It’s all about what your armor does with kinetic energy. As you may know if you’ve ever played croquet, kinetic energy can transfer through one solid object into another solid object.
In the case of a weapon hitting a breastplate, the red ball is your armor and the green ball is your body, and what you don’t want is a whole hammer worth of kinetic energy transferring through the armor into your body. A good way to prevent this is by making your breastplate convex instead of concave, so that the force can more easily glance off.
Take these two shapes for instance, and humor me in another metaphor. Say you left these two objects out in the rain for a day. What would you come back to? The concave one would have collected almost 100% of the rain that fell on it, while the convex one would still be a little wet but most of the rain would have slid off of its surface onto the ground. Now imagine that the rain is actually a battleaxe or something else heavy-ended. Do you want your armor to collect all the kinetic energy and transfer it to you, or do you want your armor to make sure that most of the kinetic energy slides off, like the rainwater sliding off onto the ground?
A good breastplate will cause blows to slide off to the sides because it is convex, as shown in this breastplate from Witcher 3 that I drew on to emphasize its shape.
Now, compare that to one of the boobplates from Skyrim, which I also drew on to emphasize its shape.
Now, each individual boob is a convex shape, which means that weapons will slide off them, but unlike the big rounded shape of the Witcher 3 breastplate I showed, which makes the weapons and the kinetic energy they bring with them slide off into empty space at Geralt’s sides, the individual boobs of the boobplate create a little valley in the middle of the chest where the weapons will end up. So the boobs on a boobplate deflect blows off the armor…right back into the armor.
Here’s another graphic to help further visualize the problem, wherein the blue arrows represent the incoming weapon and all the kinetic energy it brings with it:
– mod Sallet
tits armor is historical
What you’ve got there is a “heroic cuirass” or “muscle cuirass”, the kind worm by military commanders who wouldn’t normally see combat on the front line. It’s just for show, not meant to be a significant means of protection.
I’d like to add that not only is there no evidence of the heroic cuirass ever actually being used in battle – but they are an artifact from an era when the mightiest weapon one might by expect to be struck with was a heavy spear with a bronze tip, being wielded one handed. (That’s why it’s got that green discoloration, it’s literally from the Bronze Age, ie before they had iron or steel).
Once steel and stirrups were introduced, the impact that one could experience on the battlefield rose dramatically, because the amount of force a guy on a horse with a steel tipped lance could inflict was dramatically greater than a soldier with a spear in one hand and a shield in the other could ever even hope to inflict on their best day.
So steel armor, became the standard to protect against the guys on the horseback and so soldiers had to start carrying weapons that could hurt people in steel armor (maces, war picks, polearms, etc).
Hence the convex shape and design elements to prevent blows being deflected into bad places became a bigger and bigger focus.
It’s almost like weapons and armor have evolved over time because ancient civilizations didn’t have access to all the knowledge and science we do today…
Somebody used this gif to “prove” that Metal Gear sexualises men the same as women:
Do people really think this is equivalent to Quiet (et al.) or are they being disingenuous?
I find it hilarious how dudes will insist that if people really knew about Metal Gear Solid they’d know about Raiden and that he was (allegedly) as objectified as Quiet… despite the fact Raiden and his butt run (very late in the game) were both surprises to the player (and the development team) and Quiet was used heavily as marketing material a year in advance of MGS V being released.
It’s almost like he wasn’t intended to titillate or something.
– wincenworks
#nakedness doesn’t equal sexualisation
Continuing the theme of false equivalence… yes, we have seen (and commented on) people who proudly claim that Raiden’s naked run justifies Quiet’s “breathing through skin” un-costume.
We’re also familiar with the general confusion between sexualization and nudity. Vast majority of the Status Quo Warriors conflate bare skin with being sexual, so by that logic, Conan/Kratos/Zangief are equally, if not more sexualized than their scantily-clad female peers and therefore sexism is “solved”.
(especiallynipples), but also how bare skin itself doesn’t yet guarantee sexyness.
That’s why @partsal‘s female barbarian comparison is still a perfect example of how completely different character premise can be conveyed with the same amount of bare body:
~Ozzie
After long weeks of fighting Tumblr’s amazingly absurd flagging and appeal system, this post finally became visible again, so we can bring it up.
YES, DESPITE ALL ODDS, PEOPLE STILL UNIRONICALLY ARGUE THAT NEKKID RAIDEN IS AS SEXUALIZED AS QUIET IS. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
So here’s our brief reminder about the (not really) subtle difference between nudity and objectification.
