#BodyPositivity #FemaleRepresentation #GenderEquality
Hey there! 🌟 It’s a hot topic of discussion in the gaming world – why do female characters in games face so much controversy for having unrealistic bodies, while male characters seem to get a free pass? Let’s dive into the juicy details and explore this issue together!
Unpacking Unrealistic Bod:ies in Games
When it comes to male and female bodies in gaming, there’s definitely a double standard at play. Female characters often sport exaggerated figures with tiny waists, large busts, and curves that defy gravity. While male characters aren’t immune to this trend, their bodies tend to be hypermasculinized with rippling muscles, chiseled jawlines, and unrealistic physique that are equally as unattainable. So why does the backlash seem to land more on female characters?
It’s All About Representation
One key reason for the uproar surrounding female characters’ bodies in games is the issue of representation. Women have long been underrepresented in gaming, and when they do appear, they are often objectified and sexualized. This perpetuates harmful stereotypes and sets unrealistic standards for body image, which can have a negative impact on players, especially young and impressionable ones.
On the other hand, male characters are typically portrayed as strong, powerful, and in control, creating a different but equally damaging set of expectations for men. While male bodies in games may not be as scrutinized as female bodies, the pressure to conform to an idealized male physique still exists and can be just as harmful.
Shifting the Narrative
To combat these harmful portrayals of bodies in games, it’s essential for developers to strive for more diversity and authenticity in character design. By creating characters with a wider range of body types, genders, and backgrounds, games can become more inclusive and reflective of the real world. Celebrating different body shapes and sizes can help players feel seen and valued, regardless of how closely they resemble a traditional ideal.
At the end of the day, both male and female characters in games deserve to be represented in a way that is respectful, empowering, and true to life. By challenging unrealistic body standards for all characters, we can create a more inclusive gaming culture that celebrates diversity and authenticity. So let’s continue the conversation and work towards a brighter, more inclusive future for gaming! 💪🎮
Remember, it’s not about tearing each other down, but lifting each other up and celebrating our uniqueness! Let’s game on together! 🚀 #GameOn #RepresentationMatters
I think it’s a combination of things:
* Men’s depictions tend to emphasize their masculinity (large muscles,) while women’s depictions tend to emphasize their sex appeal (breasts and buttocks.) If men’s depictions focused more on bulges and buttocks, there would likely be more concern.
* There is a long history of women being portrayed unrealistically in media, and the damage is causes young women is much more well-documented than the damage male depiction causes young men.
* There is likely under-recognition of the effect these depictions have on men.
* Eating disorders (more common in women) are more easily recognized as harmful than bodybuilding obsession (more common in men,) and steroid abuse is implicitly tolerated by society even though it’s technically illegal and banned in many sports. So society as a whole is more able to recognize harm from unhealthy obsession with women’s beauty than unhealthy obsession with men’s bodies.
* Let’s face it: a lot of games break their own rules to objectify women. The classic example is male characters getting stronger the more they’re covered with armor, but women characters getting stronger the skimpier their outfit is. Even in games that give women full armor, there is often a visible bust built into the chest, making sure that any sufficiently hard blow will immediately break the wearer’s ribs. And some games go full on bikini armor.
It’s because men simply don’t care lol.
I could spend 10 years in the gym, and still not look like certain male characters simply because I don’t have the genetics for it. (Shoulder width, pec insertions, narrow waist etc)
But ranting on the internet will not fix this so I’m simply not bothered.
Because both male and female characters are primarily designed to appeal to a masculine ideal – male characters are designed as a power fantasy for men, female characters are designed to be a sexual fantasy for men.
If video games were designed to primarily cater towards women, both the men and women would be designed extremely differently. Most women do not want to be dainty princesses with fat tits and bland personalities, nor are most women really attracted to hulking muscle machines whose main personality trait is stoicism.
Those female bodies are very realistic, there are usually based on female body, especially today with motion capture.
In the most objective sense possible and without any judgement to either, it’s because men aren’t threatened by it on the scale women are. The reasons for that are multifaceted and not as black and white as just objectification and patriarchy, (though they do include them) but are numerous and also involve culture, history and innate biology.
