Recently, a friend sent me this image. It had been passed on by her boyfriend; it had reminded him of me. One might expect that connection to fill me with satisfaction, that I, a game designer and writer, am instantly associated with forward thinking and feminist ideals. Instead, I felt humiliated.
This is a great article that does a good job of explaining exactly why arguments excusing ”sexy armor” are invalid and altogether ridiculous.
This awesome article not only thoroughly explains why there’s no way to logically justify sexualization of female characters in video games, but also highlights the struggles that women in the industry go through:
The thing is, in this industry, you don’t want to be “that girl.” The world has communicated very thoroughly, with Anita Sarkeesian’s death threats, with so many comments on Kotaku, and with comments in the hallways of the workplace and the podiums of conventions, that being “that girl” is bad. Real bad. Potentially end of career bad.
But it’s not just dangerous for potential ramifications on career trajectory. There’s also a social component of how “that girl” is insufferable, annoying, and should be punishable by shaming.
Many female game designers, anonymously and publicly alike, confess how they have to deal with sexist standards of the industry, just so they can keep their jobs. It’s a legit problem that men, especially the ones chanting “sex sells!” or “it’s intended for male gamers!”, are either blissfully unaware of or willfully ignorant (my bets are on the latter option, though).
Please guys, read the whole thing.
~Ozzie
People are often quick to dismiss arguments against the conventional wisdom that “sex sells” as “politically correct” idealism. But one of the most compelling argument against the slogan comes from the other side of the political spectrum.
David Ogilvy was one of, if not The great iconic Ad Men of the 1960’s. Unsurprisingly he was deeply invested in the idea of gender roles and claimed “I am less offended by obscenity than by tasteless typography, banal photographs, clumsy copy, and cheap jingles”. He also (literally) wrote the book on how to create effective advertising and measure the effectiveness of your advertising.
He was, amazingly, admantly against introducing sex to sell any product that wasn’t inherently sexual in itself for one simple reason:
All his research and experience in advertising told him it would not work.
What did Ogilvy very sincerely believed was the first step in creating effective advertising an massive sales? To create a high quality product.
That way all that was required was to sincerely show the customers why it was a great product and the rest would take care of itself.
So when developers distort their products (comics, books, movies, video games, etc) by cramming sexualised imagery into them with the mentality of “sex sells” so “more sex will sell even more” they are actually sabotaging their product’s reception, reputation, sales and it’s marketing campaigns.
At least according to an old white man from the 1960s who always assumed women should be house wives… and also happened to be one of the greatest thinkers in advertising.
So yesterday, Kelly Thompson released an article for She Has No Head! where she discusses 6 recent Female Superhero costume designs that she feels are an improvement of what came prior.
Amongst the designs that were chosen was my Psylocke design, which is in the company of artists like Meredith McClaren, Ross Campbell, Mark Brooks, Jamie McKelvie, Phil Noto, and Jesus Siaz. Not a bad group of artists to be grouped with, if I do say so myself.
Basically the gist of the article was about costumes should be designed by artists who also know fashion and design, rather than just pencilers who will have to be drawing that character for their book, and how when the right person is tasked to design the costume that it will have a far better outcome. She went through and chose characters who she felt needed the update, and talked about how the redesign was an improvement.
Characters like Psylocke, Glory, Poison Ivy, Ms Marvel, Jubilee, Valkyrie, and Domino.
And as anything involving comics, hatred quickly followed the heels of this article. what else would you expect, right?
But within the comments, a few points were being brought up that puzzled me that I sort of wanted to address, Instead of my initial reaction which was to get into a comment war. Thankfully, that was a path I didn’t go down because I had things I needed to do with my day and I couldn’t waste it in what would undoubtedly become an insult match.
One of the ideas that kept coming up was the notion that there is a trend in current female costume designs that the designer must pander to screaming feminists by covering the character from head to toe and take away all of the characters sexiness and by result make them boring.
Now I’ll be honest, I don’t like being yelled at by feminists. But I also don’t like to be yelled at by womanizers, or kids, or anyone. So I want to just rule that out as a motivation. No one wants to get yelled at.
Secondly, sexiness is subjective. A character can still be considered “sexy” even if it doesn’t fit with your tastes. To say that by giving a Female character a piece of fabric to cover her ass cheeks up is ruining her sexiness, ALL that means is that YOU think that an exposed ass is sexy. There is absolutely no way to make a blanket statement about that. Some people think a baggy shirt on a girl is equally as attractive as an uber skin tight shirt.
