Amidst the ruin of this thread are some really good discussions about body type and the differences between sexualization and oversexualization, well done fellow escapists. Worth the read.
As for the characters themselves? I like them on the whole.
-Tracer is a speedster character so it'd make sense for her legs to be unarmored and sleek.
-Pharrah is a heavy assault character with some wings for mobility, her armor is appropriately thick and robotic to deal with her weapons (probably) huge recoil and flight capabilities. As for it's feminine shape? Women soldiers have been campaigning for armor that fits them years now, I approve.
-Symmetra has this whole sleek tech thing going on, she's clearly all about the marriage of form and function in both her tech and character design. And she is appropriately elegant, with an evening dress like costume that shows off some leg. I'd say it's in context with her personality and aesthetic.
-Mercy is where I start getting a bit wary though. An angelic motif for your medic, fine great. Cool tech wings, I like her hair......but those boob bags. When did boob bag clothing become a thing? I blame 90's comics personally. I have never in my life seen a piece of clothing with two boob shaped bags that contour perfectly to a woman's breasts. And more than that, it just feels a little lazy, the bottom half of her design is cool. It's got edges and curves and overlap, the top half is just basically white body paint.
-Widowmaker is, well.......Widowmaker. Okay here's the thing, I don't think anybody has a problem with cat suits as a thing for stealth assassins to wear right? I mean it makes sense, you don't want a bunch of gear or armor jangling around on you when trying to sneak and snipe, she has a grappling hook for vertical movement so it makes sense for her to be lightly armored. But there's the open front, and the butt contouring and the posing. A good assassin wants to be unseen, or kill from distances so as to make the question of stealth a moot point anyway, but her whole character design just shouts "look at me! Look at how sexy I am! Look at how my butt sticks out when I crouch!" I still think she's cool, her abilities seem fun and I love sniping so I'll definitely be giving her a shot (harhar) but I think her design would be infinitely better with a few small changes, seriously just lose the open front and make the butt not so contouring, I mean even ultra thin, tight fabric doesn't just settle in a butt crack, it stretches over it, it doesn't define it. And I gotta add this as kind of a disclaimer, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a sexy lady assassin, as long as her sexiness makes sense in context, if widowmaker's MO was to approach her target at a fancy bar/ party/ whatever, seduce them, get them to a private place, and kill them in close quarters, then revealing attire would be fine, it'd make sense. But as she's a sniper, her attire should be functional.
I guess 3/5 really isn't so bad. My main issue with the characters as a whole is the fact that they're all classic hourglass figures. Body type variation is a good thing, and even in combat disciplines different people's bodies look different. I mean Pharrah is in a huge suit of armor, she could be a bit stockier to reflect the strength required to move and fight in that thing. And despite Tracer being a speedster she's still got some pretty big boobs, when ladies run they tend to wear sports bras, because running with big boobs hurts. Sports bras do some serious compression to keep stuff from bouncing around, seems like Tracer should be wearing one. But these are tiny nitpicks in some pretty impressive character designs, I like the characters, and their personalities (aside from widow maker who seems to have the laziest evil assassin personality and backstory available) are distinct and fit their characterization.
Anyway yeah, kind of a long post. I hope at least a few people read the whole thing.
