So, as you or may not have seen the hilarity of brodudes shitting themselves in anger that the new iteration of Lola Bunny which is going to appear in Ready PlayerSpace Jam was designed to be family friendly and appeal to young girls, rather than be a recreation of porny fan art of the character. (They literally claimed a fan art by a smut artist was the “original”) (VICE article here)
This magnificent tweet by InspectorNerd highlights why what we talk about on Bikini Armor Battle Damage is an important and often overlooked aspect of design for female characters (never male characters) and also another brief point I want to cover first.
Every now and again we do get people spamming us with out of context links to quotes from large busted women who, generally speaking, enjoy been seen as attractive but are sick of being reduced down to their bust size. They supply these as though it is absolute proof that the male gaze is perfect, and if you critique the design of fictional characters – you’re attacking these real women.
Even if that fictional character is a rabbit.
Lola’s sexiness in the original Space Jam (a phrase I never wanted to type) was primarily because the first thing we learn about her when she’s introduced, is that Bugs (who is naked) wants to bang her.
However, she is distinctly wearing a “hot girl” outfit rather than a “sports girl” outfit that is a strange mix of sports bra and crop top.
It turns out in real life, female basketball players wear… almost exactly the same thing as male players do.
This is because they are focused on playing the sport, not trying to look sexy for the crowd. And as covered before, when they do seem to be posing its generally so they can obtain sponsorship from creepy marketing guys who don’t really care about the sport, just fapping off and collecting pay for repeating their catch phrase.
Thus creating the perception that women’s sports are not as “serious” as men’s sports, even when female teams outperform their male colleagues.
And how do we feel about?
– wincenworks