First of all, this is not an argument that women’s armor in media should be the same as dudes’ armor. Most main characters are supposed to look attractive most of the time they’re on screen; whether because of social or biological conditioning, the bulk added by armor on dudes’ chests and shoulders hottens them up. Dudes in practical armor still meet the hotness standards they’re held to. Women, however, genuinely are trickier to armor up without losing the hourglass figure or lean lines expected by their hotness standards. That’s a thing. Whatever you may think of it, it’s a thing. And it’s not like anybody ever gets a closed-face helmet.
TRICKIER. Not impossible, and I’m looking at you, director Patty Jenkins and costume designer Lindy Hemmings of Wonder Woman.
Honestly, I would have just let this bullshit armor go as typical Hollywood bullshit armyr, but Jenkins made the mistake of arguing, “To me, they shouldn’t be dressed in armor like men […]It should be different. It should be authentic and real – and appealing to women.”
Authentic and real, my functional-armored ass, and yes, I have armor for swordfighting, and yes, it’s damn well functional because I have a thing about avoiding cracked ribs and collarbones. They hurt.
Jenkins is open about the heels and leg exposure being wish-fulfillment, which is stupid, because you can show off muscle without showing flesh (*cough* Superman *cough* Batman *cough* every Superdude costume ever), but fine, we’ll let it go. What I will NOT let go is the belief that this armor is functional, or that you can’t have sexy AF armor that shows no skin whatsoever, AND is entirely functional.
But, Scarlet Librarian, What Exactly is “Functional?”
Let’s be clear on this before we jump in. There’s a lot of bits armor needs to protect, but for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll mostly be talking about breastplates, the biggest offender of Stupid Armyr Bullshit. The point of a breastplate is to protect the squishy bits like the heart, liver, lungs…do you know how high up in the torso lungs go?
THAT HIGH. The lungs are higher up than the bust stops, which is why a functional breastplate does not STOP at the breasts, it needs to cover the full torso in order to prevent getting stabbed or shot in the lung, which is frequently lethal, by the way, almost certainly in a premodern context. Mail usually doesn’t stop an arrow, although it can reduce the damage done. That’s what plate is for.
Any breastplate that does not protect the lungs is completely non-functional, and will not be discussed here. We shall pretend these abominations simply do not exist.
Also important, although less vital, are the collarbones, which I trust you can find yourself. They’re right where many a sword swing tends to go, and yes, a piece of rebar swung at full-strength into your collarbone is going to crack if not snap it, and even mail is only going to help so much. If you are very, very lucky, you will be so hopped up on adrenaline you won’t register the pain until after it’s no longer necessary to use both your arms to protect yourself. You’ll still lose strength and mobility in that arm, and if you’re very, very unlucky, there will be nerve damage rendering it useless.
Stupid Hollywood Bullshit, But Demonstrates That a Completely Armored Woman Can Still Be Sexy AF
As many people have pointed out already, cleavaged breastplates (as seen on Gal Gadot and co. as Wondwoman), which make a dip or crease in between the boobs, are not actually functional. They’ll direct a strike, and all the force behind it, directly into the sternum, rather than deflecting it like an outwardly curved shape. As such, the following are not entirely functional, but still cover everything without rendering the wearer a shapeless hag.
Sonja (Rhona Mitra), Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. She is awarded compensation points for her excellent gauntlets, and especially for the heavy gorget protecting her neck.
Lady Sif (Jaime Alexander) from Thor. I don’t like this aesthetically, personally, and the whole “oh, we’ll just put some stupidly-light mail over her upper chest and that will take care of the GAPING OPENING at her upper chest” is bullshit, as is having mail directly over skin with no fabric or leather beneath (you’ll have mail shaped bruises and abrasions if you take a hit there, and it’s just uncomfortable even if you don’t). However, once more, completely covered (the mail at least covers the skin), still shapely.
Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) in Jack and the Giant Slayer. The cleavage here isn’t excessive (especially in comparison to Gadot and co., whose boobs are damn near mummified), but it’s enough I can’t put it in the other categories. I also have maneuverability concerns–the pauldrons are attached at the shoulder weirdly, and the integrated turtleneck, as opposed to a separate gorget, could be problems. How the hell do you get into this thing, anyway? Body armor is typically a breastplate, which is attached to a matching backplate if you can afford it, not a bronze tunic thing. Seriously, where are the openings?
