Dick Grayson aka Nightwing
[Batsons Strip collection]
@bikiniarmorbattledamage Fully clothed but still sexualized: men’s edition.
Many people insist that Nightiwng is the one DC superhero who gets as close to pandering to female gaze as possible, cause some artists remember how good his butt looks in that bodypaint skin-tight costume…
I’d still say it’s the fan artists who really know best how to take advantage of Dick’s amazing physique by the way of pinup posing and sultry expressions – you know, those things female superheroes somehow keep doing even in the middle of action.
~Ozzie
These are only a few of the armor designs for the MMORPG BLESS Online. As you can see, quality varies wildly between designs. It’s worth noting that these are all from the “Heavy Armor” category, so designers obviously thought they gave similar protection to the wearer. There are much worse ones that can all be seen here. I’m sad to see these cool, creative, protective designs side by side with boring objectifying bikini armor. At least they all have decent helmets.
The part I find most striking is that the bikini armor outfits look so uninspired from the front due to the use of “windows” to show off flesh.
Especially when juxtaposed with the more practical designs it really does look like they did a bunch of regular designs then had Creepy Marketing Guy come along and red line it where he wanted to put bits on display.
Sadly, it seems that this was not limited to the fronts of the outfits:
– wincenworks
Let’s talk about Quiet, and attempt to answer the question:
Can you slut-shame a fictional character?
And in case anyone reading our blog still doubts whether or not Quiet (or any other woman in fiction) can be slut-shamed for her choice of attire or behavior, here’s Sursum Ursa’s concise video explanation.
Spoilers: the answer is no.
~Ozzie
As a side note, since we’re on the topic of Quiet and sexualzing characters, I feel this is an appropriate point to touch on something related:
If your argument is the men are sexualized too, but you have to comb through all the individual games to try to get together enough material to try (unsucessfully I might add) to match how much Quiet is sexualized in ONE game – you’re not going to be very convincing.
There is a massive difference between depicting a character who is many different things throughout their arc (tough, vulnerable, protected, naked, etc) and happens to be sexy at some points and creating a character who is primarily and overwhelmingly sexy all throughout their arc and happens to get to be some other things during it.
One is creating a character who’s like a person so the audience can relate to them, the other is creating a sex object and calling them a character.
It’s kind of important.
– wincenworks
A whole year passed since we reblogged this video, yet people still completely unironically keep telling us that:
- a fictional character totally can personally choose what she wears just like a real person would (so criticizing her is supposedly no different from slut shaming)
- Kojima decided to design Quiet like that for some other, smarter purpose than just popping boners and fueling cheap controversy.
So yeah, bringing back this comprehensive debunk video is definitely in order.
~Ozzie
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Watch: This dad’s TED talk about female super heroes is so important
follow @this-is-life-actually
Christopher Bell: Bring on the female super heroes!
We want to give special props to Christopher for calling out both how high saturation media giants like Disney tend to promise representation but stop short of even a token presence and how society’s fixation with gendering media and traits hurts children of all genders.
As a preemptive response to those who claim he’s misrepresenting media in general or it’s just Disney, let’s use a recent video game that claims it’s doing better representation for women.
Here is all the Zarya merchandise Blizzard has in their online store that isn’t a generic Overwatch/group item or labelled as “Men’s”
I’d like to show you their Mei merchandise, but they don’t have any. At all.
Yeah.
– wincenworks
Watch: This dad’s TED talk about female super heroes is so important
follow @this-is-life-actually
Christopher Bell: Bring on the female super heroes!
We want to give special props to Christopher for calling out both how high saturation media giants like Disney tend to promise representation but stop short of even a token presence and how society’s fixation with gendering media and traits hurts children of all genders.
As a preemptive response to those who claim he’s misrepresenting media in general or it’s just Disney, let’s use a recent video game that claims it’s doing better representation for women.
Here is all the Zarya merchandise Blizzard has in their online store that isn’t a generic Overwatch/group item or labelled as “Men’s”
I’d like to show you their Mei merchandise, but they don’t have any. At all.
Yeah.
– wincenworks