Just out of curiosity, what is your opinion of female cosplayers that perpetuate the horribly designed costumes prevalent in comic books and video games? Now that I’ve been enlightened by your blog (thank you, btw), I cringe any time I see cosplayers that wear costumes that display the problems you discuss. I can appreciate the effort and craftsmanship that goes into their costumes, but I wonder if they think about the bigger issue.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Our opinion is that cosplayers are people with their own agency, acting on their initiative and (hopefully) not putting themselves hence they’re entitled to dress as sexy as they like.

If the choices of cosplayers heavily influenced studios then Harley Quinn would still wear her full body outfit and mainstream media would have a lot greater diversity in character race (eg cosplayingwhileblack ), body types (eg chubby-cosplay ) and gender expression.

Women who cosplay already have to deal with the Fake Geek Girl Myth, explain that Cosplay is NOT Consent and receive unsolicited criticism for not meeting society’s unrealistic beauty standards (even the ones who are also professional models).  Women who cosplay in some outfits display superhuman costume construction skills and spectacular personal confidence. We nothing but sincere respect for the effort and courage it takes to wear many a bingo breaking costume to a convention.

Women in sexy cosplay don’t decide that the media will focus almost exclusively on conventionally attractive women when talking about cosplay. Women in sexy cosplay don’t sit in on design meetings and write notes on concept art with a red marker. Researchers don’t create focus groups of sexy cosplayers to test marketing ideas. Having sexy cosplayer booth babes doesn’t guarantee sales or even a memorable product.

The problem isn’t even that sexy female characters exist (let alone that some people want to cosplay them). There actually are potentially good reasons for the sexy outfits.  The problem is that modern media has standardized making female characters sexy to the extent it’s assumed to be a top priority.

More important than telling the story.  More important than making the character interesting and unique.  More important than expanding your audience outside of straight white cis men. More important than making the character human or relate-able.

This mentality is upheld by myths such as sex sells, only boys play video games and that focus groups of straight white men can reflect everyone’s opinions.

The decisions are made by executives, marketers, creative directors and occasional auteurs who make these decisions on behalf of businesses that need to sell millions of units to stay in business.  They’re re-enforced by media about fantasy art and loud groups who are dedicated to halting all progress.  

Sexy cosplay ladies are not a big enough demographic to keep a AAA title in business and they’re generally not respected by society – they have no more say in what goes in mainstream media than slash fiction writers, furries, let’s players or anyone else who has a hobby related to popular culture.

– wincenworks 

more about cosplay on BABD

Since convention season is in full swing, let’s remember that condemning female cosplayers (instead the costume designers and their higher ups) for perpetuating sexualization of women in media is just a derailment tactic. It shifts blame from the actual creators onto a vulnerable group of fans.

Instead of pointing fingers in the wrong direction, let’s question the complex issues behind the idea of “sexy” character design and problems cosplaying women face, as wincenworks expounds in this old post.

~Ozzie

As a follow up, I’d like to point out that if cosplay ladies got to decide the content of games – we’d see a whole lot more male empowerment.

– wincenworks

jerving-deactivated20181204:

Just out of curiosity, what is your opinion of female cosplayers that perpetuate the horribly designed costumes prevalent in comic books and video games? Now that I’ve been enlightened by your blog (thank you, btw), I cringe any time I see cosplayers that wear costumes that display the problems you discuss. I can appreciate the effort and craftsmanship that goes into their costumes, but I wonder if they think about the bigger issue.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Our opinion is that cosplayers are people with their own agency, acting on their initiative and (hopefully) not putting themselves hence they’re entitled to dress as sexy as they like.

If the choices of cosplayers heavily influenced studios then Harley Quinn would still wear her full body outfit and mainstream media would have a lot greater diversity in character race (eg cosplayingwhileblack ), body types (eg chubby-cosplay ) and gender expression.

Women who cosplay already have to deal with the Fake Geek Girl Myth, explain that Cosplay is NOT Consent and receive unsolicited criticism for not meeting society’s unrealistic beauty standards (even the ones who are also professional models).  Women who cosplay in some outfits display superhuman costume construction skills and spectacular personal confidence. We nothing but sincere respect for the effort and courage it takes to wear many a bingo breaking costume to a convention.

Women in sexy cosplay don’t decide that the media will focus almost exclusively on conventionally attractive women when talking about cosplay. Women in sexy cosplay don’t sit in on design meetings and write notes on concept art with a red marker. Researchers don’t create focus groups of sexy cosplayers to test marketing ideas. Having sexy cosplayer booth babes doesn’t guarantee sales or even a memorable product.

The problem isn’t even that sexy female characters exist (let alone that some people want to cosplay them). There actually are potentially good reasons for the sexy outfits.  The problem is that modern media has standardized making female characters sexy to the extent it’s assumed to be a top priority.

More important than telling the story.  More important than making the character interesting and unique.  More important than expanding your audience outside of straight white cis men. More important than making the character human or relate-able.

