Self–Censorship – entertaining the idea of adding gratuitous female boobs and butts but ultimately deciding not to because you just got a better idea.
Submitting to Harassment – Starting to add gratuitous female boobs and butts but, upon reading arguments against it in discussion topics on forums and message boards, deciding that you see where they’re coming from and you hadn’t thought of that before, so you decide to tone the boobs down a notch with a minor edit that in some cases is only noticeable in side by side comparisons.
Artist’s Wishes – This tiddy must be preserved in all its glory despite the fact that the artist wished to remove the tiddy.
Okay, see now what I don’t get is people who say they love Babs’ redesign because “finally a practical female costume in comics!!”
Because it’s absolutely true that impractical costumes are a problem that plague superheroines, but this is what Babs’ New 52 costume looked like before they redesigned it:
I’m purposefully using a picture that has her next to Batman – her costume was just as “practical” as his. Full body suit, sturdy-looking flat-heeled boots, no unnecessary details beyond the Bat symbol and cape (both of which Batman has too) – what exactly was so “impractical” about this?
For that matter, this is what Babs’ original Batgirl costume looked like:
That’s from the 1970’s, and her costume looks as practical as can be. Actually, I’d argue that Dick’s the one with the impractical costume, here.
So why are we acting like this is such a big deal that Babs “finally” has a practical costume?! She’s had one since practically the very beginning (once they stopped drawing her original costume with high heels, anyway).
Superheroine costumes are certainly lacking practicality on the whole, but Babs was never really an issue there. So giving her a practical redesign doesn’t really do anything to change the status quo – it just “fixes” what wasn’t broken to start with. Why not give Starfire a redesign where I don’t have to wonder how her top stays on, instead?
Also they made a huge deal about her new costume not being spandex, but I thought the whole batfam wore kevlar.
It’s not, it was never identified by name, but it’s apparently some sort of next gen bulletproof material, even BETTER than kevlar.
why they would choose to replace that with a cheap $20 leather jacket is beyond me
I don’t think anyone argued Barbara’s current costume was specifically one in a desperate need of redesign (let’s face it, she’s always been the one DC superheroine with consistently full body-covering suit: no cleavage, no 5-inch heels, not even bared midriff).
Her new costume is a breath of fresh air compared to the DC/Marvel female design STANDARDS, not compared to what she wore before.
But as far as the kevlar (or rather “batkevlar”) argument goes, it doesn’t really hold ground when the artist’s attempts at conveying her suit to be armor are so half-assed and inconsistent that the chest piece looks either painted on or too small to wear, let alone breathe in (see: middle images here).
Also, what Batgirl’s new outfit is praised for is how it’s not sexualized and how it actually resembles the materials it’s supposed to be made of, not how objectively good in combat those customized boutique clothes will be compared to Wayne Industry’s patented armor.
Does it make sense that after losing her old costume she assembles a new, cheap one, instead of asking Bruce to give her another armor? Yeah, probably not. Especially since she’s a regular human, not a superpowered alien or an Amazon or a magic user that can wear even a skimpy costume without caring for consequences. But that’s the issue of pulling it off with writing, no different than pulling of the existence of miraculous better-than-kevlar material.
For what it’s supposed to be, the new costume is designed awesomely.
~Ozzie
Since by now it’s confirmed that we are all trapped in Keanu fever, including his John Wick title – it’s probably a good time talk about super-fabrics like batkevlar and how they tend to be presented differently on men and women. Above we have how it tends to be presented for women: an excuse to always have them in sexy spandex that is vacuum sealed for freshness.
In John Wick 2, the titular character stops to obtain an outfit made entirely out of a remarkably similar fabric – bulletproof beyond anything real technology can do but not enough to stop bruising damage from the impact. How does his outfit look when he’s fully protected?
And yes, there are male characters who are known for wearing spandex type outfits, but you know what all of them get without a fuss? Alternative costumes.
Batman has gone through more designs than one can count, the Snake family from Metal Gear get everything from standard BDUs to tuxedos, Sam Fisher’s gear was always tailored to be not too body clingy and got to do a whole game in civvies with a bullet vest.
