looks like someone designed a practical suit for her, and then Creepy Marketing Guy walked in and told them to cut a third of it off, so they just did, without any design adjustment.
-Icy
edit: Since a lot of replies ignore that the original post is almost 1,5 years old and mentioning newer characters is beside the point Icy is making about Widowmaker, let’s quickly address this: We do acknowledge how Ana Amari is a cool non-sexualized old lady (even if squarely within OW’s established beauty standards) and Orisa is a cool female robot. That said, there are still problems with how old characters continue to be depicted and adding new heroes doesn’t change that.
~Ozzie
PS: Mercy is 37, not 34 – my bad. She looks neither age, regardless.
how to “pander to sjws / feminists”: in depth characters and storytelling, non objectified female characters, characters of all manners of races, identities and backgrounds
how to pander to gamer boys: make titty wobble
Wow no wonder they don’t want to make games more accessible to women, they’d have to reveal their lack of actual talent.
Then they end up promoting the wrong people and we end up with this guy.
– wincenworks
Bringing this post back, since now the gamer boys directly accuse “pandering to SJWs/feminists” as the primary reason for anything they don’t enjoy about any game, like the glitches in Mass Effect Andromeda.
~Ozzie
Particularly worth mentioning that these same voices are generally for more accepting and forgiving when it comes time to apply a critical lens to games like Scarlet Blade, Haydee or asset flips… and who conveniently claim creators should be allowed to do whatever they want when a short skirt is involved.
– wincenworks
Posted on
‘Sex’ doesn’t sell. Erosion of female self esteem does. The feeling of superiority over women does. Turning women into ‘things’ to be studied, scrutinized & judged and then calling it ‘sex’ does.
This week’s throwback: a concise explanation of what people really mean when they confidently announce that ”sex sells”, which somehow is supposed to invalidate critique of hypersexualized media.
edit: The original poster of this quote seems to have devoted their blog to TERF (trans-exclusionary radical “feminism”) ideology, which we at BABD do not support at all. Trans women are women and feminism concerns all genders.
Nonetheless, Sadiqa Thornton’s words remain very much true to what we believe in, no matter who put them on Tumblr (if not the Internet) first.
She will fit into your favorite moba game very good character garanteed
Edit: Holy shit it’s a joke please stop tagging this as reference/helpful/wow so good please stop using this as reference please stop thinking this is your goal please stop holy crap holy cRAP
You need to seriously re-evaluate yourself if you believe the incredibly narrow and offensive things in these gifs oMgGG
Everything about it is so painfully accurate, but the “Pick ≤ 3” part is my favorite one for the purposes of this blog.
~Ozzie
I love how pasties are the only essential chestware and how the actual high heels are not “necessary” just so long as her shoes maintain the same shape as if there were heels there.
– wincenworks
edit: Added the author’s later commentary, just to make it clear that no-one’s supposed to take this “tutorial” seriously. ~Ozzie
Because the subject of “just let the artist do whatever they like/want!” comes up regularly and far too many people are confused about what is wrong about nearly every female character looking next-to-identical, even within one game with a big cast*, this week’s throwback is the guide to the “creative” process behind designing women in media AND their costumes (bikini armor or otherwise) by the invaluable @shattered-earth.
And just for the record, this gifset is still a joke. Please do not take it as legitimate art advice!
As in, rhetoric about games that is garbage, not rhetoric about garbage games. (But possibly also that.)
Obviously inspired (and based off of with permission from the lovely Ozzie) by @bikiniarmorbattledamage, here is a bingo of terrible arguments against social justice style critiques of video games. I am clearly not an artist; if you want to pretty this up, go ahead, that would be super cool.
You can use this to your heart’s content for dealing with inane arguments.
Below the cut, a breakdown of the squares and why they’re wrong.
Inspired by Bikini Armor Battle Damage’s Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo, we present to you a special extra related bingo card this week, @feministgamingmatters ’s Garbage Games Rhetoric Bingo.
Fun for the whole family to play pretty much any time any major franchise receives even the slightest call out, critique or makes an independent effort to try to appeal to more people.
– wincenworks
(Edit: My apologies for originally tagging the wrong blog, this is why you shouldn’t prep blog posts at 1am!)
As yesterday marked Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo’s third anniversary, let’s celebrate by bringing back its cousin, Garbage Games Rhetoric Bingo!
Though it’s not the
happy
kind of celebration, considering the rhetoric collected in both cards is still alive and well among the anti-media criticism crowd. The bingos continue to be very much needed as tools against it.
Amazing video. Should be required viewing for high school students. I may make it required viewing for my future college students.
“The Fighting Fucktoy” is my new favourite phrase.
See: Why male gaze is awful and needs to be addressed
This documentary was awesome and powerful definitely recommend that you guys watch it!
A subject we referenced a couple of times before, which constantly needs to be reiterated: there’s a crucial difference between female characters being primarily badass while incidentally sexy and characters being primarily sexy while incidentally badass.
It’s super disingenuous to obviously design a heroine’s look, personality and actions around (straight) male gaze appeal and repackage it as female empowerment just because she’s technically a powerful hero (or sometimes, a villain).
~Ozzie
This week’s throwback: Fighting F*cktoy or “How to make absolutely no progress in the way female characters are depicted and repackage it as empowerment”.
While we touched upon the subject of male empowerment before, we never discussed it in detail. Also, our tone in sexy male armor posts shifts a lot between sarcasm and talking straight, so can I understand the confusion.
Let’s start with why BABD even posts examples of “empowered men”.
To us, the intent of showing men in skimpy/sexualized armor is satire through contrast. The “Women NEED to be sexy (read: show a lot of skin and do sultry poses)” mentality is so deeply ingrained in our culture that many just assume it to be the natural order of things, that “sexyness” is inherent part of the female gender. But not of the male one.
And while there’s slow shift towards giving women more varied representation, men (who have
otherwise
very diverse presence) rarely get to be the overtly sexy characters. And those who are usually get to be the villains, which feeds into “evil is sexy” trope as well as to villain gay coding, both ugly concepts that should die.
We have yet to see genuine, non-incidental sexy male empowerment in mainstream media that doesn’t come off as some sort of mockery.
~Ozzie
Also worth remembering that a lot of our commentary on sexy male armor is tongue-in-cheek parody of the kind of rhetoric we regularly receive in our ask box, in reblogs and in broad-spectrum posts that conflate us with other critics.
Because let be clear, if we tried to keep the “sexy male armor” tag stocked with images I came across naturally through my typical cishet male surfing, it wouldn’t happen every Friday or even every month.
But it seems we will never stop hearing that eighteen years ago a game with a villain in briefs was released, fourteen years ago a unpopular video game protagonist did a nudey run and sometimes they get funny feelings during the glimpses of male butt in spandex – so clearly the market is constantly over-saturated and it’s only fair every game have c-string clad warrior women in it.
– wincenworks
Following @queerrussetpotato‘s article about false equivalence, let’s bring back this old post discussing “male empowerment”, how sexualized male characters tend to be perceived by the assumed video game/comics/etc. audience (read: cishet white dudes) and why do we regularly feature sexy male armor on BABD.
~Ozzie
See also: this post which talks briefly about framing of male sexualization.