This mentality is upheld by myths such as sex sells, only boys play video games and that focus groups of straight white men can reflect everyone’s opinions.

The decisions are made by executives, marketers, creative directors and occasional auteurs who make these decisions on behalf of businesses that need to sell millions of units to stay in business.  They’re re-enforced by media about fantasy art and loud groups who are dedicated to halting all progress.  

Sexy cosplay ladies are not a big enough demographic to keep a AAA title in business and they’re generally not respected by society – they have no more say in what goes in mainstream media than slash fiction writers, furries, let’s players or anyone else who has a hobby related to popular culture.

– wincenworks 

more about cosplay on BABD

Since convention season is in full swing, let’s remember that condemning female cosplayers (instead the costume designers and their higher ups) for perpetuating sexualization of women in media is just a derailment tactic. It shifts blame from the actual creators onto a vulnerable group of fans.

Instead of pointing fingers in the wrong direction, let’s question the complex issues behind the idea of “sexy” character design and problems cosplaying women face, as wincenworks expounds in this old post.

~Ozzie

As a follow up, I’d like to point out that if cosplay ladies got to decide the content of games – we’d see a whole lot more male empowerment.

– wincenworks

Mighty Magiswords

@universe63 submitted:

So Cartoon Network has a new series called “Mighty Magiswords” about a pair of adventurers who do adventurey stuff.  This is an image of one of the two leads,Vambre, as she evolved through the years before the show got picked up. 

image

Far left is her original incarnation around 1996.

Second from left is her look to about 2006.

Then in 2007, someone stole her pants (probably creepy marketing guy) and they haven’t been seen since.

…sigh…

[source]

So over the years of design refinement not only did her skin become noticeably lighter, she also acquired a stereotypical leotard that so rarely gets worn by male characters, huh?

The show even makes “you have no pants” jokes, to which Vambre responds “Stop judging my bare legs decision and accept me for who I am!”With no real satirical twist on it or anything – they just reproduce the cliche and address it’s there, as it that was inherently comedic.

~Ozzie

Mighty Magiswords

@universe63 submitted:

So Cartoon Network has a new series called “Mighty Magiswords” about a pair of adventurers who do adventurey stuff.  This is an image of one of the two leads,Vambre, as she evolved through the years before the show got picked up. 

image

Far left is her original incarnation around 1996.

Second from left is her look to about 2006.

Then in 2007, someone stole her pants (probably creepy marketing guy) and they haven’t been seen since.

…sigh…

[source]

So over the years of design refinement not only did her skin become noticeably lighter, she also acquired a stereotypical leotard that so rarely gets worn by male characters, huh?

The show even makes “you have no pants” jokes, to which Vambre responds “Stop judging my bare legs decision and accept me for who I am!”With no real satirical twist on it or anything – they just reproduce the cliche and address it’s there, as it that was inherently comedic.

~Ozzie

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

sursumursa:

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

more about character agency on BABD

A whole year passed since we reblogged this video, yet people still completely unironically keep telling us that:

image

So yeah, bringing back this comprehensive debunk video is definitely in order.

~Ozzie

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Mortal Kombat is renown for it’s gorey fatalities and also for the snarky responses to criticisms of said fatalities:

image

However I can’t help but notice they can’t find but the standard issue rhetoric and cop outs to address criticisms of their female character costumes.

(Unsurprisingly, the source trailer is full of violence, gore, cruelty and all the other hallmarks of the franchise, view discretion advised).

– wincenworks

It seems that since @pointandclickbait has recently released an article that could very well be about many, many female characters from Mortal Kombat, this is the perfect time to bring this back.

We did comment on this not long ago but partially I also wanted to address that a lot of responses we got tended to focus on it as though it was mostly an issue in RPGs.

The reality is you see it in all kinds of video games, in comics (sometimes while throwing other cultures under a bus) and most forms of media (hence the cliches about the seductive student trying to corrupt her professor, remarkably similar to the author, and lure him into an affair despite his virtue).

Of course, there’s the old trick of super-ultra-hypersexualizing one female character in the hopes that it’ll make the other hypersexualized characters look practical and non-exploitative by comparison.

Ultimately mostly what this tends to boil down to is the desire to continue marketing women’s sexuality as a consumable product while claiming to be progressive and that others are just doing it wrong (yes, these people pretty much do maintain that real women are doing being a woman wrong).

So yeah, as a general rule if you need to break the fourth wall to justify why your female character is flaunting her sexuality despite the massive impracticality involved or you plan to blame women (one way or another) then our advice is: Don’t.

– wincenworks 

…when one male character criticizes a woman for going into battle with her shirt hanging open, which is really the snake eating its own tail of video game sexism in a game where a significant portion of its speaking female characters are similarly and impractically exposed.

Arthur Gies, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Review: Off the path

A relevant follow up the question of how does one satirize bikini armor, specifically that one does not do it by blaming a fictional character for the clothing chosen for her by the creator.

Particularly not if one is going to then normalize it within their media, which has normalized this excuse to the extent that it appears on the rhetoric bingo card.

– wincenworks