OMG the women’s boots have no heels!!!! You could actually run in those things!
Diverse cast AND sensible footwear! A girl could hardly ask for more…
that gold stripe on the thigh looks like a zipper. is that… are those… pockets?
This is such a tiny detail but it makes me so damn happy but look at the shoes. The women and men’s shoes are the same! There are no heels! Even Voyager and DS9 gave the women shoes with a heel. Even Wonder Woman, movie of my heartface, gave Diana fucking wedges which makes no goddamn sense. But not here! The shoes are the same! No heel in in sight! I fucking love this show already.
Here’s why it’s a big deal when female uniforms in Star Trek have the same principles applied as male ones.
Basically, the franchise’s record in that regard is mixed at best and the reboot films were a pretty big step backwards, even when ignoring the double standard in how female uniforms were cut.
“He knows how to design female armour because he spent years studying corsetry and lingerie.”
Me:
The scariest part of this is that so many of these concept artists who seem to “study” corsetry lingerie tend to overlook some basic details about the universal design principles:
Boobs are not excluded from physics, especially gravity
Lingerie is not generally held on by superglue
Women need to breathe and need internal organs
Different materials have different qualities, you can’t swap out silk or soft leather for steel in… sensitive areas
So yeah… horrifying as it is, studying corsetry and lingerie would actually be a step forward in many cases.
– wincenworks
We still can not emphasize enough that overall quality of costume and character design in pop media would increase if the artists actually studied corsetry and lingerie instead of just looking at lots and lots and lots of examples, starting at puberty, as our commenter put it.
Still, please remember that very little of that would help with designing actual armor, which is a whole another layer of costume and should be treated seriously on its own.
~Ozzie
I can definitely think of a few designswe’vefeaturedonthisblog that could benefit from someone with actual knowledge of corsetry and lingerie. And that’s just off the recentfirst page of our Bikini Armor Bingo tag!
Since people often ask “Alright, well this is fantasy! Why can’t we have boob shapes in plate armor?!” I decided to make a post about it. My frustration hasnothing to do with historical inaccuracy and I’m all for imagination and freedom— but I’d like to (very quickly) illustrate this for you:
I purposely over-emphasized the shape of the two spheres in the armor so you can really think about this.
Look at the shape of the blue cups and the green line, think about the form of that on some beautiful ornate plate armor. A female warrior is charging into battle. In the midst of this, she trips! Or is pushed over, or takes a blow to the chest! So long as the force is on the front of her torso it really doesn’t matter for the conclusion:
She feels a sharp pain in her chest and hears the cracking of bone! Oh no, what’s gone wrong? Well she doesn’t have time to think about that, because she is now dead.
Her sternum just fractured, take another look at that green line, that’s where all of the pressure from any front impact is going to go because of the shape of the two blue cups made for her breasts. The rest of the armor slides around your body, but because of the two cups for breasts that are often made in fantasy female armors, the pressure point is directly on the sternum. The breasts are not going to stop the force of you falling onto them, and because of that the metal is going to push in and bash you in the sternum.
What does a fractured sternum do? Why it goes right into your heart and lungs of course.
(that was the sound of all of my followers inhaling a sharp breath between closed teeth at once)
Here are three great solutions to the problem:
GREAT EXAMPLE OF FANTASY TORSO ARMOR THAT IS FEMININE BUT FUNCTIONAL:
It is usually possible to bind the breasts when fighting if they really are far too large to fit into regular looking armor (there’s padding anyway), but most women can actually fit into a similarly sized male counterpart’s armor quite easily. Even if that’s the case, the armor can be made to have a curve to it without putting all of the pressure in one area, which was actually a style of armor for quite some time as shown here:
And don’t even get me started on the dreaded “Cleavage Window”
The “Cleavage Window” defeats the purpose of having any armor on your torso because it means you’re just going to be leaving open the vital organs the rest of the armor is trying to protect.
If people are going to protect themselves and not have much torso protection, invest in some blocking lessons, because the best defense is to not get hit at all. There are also advantages to not having plate armor, and plate armor was often really expensive anyway.
I’d also like to add that boob bulges direct blows straight to the sternum as well, rather than making them glance to either side. Good post.
This week’s throwback: one of the very first posts I reblogged and a big inspiration for BABD even existing. It is THE Boobplate Post – one with the most comprehensive explanations why semi-spherical individual compartments for each boob in armor are an awful, awful idea.
It is certainly true some people went naked or near naked into battle, but not alongside warriors in proper armor and not in battle bikinis. There are some other important factors involved in their choice to do so. Firstly it usually only in cases where they didn’t have access to armor and/or the battles were largely ceremonial or otherwise non-lethal.
Armor is developed in response to weapons and usually the first forms of defense were shields. So if you had no nudity taboo and hadn’t developed armor due to lack of resources or lack of regular conflict, you didn’t really have much choice in the matter. Particularly since your weapons are usually tools that are made for hunting or other work.
In areas where this happened, usually the battles were no war in the sense of systematic killing of the enemy but more demonstrations of strength to intimidate others – usually over a piece of farm land or livestock. It was used to resolve grievances and sometimes even as a regular sport.
Usually this happened where people needed everyone to work together in order to provide essential, which means you also don’t need any more land than you already control and work every day. When you have an argument with your neighbours, you settle it to both sides satisfaction so you can resume living next to one another.
The ability to make sophisticated items like bikini armor (which is surprisingly complicated) comes from civilizations where they have sufficient surplus of resources and people they can have specialists who can trade goods and ideas. By the time you reach this level you also a real incentive to try to obtain more and more land.
At that point civilizations can start developing dedicated weapons, training dedicated soldiers (to expand your nation or defend against invaders) and their battles start to involve countless fatalities. Then it becomes worthwhile to begin the cycle of making armor to protect against the enemies weapons, and weapons to beat your enemies armor.
TL;DR: If you’re in a society that has warriors and the know-how and resources to make bikini armor, you’re in a society where your warriors wear actual armor. There were civilizations that fought nude or near nude, but they didn’t have bikini armor, fancy swords, professional warriors or sophisticated combat techniques.
– wincenworks
Time to bring this back, as the subject of nudity and near-nudity in battle came up in a disappointing video about Barbarians and their lack of armor that was recommended to us.
So, just to reiterate: going near naked into battle =/= going into battle in a metal/leather/fur equivalent to lingerie, therefore the fact that some real life warriors, in specific circumstances, fought naked is not a historical precedent for bikini armor. Same rules apply also to gladiators.
Our advice for designers who want to convey a primitive warrior culture that either just doesn’t believe in armor or uses it just partially is, predictably, amazingly: avoid double standards.
Question how and why a “primitive”, yet pragmatic culture would develop such a sophisticated and impractical, melee-inappropriate garment as a battle bikini in the first place. Should they even have a nudity/nipple taboo and if so, why wouldn’t they just throw a simple shirt or sarashi-style wrap on women’s boobs?
If you actually believe in heroic nudity and aren’t limited by “family-friendly” commercial standards, ask yourself: which of those ladies convey the idea of a berserking, unstoppable badass who needs no armor and which ones of a fancy lingerie model:
Just as fully clothed women can be depicted sexily, so can scantily-clad women be depicted as powerful and not sexual. It’s not just about how much skin is showing.
