The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: historical accuracy
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Y’know, even if there wasn’t a single woman in all of history who had fought in war or a single example of real, historical female armor, there would be no problem in pointing out fantasy armor is unrealistic because the complaint is not based on what women DID wear but what women WOULD wear.
I think it perfectly sums up the basic flaw in the “women warriors aren’t historically accurate, so realism doesn’t matter when portraying them in media” kind of rhetoric.
Much like… most of the angry ranting we receive, the plea “not proven historically accurate” tends to ignore the key reason why “sex sells” doesn’t work.
In fiction, armor is a costume, and a costume is a statement about the wearer. It is the creator’s opportunity to tell the audience about the world, the society the wearer is from and the wearer of themselves.
If a creator’s most compelling message they can think of is “she’s got sexy bits” then not only is every female character going to be yet another addition to an already over saturated nonsensical trope.
However, if you decide to actually communicate some things like… what the armor is made from, what it’s supposed to protect against, what’s happened to it since it was made, or how the wearer would decorate it: you open up the doors to infinite possibilities.
Some of which may be heavily influenced and inspired by history.
That post about “attractive armor without bikini” actually left me wondering: why would you actually want an attractive armor? Sure, everyone loves an aesthethically pleasing armor, but we can’t just forget that armor is mostly made to be, well, intimidating. It’s supposed to make people both safer in combat and also more powerful. Not having to battle – because you look so threatening or even downright unbeatable – is some 40% of the purpose of an armor piece. Why does it need to be attractive?
But let’s set some things straight first: armor is done primarily to be protective. It sure helps if the design makes the wearer intimidating enough to make the opponents surrender right away, but at its core it was invented as a physical barrier between a person and whatever or whoever threatens their life or health.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for decorative armor in the history. Highly ornamented muscle cuirass (male equivalent of boobplate) was designed to impress and worn by high-standing officers during non-battle special occasions, like parades.
That said, in the world of fiction the distinction between purely functional and decorative armor is not necessary. It’s not real, and unless the setting of choice is gritty life-like naturalism, the armor (and any other design) needs just to be believable, not realistic. We commented on it before.
This is where those two bingo squares come in. Fictional worlds, especially the more fantastic ones, can be stylized, sometimes even to ridiculous degree, as long as all of the world is consistent with its level of stylization. That’s why it’s not inherently bad to have people fight monsters in G-strings… It just needs to all make sense within its own narrative and preferably not be gendered (which basically never happens).
Hope that answers it.
~Ozzie
Sometimes we make comments about how attractive a person looks in armor, because a lot of the time, their design is going for that. Unfortunately, the shorthand for that tends to be More Skin, High Heels, the usual offenders. But even if a character is designed to be attractive, that can be done without resorting to tired sexist tropes. And so we bring attention to it sometimes, when it’s done well.
Historically speaking, a lot of European plate armor was quite ugly from a design perspective, actually.
Look at that silhouette, the tiny shapes everywhere, that scarecrow head-adjacent helmet, those duck feet. Beautiful.
Compare that to any armor in Game of Thrones, which is functional, but is just so much nicer to look at.
As critics of art and design, we care more about seeing women’s designs being consistent (and good) in their universe, rather than having 100% Organic Free Range Realism. (Don’t worry though, we will continue to feature actual ladies in actual armor for positive examples.)
-Icy
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Every year when E3 comes out, I know that there’ll be at least one title that chooses the event to highlight to the world just how ridiculous their design decisions are: This year, so far, the number one contender is: Strange Brigade
The best that can be said for it is that in terms of impracticality they were at least different in their terrible design decisions – sadly they more than made up for it with the baffling racism.
The premise is in the 1930’s a forgotten ancient Egyptian witch queen has awakened from the dead and only a group of four intrepid adventurers can stop her – specifically by slaughtering wave after wave of zombies and monsters. The three white adventurer’s (two boys, one woman) dress in pragmatic adventuring outfits with pants and boots; and the black woman gets this hideous faux romper (this link nsfw), body paint, scarification and sandals.
Not only is this costume impractical for adventuring, completely at odds with 1930s sensibilities and general design – but this is a classic example of exotification. Her body paint and stretched ears seem to be inspired by the Mun people (adjusted to look more appealing to western audiences) and the red mud in her hair inspired by the Himba people (again changed for western audiences). These two groups lived 2,500 kilometers from each other (about the same distance as Switzerland to Turkey) and it seems more than likely the designers didn’t do that much research to learn the names or locations. Mostly she seems inspired by some of Grace Jones (who was born in 1948) movie personas.
This seems a particularly baffling bad decision to be proud of given that a huge factor cited in the the massive success of the Black Panther movie was the incorporation of actual African designers in making fantastic visions of Africa.
While looking into this, I was unable to find a name for this character, or any explanation for her design (such as naming inspirations) but I did find they have exactly one closed/locked thread in their Steam Discussions:
Yeah.
– wincenworks
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Gotta love the “creativity” of web ads presenting just another grizzled military dude as an equivalent to a generic pretty girl with long flowing hair, cleavage and belly out. Totally legit and “equal” soldier designs! Especially for a game that apparently takes place during WW2?
Um, is that supposed to be some sort of parallel universe? Because other than USSR imagery slapped on like an afterthought, even the guy doesn’t look anything close to a soldier from the 1940s…
The upcoming game seems to incorporate time travel so they can have massive, carefully crafted settings with nonsensical outfits. Honestly, it makes no sense, since the same press footage they’re releasing confirms… they know how to make sexy badass ladies. I mean, look at this babe:
If you’re not in lustlove you’re just not paying attention.
