There are a
lot of discussions going on about ‘female armor’ and I thought I’d say something
about the issue. Lately it has been upheld as one of the most signature symbols
of sexism in today’s gaming, particularly MMO RPG’s, with people defending it
and bashing it for a variety of different reasons. Yet, I won’t discuss those
points and just talk about how I feel about the issue. It is my blog and I can
do what I want and I do not want to read a ton of online debates that probably
consists about trolls screaming at one another.
So for
starters, what is female armor?
This term
is pretty obvious, a type of armor that females in gaming wear. However, what
sets it aside from just regular armor is that it is usually incredibly impractical
for battle, exposing and sexualized. The versions include features like
bikini-style armor, high-heel boots, boob windows…. (references below)
And yes,
there’s almost no way to argue that any of it is practically combat wear and
one can easily see why this is just referred to objectifying women to market
more games to men. I completely understand that, yet I don’t really think that ‘female
armor’ is all that bad. I often find myself admiring the esthetic value of the
female armor in Tera, even though it is extremely unpractical. I usually say
that everyone likes to look at something nice, so I am not opposed to giving
men something pretty to look at. After all, if you present a woman as beautiful
there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as she’s not nothing BUT beautiful. (Though a bit of body type variation might
be nice)
So, my
problem is not with the female armor itself. You could say it comes down to the
ratio of how much skin a female character shows off in proportion to the male one. Allow
me to explain that on a more practical example.
Sometime
ago I played a game called Maestia, a standard MMO RPG. It featured only one
race, one could say elves, but really you could replace them with magic-welding
humans and nothing changes. My female character started off in the token belly
shirt and mini skirt while a male character started off with his finely tones abs
and legs completely covered. The gap was only more and more noticeable as I
leveled up as I started noticing that my clothes started getting smaller and
smaller as my manly peers seemed to be getting my missing parts. So pretty soon
I was running around with pretty much random pieces of cloth with my male peers
became impenetrable mountains of metal. Meaning that I have lost all motivation
to employ questionable camera angles on their characters while my panties were clear
on display.
Later I
have discovered Tera where the ratio was much more balanced. True, the pants of
my Castanic female always seemed to be missing a sleeve, but there was also a
fair share of fabric missing from the shirt of her male counterpart. Neither of
the attires gained any battle advantages from these features, but we sure had a
blast watching each other fight. Ironically, in this game the race with the
most unbalanced ratio of exposed skin are the humans, which made me think that
Tera actually provides secret social commentary.
So, to
recapitulate, I am not bothered by a woman wearing sexy armor in a video game.
I am more annoyed by the fact that men are never seemed to be portrayed as
sexy, setting up a double standard that is unfair to both parties!
