“Women should be respected and accepted as they are, don’t shame them regardless of what they look like and what they wear. Do whatever you want, ladies!”
*virtual ladies in bikinis*
“Um, this is infringing on my rights. How dare you? Keep this misogynistic filth away from me.”
Do you not understand the difference between a fictional character, created by men, to be seen as sexually pleasing for men in fiction and…like…REAL WOMEN who are ALIVE and are able to make CHOICES for themselves?
Like, women have some key differences with fictional depictions of women.
Thanks to @giantpurplecat we now have new and exciting insight into just how some creators assume women do choose their outfits [big image here].
“This? I designed it myself. It allows me to communicate quickly with my blade and control it whether sword or whip… I’ve never really thought deeply on why though, to be quite honest.” – Ivy in the latest Soul Calibur
Even the new game’s character creator classifies her outfit as underwear – her underwear lets her control her weapon better… so she doesn’t wear anything on top… even though it’s underwear.
Ultimately the most insulting part about the people who rush to support this kind of double standard is that they have so little respect for women that they will accept nonsense like this (or worse) as great writing.
I literally just read somebody suggesting that the “iron man” in all new all differen avengers van’t be pepper potts because the armor has no boobs….what ._.
But Rose, how can fans possibly believe it’s a G I R L in there if the suit doesn’t have BIG IRON TITTIES?! [/sarcasm]
Regardless of who this particular Iron Man is supposed to be, Pepper Potts rocks the boobless Iron Man suit just fine. Ask Stjepan Sejic (seems this artwork was deleted from dA. Here’s it’s archive.com copy).
~Ozzie
People really need to stop playing their faith in boobcups. They’re not necessary if you have boobs, and by now everyone should know that the boobplate does not guarantee boobs underneath:
Throwing this back as a friendly reminder that boobs on armor are neither in any way necessary for a female wearer, nor are they a warrant of feminine body inside said armor.
Around May 2017 they started using their current iconic line up, the front and center lead of which has such a ridiculous costume it appears their advertising team feels the need to hide it:
Ironically, despite this apparently being less of Creepy Marketing Guy and more part of the studio culture, a lot of the content could be pretty good and they could probably get a lot more female players if they didn’t strive to save the booplate.
Alas, it seems to commitment knows no bounds:
Can’t imagine why they have so few female players…
(Also for anyone rushing to accuse us of being selective of images… the comparison images are the ones Larian picked for themselves, unsurprisingly)
This is the world we live in.
– wincenworks
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It’s funny how when you have a female character who has magical or supernatural protection, and thus can “wear whatever she wants”, that “whatever” always turns out to be lingerie.
Glock H. Palin, Esq.
Yeah, funny that… It’s almost as if Thermian Argument and false assessment of agency had an ugly baby. And that baby kept turning up everywhere.
Personally I am still waiting for the invincible badass woman who battles evil in her sweatpants, t-shirt and a bath robe… fuzzy slippers optional.
Because if the Saints Row games have taught us anything, it’s that true heroism is engaging in spectacular acts of destruction while wearing whatever the fuck you want, no matter how ridiculous.
– wincenworks
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Maybe it’s because you’re taking the same strategy you would in designing characters for comics or video games and applying it to real people, except fictional characters are a representation of how you choose to see people or wish them to be portrayed, whereas real people get to do their own choosing, because nothing is more sexist than denying someone the right to choose, regardless of what that choice may be.
Worth bringing back – this quote from a pretty great analysis of complex problems with perpetuating sexism. The quoted part and image are the ones most relevant to BABD’s subject matter, but the article is still worth reading whole.
As we saidagainandagain, in our agency and cosplay tags, real people possess the free will to dress however they like, while fictional characters look a certain way because someone decided so. Judging real women harshly for making a choice of dressing skimpy, especially paired with celebration gratuitously half-nude nonexistent women is the sort of cognitive dissonance we refuse to stand behind.
As a blog focused on criticism, there’s something we come across regularly in responses to our writing – insistence that we’re “never happy” no matter how much better a particular example is than most media we feature on BABD.
Readers (though mostly detractors) question why we can’t qualify something (mostly games) as 100% positive example if it does one thing better than the rest in its medium/genre/etc.
Examples:
Samus Aran is a formidable fighter and legendary female game protagonist, so it’s totally not a big deal that with every iteration of the character she gets designed as daintier, more conventionally feminine and runs around in skin-tight undersuit and impossible heels rather than her classic power armor.
Overwatch has cast with diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, therefore we should ignore how, despite that, most of its female characters are a very slight variation on the same “pretty” character mold and have costumes and poses that put gratuitous emphasis on their boobs and butts.
NieR Automata’s creator admits the main character is another skinny chick in high heels and with boob window, because of his personal preference instead of some convoluted lore-specific excuse… and that honesty means her design is beyond criticism?
It’s quite disheartening to have the audience insist that we should settle for media to be tiny bit better than mediocre and call it a day. That a game or its creator not being as bad as they could deserve to be awarded and held up as an example for the rest of the industry.
We refuse to set our standards so low that “her battle costume isn’t a literal bikini” or “has characters who are female in it” or “shows a male butt/chest sometimes” qualify a title as good, equal gender representation with no room for improvement.