The reasons for it being particularly unpalatable for women boil largely down to women having suffered objectification on a much larger scale for so long. This directly leads to harm against women and really is the most important thing to take away from this. There’s also the fact that female homo sapiens have a more cooperative social style amongst each other whereas males is more competitive – “We’re all 10s” vs “You look like a blobfish my dude.”
They’re both the same in terms of what the media presenting for both sexes – an idealised and ultra-fertile form which tells your caveperson brain they’re capable of creating healthy offspring. That makes you buy the media they’re in. Although the term unrealistic is often used, it’s a bit of a misnomer as often these forms are closer to idealised than straight up impossible.
Finally, I might catch shit for this but I think any reasonable person would agree – the presence of a hyper attractive woman is just a greater threat to a woman than a hyper attractive man is to a man. If you’ve ever been in a female-dominated work field you will have seen this time and time and time again.
Does it bother you that men are being portrayed this way? Do you believe it is causing harm to men to compare themselves to these unrealistic bodies? Or is it that you don’t like that one group (woman) are being defended while men are being ignored?
If it’s the first two, then we (men) need to start stepping up and working towards better treatment of men. If it is the last one, then I STILL think it is time for men to step up for the better treatment of men.
Feminism has been hard at work for decades and decades now. Fighting tooth and nail and advocating for the science behind improving discrimination and adverse effects. But you know the name of the study of gender and how our societal norms interact with gender? The study that would specifically help men fight for better treatment? Gender Studies.
Right now, Gender Studies is a Bad Word amongst a HUGE portion of men. So they rally against the very thing that would help them achieve the goals they pretend to have. Instead, almost every single person who says they fight for men’s rights, actually just fight against woman… Not great.
Be the change you want to see. Start fighting for men and men’s issues. And do it for it’s own sake, not just as a comparison to woman and how there ARE woman working towards helping women’s issues. It isn’t a bad thing that people are working towards helping women’s issues, its a bad thing that people don’t seem to care about men’s issues except as a weapon to fight against women.
Generally (not all of the time), unrealistic male designs cater to what men think looks strong/cool/etc, but unrealistic female designs often just cater to what men find sexy.
The problem most people have isn’t that the women are unrealistic, it’s that they’re unrealistic specifically to be sexually appealing and not much else, and some people find that boring or objectifying.
I don’t think most men have a problem with super muscular dudes, because it’s meant to be a power fantasy, not a sexual fantasy (most women aren’t actually super into incredibly jacked dudes!)
Double standards
Both designs are intended to inspire male gratification. The unrealistic male figure is meant to inspire the male gamer in who they want to be, the unrealistic female figure is meant to be who they want to fuck.
Big tits are way more common than six packs irl; just throwing in my two cents here.
bouncy boobs aren’t the same as muscular torsos.
The physique does not come at the expense of the character. For example, the man being buff will not subtract his character traits. However, the woman being attractive might be all she serves for the story. so it’s kind of dehumanizing and devaluing, when a character such as that occurs. For some individuals, whether or not a female character attractive will literally make or break the character, no what matter how well written she is. Her predominant role will be for appeasement of others’ fantasies.
I think women in general are tired of the obsession with how they look and the constant sexualization. As a woman I don’t find the over characterization of the male physique to be appealing. Flat stomachs are fine but 6 pack abs not so much. If I see a totally ripped guy I think he doesn’t have much time for anything other than work and the gym.
The biggest thing I’ve seen bring this discussion back into focus recently is there seems to be a massive backlash from people online against games that are trying to have more realistic depictions of women
Tren has never been more popular among young teen boys.
Methinks that maybe these masculine role models aren’t as positive as we’re being demanded to see them as…
Idk, they’re both my power fantasy.
There’s not really a ton of actual drama, just a lot of people claiming there is.
It’s very common for people to criticize games for unhealthy depictions of men while also criticizing them for unhealthy depictions of women. But there’s a ton of people on that right wing grift train who need content, and they’re accepting of the idea that men should be better represented than women. So the result is, only the criticism of the portrayal of women is boosted into the public sphere as a bad thing.
In reality, it’s not as big of a deal as the grifters want you to believe. You can say Stellar Blade is insanely pervy and still like it, and most people do.
People have made great points, but there’s also the fact that there are a fair amount of fairly ugly, average, out of shape, and un-macho male characters in media. They’re not as common as big strong men, but more common than out of shape, average, or unattractive women.