Sexiness has NEVER been a factor when I design a character. Sex appeal ONLY comes into play when the characters PERSONALITY dictates that as a factor.
The CHARACTER must be first and foremost the inspiration and guideline for all the decisions made when trying to design the clothing. NOT what you want to see on a characters to get your rocks off. I find that frankly immature, and an insult to the character you are trying to do justice to.
Granted, what is “correct” by the character is also incredibly subjective. Everyone see’s a character differently. This is Fact. This is the exact reason that everyone has different favourite characters, we each see something different that attracts us to them. The best a designer can hope for is that their interpretation can ideally appeal to the largest majority possible of that characters fan-base. No one wants to have a design that fans hate, but you can’t please everyone.
And just to speak for myself, modesty was never a factor. I never approached storm’s, or psylocke’s, or spiral’s design with the sole intention of hiding their skin. The amount of real estate that ended up being covered or not was ENTIRELY dictated by my attempt to respect the character. There was no “psylocke has to be fully covered because it would be indecent for any of her skin to be showing”. I wanted to have her covered because I felt that a character who is performing stealth assassinations would want as little wound-able flesh showing.
My go-to example of a character that should be showing skin is, of course, Emma Frost. Here is a character who prides herself on her looks. She is an incredibly confident character mentally, and likes to show off herself physically. Emma Frost flaunting it works because it works for HER. She likes control, she likes power, and one of the best tools for that is her body. She can turn heads with her body, she can command attention with it. She wouldn’t even need to use her telepathy to have someone lose focus. Emma Frost is incredibly intelligent, she knows what she is doing. There has to be a REASON for the skin.
Even with male characters. Namor doesn’t need to cover up anything because he is indestructible. Armour would give him no benefit, and would probably hinder him. In fact, having Namor show off skin actually helps to tell a lot about him as a character. It shows his confidence, it shows he isn’t afraid to be attacked, and it largely makes sense given he lives in water.
Colossus doesn’t need full covering, because all he has to do is become metal, and he has his own protection.
There has to be a REASON.
To what tactical function would a spy need her cleavage hanging out? Does it help a character who is an acrobat?
There is nothing inherently wrong with cleavage, but it needs to be based on either the characters personality or by what they do. I cannot stress this enough. It cannot just be cause the artist felt like drawing a zipper down.
Fan-Service is no longer a logical reason to do anything. The Story should be the Fan-service by being a good story and doing the character justice, and the art should support that.
And, an Artist’s tastes are an entirely defendable reason for something, but dont try to pass it off as anything else. You can argue that it makes sense for psylocke to wear less clothing because she wants less covering her to hinder her mobility, and that does hold some water to it. It does make sense to a point. But to say the stripes of clothe on her serve any other function that just for appearance sake is laughable. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong about just saying something is drawn that way because thats what the artist likes. I do it all the time. There are things that I draw a certain way, that Ross draws a certain way, that Mark draws a certain way. It’s one of the weird double-edged swords about comics, but a lot of the audiences participation with the comic is determined by the artist and their tastes. It’s just one of those things where the artist holds a lot of power in their hands, and as such, there is a level of accountability that the artist owes the readers, but the readers arguments must come from a place of logic, rather than just “You ruined her because I want to see more tits!!”. No one has time for that
Covering characters works. Uncovering characters work. The character determines what will or will not work. There is no mandate. There are no threats. At least there weren’t for me when I designed X-force. I had incredible freedom to design as how I saw fit. As I assume how it went for the other artists that designed the marvel costumes.
I find it funny that out of the 6 costumes in that article, 5 were designed by guys. I think that just goes to show that there isn’t this gender mental block that makes men unable to design practical costumes for the opposite gender.
Anyone can design any costume for any gender as long as they approach it with with respect and understanding.
And thats my rant on that haha
Excellent commentary about priorities and goals in character design.
It’s baffling to me how some creators can spend time pondering over the exact history of a character, or how to compose a shot to homage to a classic work, then turn around and decide that it is VITAL that a female character has to be as sexy as possible even if it goes against all other aspects of her and her story.
I mean really, I would think the way they dress would be considered far more important an aspect about the character’s expression than the occasional line they drop about what school they went to.
– wincenworks
Took the liberty of bolding the most relevant parts for emphasis (and to break down the great wall of text that this article is).
