The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: throwback
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Y’know, even if there wasn’t a single woman in all of history who had fought in war or a single example of real, historical female armor, there would be no problem in pointing out fantasy armor is unrealistic because the complaint is not based on what women DID wear but what women WOULD wear.
I think it perfectly sums up the basic flaw in the “women warriors aren’t historically accurate, so realism doesn’t matter when portraying them in media” kind of rhetoric.
Much like… most of the angry ranting we receive, the plea “not proven historically accurate” tends to ignore the key reason why “sex sells” doesn’t work.
In fiction, armor is a costume, and a costume is a statement about the wearer. It is the creator’s opportunity to tell the audience about the world, the society the wearer is from and the wearer of themselves.
If a creator’s most compelling message they can think of is “she’s got sexy bits” then not only is every female character going to be yet another addition to an already over saturated nonsensical trope.
However, if you decide to actually communicate some things like… what the armor is made from, what it’s supposed to protect against, what’s happened to it since it was made, or how the wearer would decorate it: you open up the doors to infinite possibilities.
Some of which may be heavily influenced and inspired by history.
I was quite surprised to find people rushing to comment that a certain terrible screenshot was actually demonstrating destroyable armor (I guess if you already knew about it, and hence knew that her armor had been destroyed… so it doesn’t really help with marketing).
Now we have mentioned destroyable armor before… but maybe it’s best we do a little more talking on it since apparently it’s a thing that’s been sold as making sense. Surprisingly, the first appearance of this trope in video games (that I’m aware of) was inflicted up a male character.
A manly man named Arthur who was on a quest to save his love, Prince Prin Prin (actual name!), from a foe no less than Satan himself (who lives in Hades… just go with it! I promise nothing in the game will make any more sense than this summary. Nothing at all.)
While “soft” armors like kevlar weave and leather will become less protective over time they don’t fly apart for a very simple reason. Anything that hits your hard enough to dislodge armor from your person has hit you hard enough to kill you. Even the force to dislodge regular clothes by impact (rather than deliberate tearing off) will easily kill you in a most spectacular fashion!
Armor isn’t a car, it doesn’t have crumple zones. Your armor being blasted off you and you coming out relatively unscathed means that you are literally tougher and more resistant to damage of all sorts than your armor is.
Missing enamel/coloring, destroyed ornamentation, blood marks, changes in the silhouette on parts etc all convey that the armor is damaged and becoming less and less useful without also conveying that the actual point of the game is to try to see your character naked without them dying.
– wincenworks
A thing we didn’t reference in yesterday’s redesign post is that Kanpani Girls indulges in a very particular version of destroyable armor trope – creepy “defeated” sprites of humiliated waifus with their clothes and “armor” shred to pieces. I’ll put Flavie and Marica’s “defeated” looks under the cut for comparison with the previous post, because it’s genuinely disturbing.
So this week’s throwback is a reminder that there’s no reason to incorporate armor which suspiciously falls apart during (or after) a fight in fiction, especially on female characters. And people who do it have an obvious agenda to show off flesh, not battle damage, which could be easily conveyed in non-pervy ways.
Recently, a friend sent me this image. It had been passed on by her boyfriend; it had reminded him of me. One might expect that connection to fill me with satisfaction, that I, a game designer and writer, am instantly associated with forward thinking and feminist ideals. Instead, I felt humiliated.
This is a great article that does a good job of explaining exactly why arguments excusing ”sexy armor” are invalid and altogether ridiculous.
This awesome article not only thoroughly explains why there’s no way to logically justify sexualization of female characters in video games, but also highlights the struggles that women in the industry go through:
The thing is, in this industry, you don’t want to be “that girl.” The world has communicated very thoroughly, with Anita Sarkeesian’s death threats, with so many comments on Kotaku, and with comments in the hallways of the workplace and the podiums of conventions, that being “that girl” is bad. Real bad. Potentially end of career bad.
But it’s not just dangerous for potential ramifications on career trajectory. There’s also a social component of how “that girl” is insufferable, annoying, and should be punishable by shaming.
Many female game designers, anonymously and publicly alike, confess how they have to deal with sexist standards of the industry, just so they can keep their jobs. It’s a legit problem that men, especially the ones chanting “sex sells!” or “it’s intended for male gamers!”, are either blissfully unaware of or willfully ignorant (my bets are on the latter option, though).
Please guys, read the whole thing.
~Ozzie
People are often quick to dismiss arguments against the conventional wisdom that “sex sells” as “politically correct” idealism. But one of the most compelling argument against the slogan comes from the other side of the political spectrum.
David Ogilvy was one of, if not The great iconic Ad Men of the 1960’s. Unsurprisingly he was deeply invested in the idea of gender roles and claimed “I am less offended by obscenity than by tasteless typography, banal photographs, clumsy copy, and cheap jingles”. He also (literally) wrote the book on how to create effective advertising and measure the effectiveness of your advertising.
He was, amazingly, admantly against introducing sex to sell any product that wasn’t inherently sexual in itself for one simple reason:
All his research and experience in advertising told him it would not work.
What did Ogilvy very sincerely believed was the first step in creating effective advertising an massive sales? To create a high quality product.
That way all that was required was to sincerely show the customers why it was a great product and the rest would take care of itself.
So when developers distort their products (comics, books, movies, video games, etc) by cramming sexualised imagery into them with the mentality of “sex sells” so “more sex will sell even more” they are actually sabotaging their product’s reception, reputation, sales and it’s marketing campaigns.
At least according to an old white man from the 1960s who always assumed women should be house wives… and also happened to be one of the greatest thinkers in advertising.
Bringing it back particularly because it mentions how it is a professional suicide
for women in the industry to call out sexism in game design and narrative. And, in light Jessica Price’s of ArenaNet firing, we learned how even talking back to a male gamer community member can lead to the same.
