As a female geek, I'm subjected to overly-sexualized female characters wherever I go. Ridiculously big breasts, collagen lips and perpetual bedroom eyes, panty shots galore. Short skirts, scanty outfits, platekinis, you name it. It gets really tiresome after a while.
I'm really not so much of a comic book fan, but I've determined that there is some sort of rule in place that requires that women stand with their ass pointed towards the reader 95% of the time. That usually means horrible, spine-twisting positions that one wouldn't want to hold for more than a few seconds, if at all. Chiropractors must make a good living in superhero-land.
I'm much more of a gamer, but it's not really any better there. The whole selling point of Tomb Raider was Lara Croft's gigantic breasts. We've all heard the story of how one of the guys working on the game accidentally gave her those breasts and was told to keep them that way. Dead or Alive is known less for its gameplay and more for its ridiculous jiggle physics. Tifa's a strong, competent female character, but her victory pose still involves doing a stretch and sticking her chest way, way out. If Rayne so much as turns slightly to the left or right in a cutscene her breasts jiggle uncontrollably. There are so very many more examples, but I'd be writing an insanely long post if I tried to list them all.
It sometimes amazes me how armor (usually chainmail or plate) in World of Warcraft can magically change from full-body coverage on a male to a skimpy bikini on a female. The Outland gear is by far the worst, with my poor Death Knight running around wearing plate pants that looked like bright purple garters and stockings and a chestplate that resembled a bra. I'm a horrific undead abomination, once part of the Lich King's mighty army. I've cut down innocent townsfolk and seasoned warriors alike. Why the hell am I forced to prance about in lingerie? It doesn't make sense! Male or female, I still need the armor to protect me and it can't do that if it's barely covering me.
Of course, while the Wrath and Cataclysm sets are for the most part much better, some of them still make me shake my head. Much as I'm fond of my Saronite War Plate and use it for mogging purposes, I can't help but notice that males are fully covered while females have their midriff and upper arms showing. What, you just couldn't have an outfit without skin showing? Oh sure, she's a fearsome Scourge soldier, but we still have to show that she's a woman. Mmmmm, sexy necrotic skin. Never mind the fact that such a design would offer two nice vulnerable points. Skin! Sex! That's all that matters.
When it comes to some of the races, the sexual dimorphism is ridiculous. The males are huge, hulking beasts and the females are always curvaceous and pleasing to the eye. Even tauren women are perfect hourglasses. It's just the rule: men are large, powerful and imposing. Women must be sexy. Female trolls were originally going to be long-armed, ugly slouching monsters like the males, but the alpha testers whined so much that they and the tauren were not sexy enough that we got the models that are in-game today. If I'm going to be a troll, I want to be a slouchy monster and not a funny-looking elf with tusks, damn it.
It's very telling that male Blood Elves, who are normally considered the most aesthetically pleasing to women, are constantly derided and mocked as being "too feminine" by male gamers. The simple fact that they're a little smaller, less muscular, have nicer hair and don't act like chest-thumping ogres seems to upset these guys. Or, alternately, consider female orcs. Orc women are muscular. They have gruff voices. They're just as warrior as the males are. I always hear guys calling them unfavorable, derogatory terms whenever they're clogging up Trade with drivel on whichever race's women are the most "hot".
Imposing, strong woman = bad. Imposing, strong man = good. That's the basic attitude here.
People will claim that this is because most gamers are male and developers need to cater to their audience. Bull. Female gamers aren't nearly as much of a rarity as everyone likes to pretend. In fact, forty percent of the gaming population is female. Thirty-three percent of that are women over eighteen. This is significantly more than the eighteen percent that teenage boys make up. You know, the group that everyone loudly proclaims is the "majority" of gamers out there? Something to think about, huh?
The sad thing is that I know most guys won't actually think about it. They'll never go "Yeah, it is a little creepy how women are portrayed, isn't it?". No, they'll huff and puff and stomp their feet, fling insults and accuse women of being "too sensitive". I forget that we're supposed to like being treated like meat. We're supposed to like being ogled, groped, and pawed at. We're supposed to like the sleazy comments, the rape jokes, the obsessive focus on T&A. We're supposed to accept that a man's value lies in his capabilities, while a woman's is based on her appearance alone.
And if we don't like it, we're supposed to just shut up and take it, or else we're insecure prudes who "need to lighten up". Or of course, the classic "you're just a man-hater" retort.
It's somehow every woman on Earth's fault that these guys don't have a date, and in their eyes that makes it right to dehumanize all females. It never occurs to them that if they'd stop spewing misogynistic bile, or acting as if women somehow owe them sex, or dropped that damn "Nice Guy" act and treated us with some respect, then maybe they'd have somebody.
Unfortunately, as long as they continue to react with hostility to the notion that women are people, and as long as geek culture continues to propagate the idea that women = sex objects under the mistaken assumption that their audience is mostly male, this will never stop. And that's just really, really sad.
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