Princeless Lampoons Popular Female Armor
jedda-martele submitted:
Princeless is a great, fairly new comic book series aimed at kids. The protagonist is Princess Adrienne, who has decided to rescue herself. There are plenty of moments that mock standard comic book conventions. Here’s one about ladies’ armor.
Oh, good one!
I remember the subverted pin-up cover of this comic that was featured on Escher Girls that one time.
Considering it’s a kids comic, not young adult one, I’m starting to think that all those clever references in Princeless may fly over the heads of target audience.
MichaelD submitted:
One example that always sticks in my mind are the two Kingdom Under Fire games on the Xbox (great games dumb armour especially on the dark elves). The one character that sticks out for me though is Ellen who gets a bit of a patch job between games.
From the first game:
From the second:
Its the same plate lingerie but between games someone decided got to put chain mail over all her exposed skin.
I’m struggling to find the words for this… In theory it is an improvement of some kind, but what is covering exposed skin with ridiculously close-fitting chainmail (patterned latex?) actually supposed to help with? Especially when her boobplate, chain thong and two-inch heels are still there?
It takes more than just covering the character to cure her design from sexualization.
Well, at least she acquired a helmet (a part of armor so often omitted on fictional warriors of all genders), I’ll give her that.
EDIT: Submitter noted on that little gem too:
It’s also a bit odd in-universe because the 2nd image is from a prequel game. So between games chronologically she decided to stop wearing the chain-mail and helmet. In retrospect probably a bad decision.
edit 2: Minor re-wording of the part about helmets, to make it more gender inclusive.
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As if that wasn’t enough, twin-bulged breastplates ignore the anatomical makeup of the female breast itself. To make a long story short, the breast largely consists of fat and modified sweat glands (for the production of milk, that is), and hence it’s not nearly as solid as a comparable mass of muscle. So all but the largest breasts can be bound quite flat against the woman’s chest without occasioning too much discomfort. In turn, this means a fighting woman probably isn’t going to need a breastplate with a chest profile larger than one worn by a fighting man of a similar height and general body shape, and therefore it’s quite likely that the woman would simply fit into the man’s breastplate with the aid of some padding to make up the slack in the waist and shoulders.
Why female breastplates don’t need breast-bulges
(The article was deleted since. You can read its mirror copy on archive.com here.)
A Thought
When every female character is “sexy” by default, do you find that it lessens the effect/allure of the characters whose sexual appeal devs actually try to emphasize for narrative reasons?
Why do a lot of people forget that boobs aren’t here for you. They are supposed to produce breast milk, not be sex objects.
It’s the question I ask myself all the time.
Of course being aroused by breasts is natural and by no means bad in itself, let’s make it clear. But our culture skewed the perception of breasts by overemphasizing their arbitrary* sexual value (*boobs are not necessary for sex to happen, after all). They’re treated like some kind of secondary genitals, while tabooing the actual function they’re designed for (feeding babies).
That’s the sad reason why on one hand a bare female breast is considered “indecent” to the point of shaming women from nursing in public places, while on the other hand they’re used as a shortcut for what straight male audience would (allegedly) instantly find appealing.
And as (horny) hetero men are somehow the default audience for most of entertainment media, boobs need to be bared, or at least emphasized beyond any logic (and beyond how science works) on every possible occasion, even when it makes little to no sense in context.
Frustration with above school of thought is one of the major reasons that this blog exists. You know there’s something wrong when it’s more important to show that a warrior character happens to have boobs than to apply some practical battle wear for them.