Fantasy, But Included For the Sake of Argument
Stuff that, while not entirely functional, covers everything without making the wearer look a shapeless hag, or whatever these costumers are so afraid of.
Emily Blunt as Freya in The Huntsman: WInter’s War. Again, no neck armor, and the neckline itself is a little low for my liking, but most of her torso is covered, along with her arms, which have both pauldrons on the shoulders and bazuband-style vambraces protecting her forearms and elbows. The scales are really small, which won’t protect her as well as more historically-based lamellar (see below) would, but this is is probably as good as mail, and the point remains that she’s completely covered in metal and still looks damn good. It’s also worth mentioning Freya is a scary-ass winter witch with guards around her RIDING A GODDAMN POLAR BEAR, so while this is fantasy armyr, it doesn’t have to be functional so much as look badass and sexy, and it’s doing just fine with that. While still being more functional than a lot of hands-on-Warrior-Chick armor is.
For sale by Armstreet, this is…okay, this is a really weird bastard child of late 16th-17th century stays and someone’s perception of Greek armor. I wouldn’t want to wear this in any actual combat situation, since mobility is pretty restricted, and my god, please wear some pants and something with sleeves or that shit is going to chafe, but again–Female torso, fully covered, even her neck, still a very feminine look. (And it comes with a helmet!)
Also from Armstreet. She has been granted, of all shocking things, clothing under her armor! Heavens to betsy. I’m not a huge fan of those pauldrons and the way they fit, and for this to be a wholly protective kit she’d need a chainmail coif (like a hood that also pools around the neck and upper shoulders), but we’ll roll with it, especially as the coif would cover the armor that it’s advertising here.
Really, Not Bad
Virginia Hankins, stuntie and performer at the Southern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire (and who thought that was a good name for it?). This is clearly costume armor that’s never been hit in its life (she doesn’t joust, as we’ll get to later, but rides around hitting targets, which, yes, is very difficult, and how the hell she does it with that hair I’ll never know, because mine would be trying to strangle the horse, but doesn’t require impact-resistant armor). It’s too tight-fitting to be entirely functional, because the idea here is to look badass and feminine on horseback from a distance. Fully covered. Still clearly woman-shaped.
Mia Wasikowska as Alice in Alice in Wonderland, really weird pseudo-mail sleeves that the vambrace bits are just sort of riveted to, but whatever, quite reasonable pauldrons, and even gauntlets!
Sans bunny.
Kristen Stewart as Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman, with surprisingly better-looking mail. It’s less girly, both in the shorter and less fluffalous skirts over the hips and thighs, the embellishments, and the overall design, but SW and the H has a weird attempt to be gritty and realistically semi-medieval thing going on (which is hilarious on multiple levels). Honestly, they may have been going for borrowed dude armor here, but, again, completely covered, still looks fine. (Okay, except for that hair, nobody ever looks good with their hair scraped back directly from their forehead. That has nothing to do with the armor, the armor is fine.)
Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones, in a padded gambeson, mail (still stupidly light, but mail), and even a helmet! The lobstered plates coming down over her hips are too short and too narrow, but she does have something. She can’t really be described as “shapely,” but she’s not supposed to, the point is she’s mistaken for a guy with her face hidden in the helmet anyway (nor is Gwendoline Christie the most hourglassy lady to begin with). The design of the breastplate could very easily be altered to taper in more at the waist as well if you really wanted to girl up the look. (Also included because a number of fighting female friends would beat the crap out of me if I didn’t, this armor is BELOVED among them. And it really is quite schnazzy.)
Miranda Otto as Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings, also disguised as a dude, and it’s hard to get a cuirass like this to fit really snugly when it’s over accurately-sized mail. So while she doesn’t look all that girly here, she’s not supposed to, and again, like Brienne’s, this armor could be feminized without losing functionality. (There is, however, NO excuse for this hair being all over the place, NO excuse whatsoever. Tolkien SPECIFICALLY refers to her hair being braided, besides the fact that you do not, ever, want long hair around mail, because it WILL get caught and it WILL hurt; long hair worn down on your neck is really hot and sweaty and gross if you stick a metal pot on it and then run about in a very active manner; and two words, ladies and gentleman: HELMET HAIR. It’s real. It’s sweaty. It’s gross. It’s at least a little tangly even if you braid your hair, which is what very nearly every long-haired (and by that I mean even to the shoulders) woman I know who sticks her head in a metal pot and then bounces around excitedly while wearing heavy, warm protective clothing does, because HELMET HAIR. Would you play hockey, or roller-derby, or any other active sport that requires a helmet, with waist-length hair left to its own devices? I’m not even talking about how it looks when you don’t have a professional team making sure you look rugged and a bit tousled but, not, you know, sweaty and gross and afflicted by HELMET HAIR. This is just about how nasty it feels.)
