We have previously updated some bingos after they have been posted, however we will not be doing this unless there is an important reason.
Here’s why:
- Female Armor Bingo is intended as a fun way to encourage critique of popular media and thus draw attention to troubling tropes. Too much pressure to make every bingo perfect takes away the fun and derails the conversation away from the intended purpose.
- Many of the terms are deliberately vague so as to cover the many forms the trope takes and thus it can become very subjective.
Nitpicking over details again derails and also encourages the mentality that “No one can criticize you for x, provided you do y.”- When people submit bingo cards to us, they’re marking off the points they see – if they miss a point or two on a card that’s already over half full then it doesn’t really diminish from the core point: The armor is disrespectful to women in general and part of a prevalent and harmful trope.
- Sadly, Female Armor Bingo is not an empirical measuring device – we’ve had absurdly objectifying outfits that didn’t score bingos either due to technicalities or how the squares happened to be filled out. They were still objectifying and deserving ridicule.
Just like the famous Bechdel Test, the bingo is supposed to shed light on a bigger trend in popculture, not to meticulously analyze who and what “passes”.- Finding new content for the blog, checking submissions, researching and writing posts, etc. is time consuming and a much higher priority than tweaking bingos that are already entertaining and on-point.
While it’s great fun to joke about the exact score and keep a tally of the highest scoring bingos it’s not essential for every bingo to be 100% accurate and correct.
So from now on we’ll be limiting edits after posting to important and noteworthy events – like that time we discover that against all odds, Fran’s outfit was worse than we dreamed.~Ozzie & – wincenworks
As the Female Armor Bingo is nearing its third anniversary next month, it’s good time for a reminder that the game’s main goal is to help the audiences observe and point out prevailing harmful tropes of female warrior costume design. Not to narrow down definition of sexism, let alone judge which outfits are “sexist enough” to criticize based on the score.
That said, as updating the board is our unofficial yearly tradition – do you, readers, think some squares should be changed or adjusted to reflect any common design problems that aren’t addressed yet?
~Ozzie
