Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits

Fantasy Armor and Lady Bits

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.image

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:

image

From the second: 

image

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.

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.