Historically-Based
Nicole Leigh Verdin in Shroud. While cinched in at the waist to an impractical degree, it still follows the lines of the late-fifteenth-century Gothic armor I promise I’m getting to, so it still keeps EVERYTHING COVERED.
Valentina Cervi as Caterina Sforza Riario in Borgia, set in the 1490s. See what I mean about Brienne’s thigh protection?
Gina McKee as Caterina Sforza Riario in The Borgias, yup, still 1490s. Both the pauldrons and helmet are weird, but the breastplate is decent, and that’s the main culprit in bullshit female armor.
Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. This armor is more than a century too early, but put her in period-accurate armor and you get…
Helen Mirren in Elizabeth I, an HBO minseries. The costuming in this miniseries is damn near reproduction quality, and I’m happy they went with an accurate peascod shaped breastplate because I’m an accuracy geek, but nobody has ever looked good in either a peascod doublet or a breastplate shaped like one, which is why the costume team on the appealing-to-a-broad-audience-that-just-wants-to-see-Cate-Blanchett-Look-Hot-In-Armor Golden Age went all Gothic instead.
So this is actually a gaming mini made by Thunderbolt Mountain, designed to be 12th century Rus, including lamellar (interlocking plates) armor over mail. This is actually pretty accurate except for some weird draping in the mail coif over her neck and head (and the fact that there’s nothing between the mail and her hair–DO NOT LET MAIL TOUCH YOUR HAIR, you will be very, very sad and possibly bald). Lamellar, which is I what I wear for several practical reasons not all to do with the Girl Body Thing, is awesome for female armor because of how easy it is to adjust the fit as you make it, and because of its flexibility once it’s made. My quibble here is actually that she only has a sword belt, not another belt cinched in snug around the natural waist, because that makes a HUGE difference for both men and women by getting some of the weight to settle on the hips rather than hanging off the shoulders and back.
Actual Damn Armor
Armorer Jeff Wasson’s wife Stacey, wearing early- to mid-15th century armor. As armor. Because she’s not an actress or performer, she’s a legit jouster (this is why she has the larger pauldron on the left shoulder, where she’s most likely to get hit).
Here she lands a hit on her opponent. This group used balsa-wood inserts in the lances that are designed to break on impact, the idea being that you get hit but don’t, you know, die (this is historically accurate; tournament lances were designed to break themselves, not break people). That being said, you’re still being hit with a bigass stick by someone on a galloping horse; I would bet money she’s not only taken hits in that armor but also fallen off the horse in it.
(Thomas Swynborn Dating 1412 Church of St Peter and St Paul, Little Horkesley, Essex, England.) What dude armor from the same period as Wasson’s is based on. The hourglass was in for guys as well as women, to the point that men’s clothing heavily padded the shoulders and chest to exaggerate it, which is what makes the 15th century a great period to base feminine-looking female armor on.
Other examples of extant (and thus made for dudes) armor that would make excellent inspiration for functional and feminine armor, JUST SAYING, PROFESSIONAL COSTUMERS, is from the late 15th century, google “gothic armor” for more:
15th c. German,courtesy of Dr. Andrea Carloni (Rimini, Italy), AAF ID.
1470 Leeds, UK, Royal Armouries, II.168, composite armour “alla tedesca”, breastplate formerly in Churburg, Milano and Brescia Images courtesy of Igor Zeler*, AAF ID.
1484 – Vienna, Austria, Kunsthistorisches Museum, A 62, armour for Archduke Sigismund von Tirol, by Lorenz Helmschmid, Augsburg Front image courtesy of Blaz Berlec, AAF ID.
No attribution, but typical of late 15th c. and holy shit, gorgeous. Look at me, I’m a pretty, pretty badass!
