The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Month: June 2017
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Every time I see someone say, “Who cares?” about either my own posts or those of other tumblrs on the subject of female representation in comics, I want to point out to them the over 5000 people who’ve subscribed to lesstitsnass (holy crap over 5000?!), the other thousands and thousands of people who follow eschergirls, all the other blogs that do redlines, The Hawkeye Initiative’s slew of participants, the multitudes of articles and comments on all the online magazines that discuss the subject, and say, “Them. They care. There’s a whole lot of them. So get your head out of your butt and try to see what they see.”
Cue fanfare! Can ya’ll believe that it’s been 10 weeks (well, 11 since Icy wrecked her shoulder that one time) since we started doing livestreams? So for the big One-Oh we decided to do something a little different.
Well, the most obvious differences between Conan and Jacob is that Conan was what his creator, Robert E Howard (who struggled his entire life with the pressures of society and toxic masculinity) not-secretly-at-all yearned to be and Jacob is the Stephanie Meyer’s idea of semi-exotic potential boyfriend.Check out this classic depiction of Conan by Frank Frazetta and try to remember the last time you saw a guy like this on the cover of a romance novel.
What makes guys sexy to women (physically)?
Well, it turns out since women are not a monolith and women don’t get to dictate beauty standards for men there’s no real standard.
Research has shown that men in general overestimate how much muscle women find attractive. They also tend to overestimate the importance and the preferred size of penises. (Seriously guys, don’t send unsolicited dick pics and don’t expect bragging about ridiculous endowment to help you)
Honestly though, the notion that you have to adhere to beauty standards in order to make a character attractive is kind of ridiculous. I mean, butts are sexualized across genders. Feeling comfortable pressed up against someone and kissing them is usually a plus. Looking like they may find you interesting as a person or want to impress you are definite help.
When designing a sexy male character: Leave the books about primary and secondary characteristics alone and forget about what manly men say a man should be like and ask, “What’s she going to like in this guy?”
Nothing is genuinely universally attractive, but at least this way you have a chance that the audience will see the appeal even it’s not for them.
Time to bring this back, as discussions about what all women find attractive in all men continue, despite this being essentially unanswerable question. And a wrong thing to ask regarding equality in sexualization of genders.
~Ozzie
And because, apparently, it needs to be said:
If you ever find yourself tell people that the female characters are just as sexualised as not just the men but also the bears, genderless robots (it still terrifies me I have to clarify the genderless part) and/or skeletons with a ecotoplasmic pompadours then it’s well past time to just…
“Hey, this combination of light armor pieces looks really nice on my elementalist! Let’s see how those exact same armor skins look on my mholy fuck why.”
(I love Guild Wars 2 with all my heart, it’s such a beautiful and fun game with many many good styles and pieces and colors to choose from and to mix-and-match freely, but this. this really bugs me.)
What I notice about Guild Wars2 fandom is that they tend to express their adoration for the game, while being completely aware of godawful double standard “armors” that can be found there (the game does have better examples for comparison).
Fans of a certain type, like the ones religiously devoted to whatever Blizzard or Warhammer40k spews out, could learn a thing or two from GW2 players about proper critical attitude towards the thing they like.