Sadly, we still operate firmly in the reality where “sex” (or rather: erosion of female self-esteem) is considered a marketing booster and women speaking out for themselves in any way get shoved aside, so we don’t have to have the uncomfortable conversation that maybe they have a point.
~Ozzie
Couldn’t help but make this joke out of the accompanying image from the Jessica Price article linked above.
Don’t know if the writer did it on purpose or not, but thanks!
That post about “attractive armor without bikini” actually left me wondering: why would you actually want an attractive armor? Sure, everyone loves an aesthethically pleasing armor, but we can’t just forget that armor is mostly made to be, well, intimidating. It’s supposed to make people both safer in combat and also more powerful. Not having to battle – because you look so threatening or even downright unbeatable – is some 40% of the purpose of an armor piece. Why does it need to be attractive?
But let’s set some things straight first: armor is done primarily to be protective. It sure helps if the design makes the wearer intimidating enough to make the opponents surrender right away, but at its core it was invented as a physical barrier between a person and whatever or whoever threatens their life or health.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for decorative armor in the history. Highly ornamented muscle cuirass (male equivalent of boobplate) was designed to impress and worn by high-standing officers during non-battle special occasions, like parades.
That said, in the world of fiction the distinction between purely functional and decorative armor is not necessary. It’s not real, and unless the setting of choice is gritty life-like naturalism, the armor (and any other design) needs just to be believable, not realistic. We commented on it before.
This is where those two bingo squares come in. Fictional worlds, especially the more fantastic ones, can be stylized, sometimes even to ridiculous degree, as long as all of the world is consistent with its level of stylization. That’s why it’s not inherently bad to have people fight monsters in G-strings… It just needs to all make sense within its own narrative and preferably not be gendered (which basically never happens).
Hope that answers it.
~Ozzie
Sometimes we make comments about how attractive a person looks in armor, because a lot of the time, their design is going for that. Unfortunately, the shorthand for that tends to be More Skin, High Heels, the usual offenders. But even if a character is designed to be attractive, that can be done without resorting to tired sexist tropes. And so we bring attention to it sometimes, when it’s done well.
Historically speaking, a lot of European plate armor was quite ugly from a design perspective, actually.
Look at that silhouette, the tiny shapes everywhere, that scarecrow head-adjacent helmet, those duck feet. Beautiful.
Compare that to any armor in Game of Thrones, which is functional, but is just so much nicer to look at.
As critics of art and design, we care more about seeing women’s designs being consistent (and good) in their universe, rather than having 100% Organic Free Range Realism. (Don’t worry though, we will continue to feature actual ladies in actual armor for positive examples.)
It really says something about fantasy art that the thing people seem to remark most on in my work is the fact the female armor I draw is ‘functional’ with out and sexy bits out there showing. Something I just think of as “well you wouldn’t want to get stabbed in the navel… so lets put some studs and leather there” is so foreign to some that it sticks out. But, it really shouldn’t stick out. People shouldn’t even notice that. And that kind of pisses me off about the other artists out there. Look I am not saying every character has to be all covered up and armored, if it is a female/male rogue who uses her god given talents to subvert, distract, and get what s/he wants by all means show some skin.. .but if it is a paladin, warrior, anything that needs to be heavily armored then put some damn good armor on them! And despite what some art directors think, a girl can look pretty damn hot in some nice, functional, armor with out her tits flopping about. And if you are an artist and the only way you can make a female attractive is by showing her ass or cleavage, you are a BAD ARTIST, go practice.
Bolded for emphasis.
It’s really a painful realization that bikini armors are so ingrained in the collective consciousness that actually protective female armor stands out as novelty.
Which also proves just how bullshitty the “skimpy costume design is creative” excuse is. If it was so, people would be more surprised by it than by costumes that do provide cover. Yet here we are and no-one’s shocked by the sight of bikini armor anymore.
This kind of double standard really points out our culture’s idea that (White) Man is the norm, and is thus allowed to be other things than just Man. Meanwhile, Woman is like its own all-encompassing descriptor. Once you’re a Woman, you can’t be anything else, so everything about the Woman has to point out how Womanly she is.
And we can’t give her armor that doesn’t accentuate the fact that she’s a Woman, because then she’ll be like the Man! We can’t have that! And then we end up with Bingo material.
Whoah. The absurd of Tera, the universal example of logic-defying female battle outfits, advertising itself to have “practical armor”… that is skin-tight and boobsock-y on women leaves me astonished.
This armor is so totally practical that even Erik Larsen, the devoted anti-practicality in women’s costumes guy, probably wouldn’t mind it.
Dear Tera’s Creepy Maketing Guy: Just because boobplate and figure-hugging metal cover more than what you usually call “armor”, it doesn’t mean you should label it as “practical”.
~Ozzie
I feel it’s time to bring this back, not just because laughing at Tera’s idea of quality armor never gets old, there’s a funny thing I noticed. I feel like I’ve seen this… somewhere recently…
Yes to everyone assuring us that Blizzard is really trying… we have confirmation they are trying about as hard as Tera was last year.
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.
This week’s throwback: a timely reminder that yes, we still live in a world where fiction doesn’t merge with the reality, so no, fictional characters do not possess free will that lets them personally decide what to wear and how to behave.
Each and every “choice” a character makes is 100% responsibility of their real, living creator(s). Thus criticizing how fictional people are designed or written isn’t the same as personally attacking them. To cite @foldablehuman‘s Thermian Argument video:
Criticism of a creative work is, ultimately, criticism of the decisions that people made when they were putting it together.
Essentially, there’s no point in getting offended on behalf of a person who doesn’t exist, especially in response to valid critique.