Being better than a random asset-flipping game with stolen artwork in their web ads isn’t hard. Being better than your last project and learning from its mistakes should be a given. Simply not makingasinine excuses for poor representation shouldn’t be applauded. No-one is asking for perfection, but all creators should be held accountable for the product they’re selling, with its good and bad sides.
BABD in particular, instead of doing comprehensive reviews, is focused on female costume and character design compared to male ones. Yet even such specific topic can’t be talked about from both angles without someone decrying unfairness. Does it really say more about us being negative and cynical or the fans being entitled and blind to any challenging point of view?
~Ozzie
*The link leads to a satirical @pointandclickbait article, but the satire is not really all that exaggerated. Yes, really.
We must be doing pretty well lately, given that the majority of totally legit criticism we receive seems to be around the idea that there is really nothing wrong with anything… so naturally we must be deluded or clueless to think there’s some sort of issue with depictions of female characters.
(My personal favorite for this has been people rushing in to tell us since we don’t, allegedly, know enough about a male character in a scene – we clearly can’t tell if a female character’s outfit is ridiculous)
All of this, of course, coming back to the same statement when properly translated: “I am comfortable with the level and quality of representation other people are being given, so fuck them if they’re not.”
When really, the overall goal shouldn’t be to make everyone begrudgingly accepting of the state of global media. The goal should be to make everyone excited about the state of global media.
Because right now every major professionally produced piece of media has so much potential to explore long neglected opportunities and break away from painfully boring cliches. That they’re not doing that isn’t some sort of mild disappointment, it’s just ridiculous.
After much deliberation (and coming to a conclusion that a 5-day judging deadline that intersects with our holiday season wasn’t a wise idea), BABD is proud to present winners of the Break the Bingo design contest!.
But first, let’s give shout-out to those of fans who started working on their designs, but didn’t end up officially submitting them, particularly the artists who tagged us in their WIP posts. Those drawings, even when unfinished, were pretty great!
We’re amazed by the ultimate turn-out. A lot of contestants put extra effort into their entries, by doing things things like:
putting them into a form of a comic/concept art pitch/fake advertisement
It’s a bit scary just how close to the industry standards lots of you guys came! Some of the designs look like lifted straight-up from a video game or comic book studio!
Each and every submission is appreciated and we’re sorry we could reward only a select few of them, ones that we found to be the most creative in their use of the Female Armor Bingo tropes. And those are…
The plexi-boobplate is very clever! Nice way to score “Covers only nipples and genitals” while technically giving her a chest piece 😀 Also best luck to Tom in his never-ending quest of finding the sexy male armor suitable for his empowered body. ~Ozzie
Legitimate depiction of how heavy armor works in video games. – wincenworks
Her main “covering” is mostly mesh/chain mail thing. It’s sorta lingerie stocking AND boob sock armor. What I think is most innovative about this design is the boob holes in her boobplate. The girls can swing free and unencumbered while in action. Great for badass empowered female warriors.
Accurate representation of shoulder plates and fantasy high heels! – wincenworks
Chainmail boobsocks encased in what seems like a boobplate frame… possibly the most painful-looking chest piece in the contest. That + super impossible heels + pointy bits that will stab her whenever she moves = another winner! ~Ozzie
Extra points for showing accurate understanding of how bikini armor artists think how physics work. – wincenworks
Personally I think the original version of this chest piece fitted the definition of “boobplate” a bit better, but both versions are very well designed and look as uncomfortable as expected from a bingo winner! ~Ozzie
Bonus prize:
Thanks to lokificent’s generous prize donation, we were able to choose the fourth winner! And that artist is…
Designing ‘armour’ that would score all 25 squares and the bonus points was equal parts interesting challenge and vicarious thrill. I had to constantly resist the urge to make things less ridiculous. The pinnacle (or nadir, depending on how you look at it) of this exercise was the Echo variant ‘breastplate’; it’s practically a bingo in its own right
Particularly accurate with sci-fi’s tendency to put bits of metal and lights in random places. – wincenworks
I’m getting an impression that more thought was put in designing those modular nipple pieces alone than in many complete outfits we bingo’d before. ~Ozzie
The prizes:
As established above, there are four rewards to choose from:
To collect their prizes, the winners should contact us at bikiniarmorbattledamage via askbox/fanmail or at BikiniArmorBeDamned via private message and the first three of them should specify what is their preferred reward. First prize winner gets whatever they choose, then the second and then the third one pick from the remaining poll. Bonus winner gets whatever is left for them.
All the other contest entries + further commentary under the cut:
Bonus throwback this week in reference to a question we get periodically regarding the Female Armor Bingo. Credit to the latest asker of it, @deeppurpleskeleton:
The answer, in short, is: We have, to date, not come across any example that fills all squares of the Female Armor Bingo in the wild. We did, however, run a contest to break the bingo card and were very impressed with the creativity of the entrants.
Please do click on the Keep reading link and view all the entries. We’re very proud that our blog inspired artists of many skill levels to come up with so many distinct, yet equally absurd costume designs. All of them deserve recognition.