My point is: If your fictional world is developing wonder technology to prevent battle damage – the first and foremost application of it should not be for women to wear body hugging outfits (that then get torn and don’t stop all the damage anyway) – but probably to augment existing combat outfits.
You should probably also consider the “rules” of it – and whether someone would prioritize showing off their body over not being covered in bruises all day every day – because bruises are not fun and you probably want your characters to display at least vaguely relate able judgement. Let them get hurt but, don’t make it an hourly thing they could easily avoid.
Sometimes when I’m watching a review for a Marvel movie and they start talking about how hot the female lead is, I briefly think “Seriously? Gross pigs”. But then I take a look at my desktop and see screen caps of almost all of Chris Evans’ ass shots from his Marvel movies, and I realize I have absolutely no right to judge. I am no better. That’s not to say nobody else has the right to judge, because they do. Just putting it into perspective so both sides can understand one another better.
Not really. Who even cares about objectifying Steve Rogers when he gets 3 of his very own movies and there isn’t even a SINGLE movie for ANY female character. Who cares about women on tumblr objectifying him prettyyyy much harmlessly when entertainment shows/sites seen by millions gush about Steve’s character development or Chris’ acting, while the only thing they say about the SOLE woman is her new hair/her weight loss or gain/how hot she looked. Sometimes, women are ONLY put in movies to be the token “eye candy”, (regardless of whether or not she’s underage) and this happens a lot. Look at the massive franchise that is Transformers.
It’s not the same thing… Men objectify women and it leads to real life violence against women—fuelled by already rampant misogyny. Women objectify men and it leads to gifsets of Chris Evans’ ass.
Yuppppp And no one respects sexy men less for being “objectified” if you can even apply the term the same way to a guy- if anything, being objectified is glorifying for men.
What’s that thing Joe Mangianello said about how he doesn’t feel like men can be objectified? Cuz women are viewed as sex objects, but men are viewed as power objects?
A guy who takes off his shirt and shows off his buff bod in a movie has power, he’s displaying his value and attractiveness
I mean, the culture isn’t NEARLY the same; I’ve been thinking lately about how no matter how much we “objectify” men, it’s always an empowering thing for the man.
He’s sexy: it’s an achievement.
And a lot of our attraction is also about fawning over the man’s personality, his expressions, the nuances of the character he plays- cute jokes about Doritoes….
I can go from posting ten close-ups of Chris Evan’s ass (accompanied by praise and self-deprecating jokes) To a picture of him in a sweater-vest, looking pensive and talking about his love of golden retrievers in the same ten minutes (with commentary about what a darling angel he is)
None of it is demeaning or objectifying in remotely the way female objectification is, and your point about Chris Evans starring in three Cap solo movies is really right on…. …while women can barely scrape past the damn Bechdel test half the time, and half the time are reduced to T&A and get assaulted or fridged or show up in their undies for no reason…
Some wise words about gendered double standards and false equivalence between objectifying male and female characters.
Keep in mind that this post is at least five years old and since then we had barely two mainstream superhero movies with female leads released, one of which was about Wonder Woman in an unmistakably sexualized costume.
Idea for artists designing female superhero costumes.
Start with a sports bra. Any sports bra.
If your design cannot incorporate that underneath or including it, you’re probably fucking it up.
@bikiniarmorbattledamage I’m sure someone else probably tagged you in this already but hey. This sounds like a really good piece of advice !
Amazingly, no-one before sent this our way. Thank you for doing this, because this is an AMAZING rule of thumb!
Love how simple and on-point it is! PREACH
~Ozzie
Bringing this back as a reminder that if more women were to design superhero costumes, we’d definitely get to see things actually referenced from athletic wear, including, but not limited to, sports bras.
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
This time reblogging from @big-wired, who was smart enough to convert it from garbage chat post format into a text one AND made a valuable addition to the list of things that (cis) white males can’t handle in games (and other media) because ‘historical accuracy’… in largely fantasy worlds.
Though we would be here all day if we were to list ALL the common and perfectly normal (often historically accurate) kinds of things and people that “ruin” the immersion of a Status Quo Warrior gamer dudebro.