Of course, most of the current fuss is not over the zombie mode but rather over the lack of a single player campaign. Though personally, I’m glad we get this moment that I’m choosing to believe depicts a female character getting to meet the Creepy Marketing Guy responsible for this.
I literally can’t get myself to sit through movies that don’t have women. I’m like where the fuck are the women? Why are there so many men? This is boring as fuck goodbye
Even if it’s historically accurate?
as everyone knows, women were invented in 1990
All the notes of “women weren’t on old time battlefields” are wrong. There were more prostitutes and merchant women than there were soldiers in most every encampment. They followed the armies, marching alongside them, and notably ran the camps.
Many more women dressed as men to fight.
Long before female nurses were officially considered to be a part of the military, they were already on the battlefield. They merely didn’t get written into official reports because they were “invisible women”, “not supposed to be there”. Usually they would be local women running a makeshift care center out of their homes.
Movies involving ancient societies? Guess how many had female fighters?
Spies? Mostly female. Yeah, only the men were caught, usually (because nobody suspected the servant woman), but historians believe most cases had more women spies than men. Most cases meaning across time and continents.
Giving me a movie on samurai? Women were trained as well to avoid being captured and raped, and often fought just as hard as men. One woman notably survived multiple battles, and became a hero alongside her sisters after taking out 7 men before dying in her last fight (usually in sword fighting you’d be lucky to take out 2 enemy soldiers. 7 is fucking insane, but because she was a woman it was shoved under the records how the lord managed to survive).
Women have ALWAYS been on battlefields. Women have an intense history in driving victories and losses alike. They were supply runners, fighters, spies, assassins, prostitutes (look up how prostitutes essentially ran the western world, or even the social status of harem members. They literally fucking ruled), even underground activists.
The only time there weren’t many women were with cowboys. Actual western cowboys tended to be both POC and gay. In fact, any time women didn’t have a near equal or greater presence, there was a LOT of gay men.
History: either 80% female or 100% gay. And it’s 95% POC.
Actually, the Wild West (while not really associated with warriors and battlefields) would be one of the historical settings with the best recorded history of women (specifically prostitutes) running the place:
I literally can’t get myself to sit through movies that don’t have women. I’m like where the fuck are the women? Why are there so many men? This is boring as fuck goodbye
Even if it’s historically accurate?
as everyone knows, women were invented in 1990
All the notes of “women weren’t on old time battlefields” are wrong. There were more prostitutes and merchant women than there were soldiers in most every encampment. They followed the armies, marching alongside them, and notably ran the camps.
Many more women dressed as men to fight.
Long before female nurses were officially considered to be a part of the military, they were already on the battlefield. They merely didn’t get written into official reports because they were “invisible women”, “not supposed to be there”. Usually they would be local women running a makeshift care center out of their homes.
Movies involving ancient societies? Guess how many had female fighters?
Spies? Mostly female. Yeah, only the men were caught, usually (because nobody suspected the servant woman), but historians believe most cases had more women spies than men. Most cases meaning across time and continents.
Giving me a movie on samurai? Women were trained as well to avoid being captured and raped, and often fought just as hard as men. One woman notably survived multiple battles, and became a hero alongside her sisters after taking out 7 men before dying in her last fight (usually in sword fighting you’d be lucky to take out 2 enemy soldiers. 7 is fucking insane, but because she was a woman it was shoved under the records how the lord managed to survive).
Women have ALWAYS been on battlefields. Women have an intense history in driving victories and losses alike. They were supply runners, fighters, spies, assassins, prostitutes (look up how prostitutes essentially ran the western world, or even the social status of harem members. They literally fucking ruled), even underground activists.
The only time there weren’t many women were with cowboys. Actual western cowboys tended to be both POC and gay. In fact, any time women didn’t have a near equal or greater presence, there was a LOT of gay men.
History: either 80% female or 100% gay. And it’s 95% POC.
Actually, the Wild West (while not really associated with warriors and battlefields) would be one of the historical settings with the best recorded history of women (specifically prostitutes) running the place:
While we occasionally comment on contorted female anatomy, we urge our readers not to submit or tag us in posts that deal only with that issue. Please hit up our dear friend Ami @eschergirls when you see some atrociously twisted female character bodies in media.
Some historians have expressed concerns that people may over estimate the prevalence of warrior women, nobody can dispute that it’s pretty sweet that DNA testing has confirmed that history’s old system of just assuming if a skeleton has weapons it’s a dude has been debunked.
(Warning: This game deals with a lot of dark material and imagery for this game includes a lot of themes of torture, death, psychosis and gore. I have tried my best to avoid putting any disturbing imagery in this post or linking to any directly)
We’ve had numerous requests for comment on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and to be honest it’s a complicated topic. It is true that it is a game that avoided various tropes that we’re told games need such as bikini armor, battle thongs, cleavage, etc But the outfit is still not on par with say Emily Kaldwen or Billy Lurk’s attire. (It’s still angering brodudes though)
It’s also a game where the much more important criticisms such as the handling of theme of mental illness and protagonist having locs (which Celts and Vikings did not have, which is why their descendants need various modern products to replicate them). So comparatively Senua’s attire not being terrible is minor.
The game is however is an interesting example of how even studios beginning with the noblest intentions can get pulled down by industry pressure and reliance upon media and societal standards. They started with:
They wanted it to be historical, but when it came time to find reference images… they didn’t exactly cite what I could call historically robust sources:
When it came time to scan a body for the 3D model of Senua, they went with a fitness instructor, who also happens to do modelling. She she did end up half of the things that the original vision promised she would not be, and her attire was designed more around modern fashion ideals than her origin.
The fact that it stands out to so many people as so different and that the developers felt they only had the freedom to do this much by avoiding signing on a publisher really says a lot.