~Ozzie
Posted on
My boyfriend called me while I was at work to tell me about it. He sent me an email with pictures of this new “soldier” and I had to show the women I work with (also Marines, current or former). We couldn’t believe it wasn’t some sort of joke. One of my coworkers even said, “Oh, yeah; she’ll definitely last in combat so long as she isn’t worried about a tit popping out.
“um starfire’s powers are fueled by the sun that’s why she has to wear skimpy clothes” hey u know who else’s powers are fueled by the sun? superman. come on clark time for that toothfloss speedo chop chop
Given how people generally seemed to like my previous female armor post (save for one comment that argued that criticizing the depiction of warrior women wearing these and stating that in real life warrior women wouldn’t wear anything like that and that these are highly sexualized is slut-shaming of fictional characters), I’m happy to present part two. Originally it was going to be about torso armor, but several people asked for butts. Now, I hadn’t given thought to butts as much, because unlike boobs, that are depicted as existing almost separately from the entire body, butts are more often incorporated into the rest of the outfit.
The most interesting thing about these images (for me) was my own entirely positive initial reaction.
At first glance, I thought it might be a cute little guide to styles of burlesque underpants. (I got a good laugh out of the flavour text beside a depiction of what is essentially a fancy merkin: “Where is the point of disappearance?” ..and chuckled at mentions of crystal and magic jewels.) Reading on, and considering the artist’s own understandably sarcastic statements, I can see it’s actually intended as playful criticism of costumes designed to unnecessarily hypersexualize female characters in sci-fi and fantasy media (comic books, video games, movies, art, whatnot). I have a bit of a nerdy background, so of course the satirical aspect of these drawings struck a chord with me, (and I wholeheartedly agree with what’s being said,) but on the other hand I am an actual seamstress for actual strippers; my clients specifically request cheeky windows, plunging necklines, and short hems that show off some t&a; mystery (“how does it stay up/on?” or “how did it just come off?”) is alluring; properties like fabric transparency and movement are essential to the art of the tease. That flowing long loincloth is an oldschool bump ‘n’ grind panel skirt, for goodness’ sake.
If a real or fictional character’s purpose or motivation, whether onstage or in a comic book, is to actively bare herself and seduce her audience for whatever reason, then YES, go forth and dress that character in designs like these! This sort of costuming IS appropriate for those who choose to reveal their bodies.. it IS NOT appropriate for questing, fighting crime, keeping warm, protecting vital organs from bullets or lasers or spears or maces, flying a spaceship, wrestling dinosaurs, whatever. I’m a big fan of form following function, (for example, while a full-body unitard may be revealing in its way, it would also be totally appropriate when a heroic person of any gender must streamline themselves to move quickly through water or air – I don’t get annoyed by stuff like that,) but when there’s visual dissonance between a superheroine’s costume and the feats she performs while wearing it, coupled with a shameless attempt to make her outfit needlessly revealing and titillating, it irritates me. When an exotic dancer or burlesque entertainer’s attire is cleverly or beautifully revealing and titillating, I nod my head and think “well done” ..because stripping is her superpower, and form follows function in every sense.
That was very well said, thank you 🙂
That post got ten million times better when a person who tailors costumes for strippers and exotic dancers added her thoughts on booty “armor”. Took the liberty of bolding crucial parts.
Here’s why I’m not the person to ask such questions, in case you missed the note… …BUUUUT it just happens that the very first submission to this blog was a very comprehensive articlemy friend wrote about Sisters of Battle, especially Sisters Repentia.
In short, Warhammer 40k is pretty ridiculous by definition, but regular Sisters have surprisingly decent armor (for the standards of such setting, that is), with the only major fault being the boobplate… With Sisters Repentia though, as much as the idea of redemption by death is interesting, there is no reason why their death-wish outfits need to be the skimpy, pants-lacking, physics-defying… uh, this:
And these aren’t even the most blatant sisters repentia outfits I’ve seen. As of regular sisters of battle, sometimes they are drawn with high heels, but on the other hand, sometimes they have helmets and not a boobplate, so this balances it out.
on a textual level, a female character can dress however she wants and shouldn’t be slut-shamed and hated for what she prefers to wear.
on a metatextual level, she might still have been designed with an intention to provide fanservice.
this means that criticising a design, as opposed to a character, is neither misogyny nor slut-shaming. being displeased about the way a character has been designed is not synonymous with hating her.
have i made myself clear?
CRYSTAL CLEAR.
PS: I love you, durendals. Why didn’t I see this post on my dash ever before? It’s perfection.
