Windknight said:
Again... A PERSON choses what they chose to wear, chooses how they act and has all the rights in the world to do whatever they please with their own body, behaviour and fashion choices.
I'm not sure I follow how you're using this in your argument considering every character that's created out of fiction is not a real person. I could understand if the depiction was of a real person and they chose to exaggerate certain features, but this discussion revolves around a fantasy fictional setting.
I'll try and break this down but please correct me if I'm misunderstanding any of your words.
Windknight said:
A CHARACTER has all this chosen for them by an artists who's intentions are in question. And in the cases that cause people Ire the intention is to provide titillation using characters who are supposed to be strong women.
I have to ask, how do you know what the characters are supposed to be like?
I can understand someone having a desire for characters to be a certain way, but "how they are supposed to be like" is really up to the artist creating them, no? Especially considering these are all net new characters.
In a related tangent, this would imply that an artist who creates male characters that provide titillation to a female audience would somehow suggest that that artists intentions should be brought into question, especially should someone deem that those characters fall short of their definition of "strong men".
Windknight said:
And if this is porn or erotica, that's no problem - sexy outfits have their place.
You say that as if they are separate subjects in all other mediums (like tv, movies, music, etc.). Are you of the opinion that they ought to be strictly separated in those mediums as well?
Windknight said:
if its a fantasy knight who's supposed to be fighting monsters with sword and shield, and the portrayal is more interested in giving us boobs and ass, its weakening the character for the sake of titillation
This is where I disagree the most, the notion that it "weakens the character" is truly a judgement made by the individual, not an objective assessment of that character.
If you simply switch the genders and present them the same way (ie. a Barbarian character like say Conan who fights with a sword and shield, and little else), few people would make the same assessment that it "weakens the character". If anything, people would see the exposed vulnerability as risk-taking and boldness "because its a male character". Can you see where my concern lies with how opinion changes based on the gender of a character?
Does it appeal more to one gender rather than the other? Absolutely.
Does it make it wrong to do so? I have to ask why?
I don't see many men interested in characters like Jacob (Twilight) / Mr Big (SatC) / etc. and likely because those characters appeal more to women than men (they were designed to). Now I'm sure someone will point out that those are all physically moderately proportioned males, and obviously because they are played by real people. Even if they were drawn, they'd likely still be less exaggerated than what you see with female characters and that's because what appeals to women is not the same as what appeals to men, especially when it comes to accentuating physical features. That doesn't equate to one being less "bad" than the other though.
Windknight said:
- this is objectification.
I also have to dispute this. How are they objectified? Are they used as an object in the game? Are they denied recognition as a human being and used as a form of currency or property? Do they not stand alongside all the other heroes on equal footing? How do you even objectify a fictional fantasy character that's not a real person to begin with?
Windknight said:
this is why people don't like the chainmail bikini, and half naked women in these kind of situations.
Agree with your choice of words here. Not liking something because it doesn't appeal to you is okay. A lot of people would also not like men in chainmail bikinis, but that wouldn't make those characters weak, worth less (at a fundamental level, not preference), or wrong compared to any other.
Windknight said:
To bring up an example from comic books, a female character is welding, has an accident and is burned. If, as scripted, she had been wearing safety gear thats all it would have been. But he artist wanted breasts, so put her in a low cut top, which ultimately made the character look like a complete idiot when she had the accident and got burned.
Do you not see how you are projecting your opinion of what constitutes as strength / intelligence in this very same situation. You are judging the character (or setup, whichever you choose) by what you think is important and value, not by what is actually described as happening.
Windknight said:
Please stop trying to say that by being against objectified characters I'm trying to 'slut shame' women who chose their own wardrobes. Its not what I'm saying and you know it.
That's not what I'm saying at all and I hope the above clarifies where I'm coming from.
What I'm against is a destructive attitude towards the portrayal itself.
Going back to the characters that appeal more to women than men. If TV / Movies / etc. were to be overly saturated with nothing but these characters, my opinion wouldn't be that those characters need to disappear / are "worth less" / "bad" / or demean men, it would be that variety is needed to enrich the medium.
For example, how many soap operas contain male characters designed to appeal to men more than women? Is it wrong that they are heavily biased to appeal to women instead of men? Does that make the writer or director have suspect intentions? I have to say no to all of those. Does it enrich the medium to have characters that appeal to both genders? Sure. After all, I'm sure most people would prefer watching Game of Thrones versus The Young and the Restless but that doesn't make The Young and the Restless a bad show because they target one audience over the other.