Superman is the ideal of what a man should be to men. Superwoman is also an ideal of what a woman should be… to a man. There’s a bit of a mismatch there. This is what people mean when they talk about “men writing women”; they tend to just be a pair of tits smacked onto an hourglass with shoelace arms for the sake of fan service. Objectification is the problem; these are the women that men want to see around themselves; not the ones women want to be.
I met a lot, a LOT of insecure and hateful guys when mystic messenger came out and became a small craze amongst some ladies. They hated the women who liked the game, they put down the designs of the men, and they really just became an even more awful version of the people who hate on women’s bodies in games. I recall them doing the same to Tom hiddleston when thor came out or David Tennant when he was in doctor who.
They weren’t even unrealistic bodies. They looked about as good as people who go to the club. People act weird when they feel like they’re getting outperformed by something popular; it just so happens that this is a male dominated field.
Imagine another Justin Bieber or imagine Taylor Swift was a male performer with all of those fans still.
Mfw my favourite protagonist is carlo from lies of P (visually I mean, otherwise it’s John Marston)
Probably because both are still made to cater to men’s fantasies. Men who care about this want to have sex with the women and look like the men. Most women don’t want someone built like Ryu. We know that’s not real. And honestly a lot of male VG characters *are* more realistic. Just on the extreme end. Not something most men could achieve, but not something NO man could achieve. And being extremely fit makes sense for most characters in games where they fight or try to survive an apocalypse etc. I also see a pretty wide variety of male body types on a quick search of male video game characters.
The female characters are less varied. They seem to focus on sex appeal over fitness. How is a woman with no visible muscle tone and a 22 inch waist battling dragons? It makes no sense.
If a game is not geared toward sex appeal why do some male gamers get so angry when the female characters are drawn more realistically? Do you believe female gamers would get upset the same way if the male characters were made more lean and with more clothes?
Comparisons are the thief of joy, and men generally aren’t comparing themselves to those men; the women are. Its the same moral panic that happened to barbie dolls, they claimed it was giving young girls unrealistic expectations.
The reality is much more boring, mattel wants to sell dolls. Video game devs want to sell their games. And sex sells, sometimes even having a dirty mind of its own(overwatch being labeled the best rule34 game nobody plays).
This might be my own bias, but on the topic of sales and marketing, theres a quiet industry reason why TV executives would never show two men kissing on screen, if they [valued their ratings](www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19419899.2017.1328459).
Having less attractive women isn’t having that kind of impact so its not reducing sales.
Just look at armor progression. Male armor gets more ‘armor-y’ while higher levels of female armor gets more skimpy.
But they’re not unrealistic.
This criticism isn’t true for most games any more. The moment I hear it, I assume the person doesn’t game.
I’m a woman, before anyone asks.
While the point you make is valid, it does not show the full issue.
In power-fantasy games, it is quite common to see men and women with equally impossible, unrealistic bodies. Men are impossibly muscular, women are impossibly voluptuous – it’s fantasy, whatever.
The issue is that in games where male characters are portrayed realistically with regular flaws and physiques, it is extremely common for female characters to have the same impossible beauty that is found in the unrealistic games. There is a male power-fantasy body, but it is not ubiquitous to all games. But it is hard to find games that have realistic, non-super model female characters. Many of the games that try get needlessly attacked by internet slugs (see Lost Horizon 2, Last of Us 2, Spider-Man 2, and more)
There is nothing wrong with making beautiful characters. But when characters *must* be beautiful at the expense of realism, theme, or common sense, that is a huge hint that there is a big problem.
You mean like the absolutely jacked up female in tlou2? I think people kicked a fuss about her because she is a skinny teen and then after years of post apocalyptic life she got more jacked than any female can. She must have been on Russian Olympic steroid team and been feed 10k calories a day. Whatever she became would require 24hr dedication to that one goal without interruption.
How did she get the steroids? How did she sleep enough to grow that big? How did she eat enough for 4 men a day? How did stress not fuck up her growth along with everything else in that world. It was unreasonable in an otherwise believable world.
She was unbelievable in a perfect world.
She was a specimen of lean pure muscle, as masculine as possible but then made her a female for what purpose?