The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
After discussing the disturbing attitude towards female protagonists in video game industry Jimquisition once again tackles the topic of gender in games by commenting on controversy around Dragon’s Crown female character designs.
Sorry to post again about not-exactly-warrior-outfits, but it’s a very relevant case concerning strictly related areas (character design, women in popular culture).
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.
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.
allec-overcoming-anxiety submitted:“Fighting Girl Clothing”This link is to a video by Rooster Teeth that shows how effective women’s fighting uniforms are in video games.
As one may guess, the results are…erm…censored.
Burnie (the man who is hosting the show) calls the fighting technique done by their two models desperately trying to fight while not flashing their tits is called “Bashful Panda.” I’m sure you can go to ANY martial arts studio and learn this move yourself.
Escher Girls: Now supported by science!
edit 2016: Due to original video posting service for this (Blip) being dead, the video’s now available via YouTube.