In Conclusion
Armor: Can be feminine, functional, and hot at the same damn time, without showing any skin. And while I’m of the opinion that armor needs to look functional for the wearer to be badass, and that wearing a metal swimsuit makes the wearer look ridiculous and neither badass nor sexy, I recognize that when catering to mainstream audience, female characters frequently need to look sexy as well as functionally badass. That’s the reality in Hollywood right now, like it or not. I do NOT recognize that skin is necessary for this, or that bullshit fantasy armyr is, because holy shit, how hot would Lady Badass look in some of that Gothic stuff? SMOKING hot. All the more so because it would be completely functional.
Just saying, costume designers and denizens of the internet. Just saying.
When creating fictional female armor, the designers can go literally anywhere on the scale between “Stupid Hollywood Bullshit” and “Actual Damn Armor” and not worry about the character losing her femininity or sex appeal, if they do their job right. All without showing an inch of randomly exposed skin.
Things like flaunted cleavage or suspiciously uncovered thighs are a dead giveaway that whoever approved the costume just opted for “sexy” shortcuts. They really highlight that the sole priority was to convey generic “hotness”.
While we here at BABD believe that woman characters should be more than just eye-candy (and dead, from the way they’re usually dressed), we should probably remind people that women can also look hot while also being protected in battle. Most of the examples here are plate armor, but trust me, it’s possible with other types of armor as well.
So if, for example, a character is out there fighting, but she also uses her Womanly Wiles to get the Men to her side, she can, like… wear armor… and do that also?
And honestly, even if armor was just fundamentally un-hot (would that be “cold” then?), she probably has more than one outfit. It’s just that maybe you shouldn’t wear your little black dress to beat some dudes up. Unless you’re Superman, he’s got literally 0 excuse.
It’s bad enough when a sci-fi setting has all the ladies wearing painted-on tights so snug that you can see all the way up their respective buttcracks, but then they go and do it with the armour, too.
Like, it’s armour.
It’s a solid chunk of heavy, rigid material.
How does that work?
How do you walk with a pair of inflexible domes tightly cupping your glutes?
Hell, how do you even stand when you’ve got a quarter-inch durasteel plate wedged so far up your ass you’re tasting metal?
That said, butts or no butts, armor so snug it looks like shiny bodypaint/metal spandex is a blight on costume design that should be stopped.
~Ozzie
As we throwback this nightmare fuel this week, I’d just like to casually remind everyone that, at least when it comes to 3D modeling, giving a character individual butt cheeks and individual boobs is way more work than giving them actual Real Person clothes. So there are still people in the gaming industry who look at their budget, look at their specs, and then decide that, yes, spending that money on individually-modeled boobs and butts is a Good Investment.
That’s not even metal, and even it looks physically painful.
So, 2018 has come and gone. Sadly but unsurprisingly, the skimpy female armor and the high level variant did not die as a commonplace trope. Oh well… maybe 2019 will be the year free of bikini armor! Let’s ask the magic eight-ball…
But you know what popular media? I dare you to make a fool of me.
All you have to do is go a year without ridiculous female armor… that should be easy right?
Greco-Roman mythology follow-up to NorseDat Ás is AMAZING!
Pan/Faunus, Poseidon/Neptune and Dionysus/Bacchus have got to be my personal faves. They look so fun!
You can almost forget that, according to myths, most of those gods aren’t very keen on consent when approaching women and men…
Of course that leaves us with a quiet expectation for equivalent to Dat Asynja coming out sometime later, with goddesses doing some very epic anti-pinup 😉
Fire Emblem Heroes has already been getting some flack for their uninspired character design, and this is a good comparison of the changes made to Rhajat for Heroes. Her original design still has problems, primarily the nylon tech this fantasy country seems to have, but the new version (named Virghat) is just so much worse. From the wiki entry on Rhajat:
…It is revealed that her cold personality is a means to mask her loneliness due to being raised in the Deeprealms by herself.
I’d believe that description, given that this was her sprite in Fates:
She’s hunched over, her eyes are in shadow, and her arms are in front of and around herself protectively. But the Heroes design and posture? All I’m getting from it, is generic poker-faced cute caster.
Oh, and of course, there’s a damage sprite, as mentioned in the comparison image.
In these troubling times where our social media platforms must scramble frantically, expunging massive amounts of imagery as the only means to protect us from anything titillating it’s a comfort to know that there will at least be good wholesome content from family friendly companies like Nintendo who make games you can play in your living room or in public without it getting awkward!
As a side none, it appears that they decided to really lean into the damage sprite with her fashion sister, Loki.