When Samus was in armor, guys respected her (and even said they wanted her armor). But girls didn’t give a damn. They still don’t give a damn about her in armor, whenever I see fanart of it, the artist is almost always a guy. But now that Nintendo is pushing her as a big-breasted latex model with a nice butt, fangirls are drawing her, saying they idolize her and want to be her (and saying they want her SHOES). Care to weigh in on what’s up with that?
So… since I haven’t heard anything like this… I went and asked one of my gamer friends who happens to be a woman what she thought. Here’s how she started her response:
“Please provide sources, if you’re going to attempt to tar girls with the same brush that is clearly lubricated by entitled male gamer tears, then you must provide the burden of proof.”
From there the rage intensifies and it gets kinda nerdy, so I shall just share the highlights:
“You’re referencing art of ZERO SUIT Samus, which rose to popularity with Super Smash Bros, which has targeted a younger demographic. It’s become commonplace to see Samus OUT of her suit rather than in it, despite it being an iconic image of Metroid. Back in itty bitty pixels, we saw as a bonus at the end of a game that Samus was a girl, thats it.”
“If they’d spent any time actually IN the gaming community of tumblr … then they’d be aware that the community ISN’T vocal in favour of Samus’ new look”
“She’s 6 foot 3 too, mind you, and weighs 90kg. The recent sexualisation/slimming of Samus is a move on NINTENDO’S part, not the gamer fangirl base.”
So to make sure this wasn’t a one off, I asked another friend:
“Firstly, Dudebro McFedora, you have no basis to say that women don’t like Samus. The odds are that you’ve probably never talked to a girl that’s played the games.”
From there the rage intensifies – so I will just share some of the highlights:
“I will say that I particularly want her shoes. They’re spark shooting death heels to beat up people. It’s wonderful; who wouldn’t want that?
They are not appropriate for SSB though BECAUSE THEY’RE FUCKING PUMPS. You can’t run around in that shit!”
“Samus in her armor is fantastic because it creates this unique position where anyone can play her and entitled ‘macho boiz’ never think to say, “Oh shit I don’t want to play as the girl” or “Sweet, the girl character is fucking hot.””
“Samus Aran is my role model.”
Also, I seem to recall seeing amazing fan art by women:
And amazing cosplays:
This is not to say there aren’t female gamers who only discovered Samus when they announced her high heels of doom, female gamers who really want to cosplay Samus in heels because they’ll look cute and sexy or female gamers who like the Zero Suit better than the armors for other reasons.
I say this theoretically because I did look to try to find some of them, and between quick searches for them and searches to find choice examples of art and cosplays… I didn’t find a single woman who suggested that she only became interested in Samus due to the Jet Boot heels.
So if you have come across women who only got into Samus due to the high heels, it’s still quite ridiculous to decide those particular women are somehow representative of women or female gamers as a whole. Particularly since the character first appeared in 1986 – so has had quite a while to grow a diverse fan base.
Trying to dismiss and/or erase huge numbers of female fans just so that you can try to pretend gender stereotypes are facts is pretty much the reason why the rage intensified.
Bringing this old ask post back, because I couldn’t help but be reminded of it while browsing through other people’s reblogs of the Kitana/Jade redesign post.
Once again, all the props to @wincenworks’ friends for how eloquently they described the nonsense of the asker’s (and, by proxy, all the other Dudebros McFedora’s) “logic”.
TL;DR: People who obviously never spoke with any woman sure do feel the most eager to mansplain what women really want from female video game characters. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
~Ozzie
notice: This is a reposting of this throwback, due to Tumblr queue being a total goober and initially publishing the Throwback Thursday post on Wednesday.
New rule for female armor: if you design female armor and you wouldnt be willing to cosplay it, you’re making a mistake.
I’d like to propose an expansion of rule:
If you’re a guy and you’d wear it because “it’d be funny” but you wouldn’t respect a female cosplayer who wore it: You are a mistake.
– wincenworks
Another caveat to the rule, inspired by an article we linked in the past: if a costume is (near*) impossible to replicate or too uncomfortable to wear for cosplayers – it fails as a costume.
~Ozzie
Honestly, if a cosplayer would need to use double-sided tape in order to maintain their decency while wearing your costume, maybe just… don’t.
-Icy
*”Near impossible” only because cosplayers are amazing and can somehow make even the most absurd shit work on human bodies somehow. But at what cost?
