Female Game Characters Photoshopped to Average American Proportions

[Lightknight]

This ISN'T fat:

This is what people who can " do stuff" look like.

Nobody is calling those fat. But the photoshopped images of those video game characters are according the field of medicine.

If anything is causing an image problem, it's the ridiculous body weight ratios that doctors encourage.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

(I will say they probably represent the average American feminist, though),

...Really? We're stooping to mudslinging levels that are THAT low?

What?s this ?we?? I?m me; I?m not a part of a ?we.?

As far as mudslinging? I personally don?t see it as mudslinging. If you consider that comment mudslinging, then you should admit they drew first blood. I was just defending American women by saying that that the average American woman is NOT as fat as these female character adaptations are. The photoshoppers are insulting American women by insinuating that these fat figures represent the average American women.

What should be understood however, is there is a HUGE difference between " being overweight" and having a different body type. Simply because someone is an endomoprh or an apple shape does not mean they are fat. The pictures are not actually of overweight women, they are just different body types. Not everyone can be an ectomorph, or an hourglass figure regardless of how much weight they lose. You can be underweight and still not have a flat belly due to your natural body shape. The idea that some think someone is fat simply because people have different body types does not mean they actually are, it is only showing ignorance of the human form. I personally would like to see more body types included in gaming. nhaving a variety of different heights, races, body types and personalities would be great.

More of this:

No. I'm willing to put actual, real US dollars down this. If the altered Helena, Riku or Cortana went into a reputable doctor, the doctor would give them a nice long chat about how they're very, very overweight.

Almost all of these characters were perfectly fine beforehand, or only need to be slightly bigger to present a "reasonable" image.

LMAO.. WHAT?!! I certainly hope you do not actually believe that. No, they do not appear to be overweight by the pictures provided here, just different body types. This may be helpful to you:

 

[Pinky's Brain]

If you are going to have a character with a gut don't make them out to be a pure hero archetype, they are someone who value their vices over their attractiveness and their health. A gut on Leisure Suit Larry is fine, a gut on Kratos would be silly.

People need to be trained to be less image conscious, more self aware and more personally responsible. Changing the depiction of these characters wouldn't help with that, quite the opposite. I don't feel responsible for anyone but myself being fat, which I am, I don't feel responsible for anyone but myself being bulimic, I don't think society should walk on egg shells to protect your fragile little mind. If you come for the pretty girls in my entertainment I'll stop spending money on it, as I stopped spending money on Bioware games.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

This ISN'T fat:

This is what people who can " do stuff" look like.

Nobody is calling those fat. But the photoshopped images of those video game characters are according the field of medicine.

If anything is causing an image problem, it's the ridiculous body weight ratios that doctors encourage.

No, they are not according to " the field of medicine", considering what I do for a living, I think I would know. No, those images just show different body types, not " obese" people. LOL

FYI you can be " skinny" and have more fat around your arteries than someone weighing much more, and be in much poorer health. All is not determined by the circumference of one's waist or the diameter of their thighs.

 

[Erttheking]

*snip*

Statistically, America IS fat, at least compared to other countries. Part of that is due to ease of living, availability of food, etc. But part of that is also due to 'progressive' people who trot out the 'fat is healthy' line because they don't want to exercise. Being obese isn't 'healthy' at all. And there is nothing wrong with people who exercise and take care of themselves.

All making established characters obese really accomplished was having people point out that they are now obese and how stupid the whole thing was. If there isn't some deeper meaning, I don't really see the point to be honest.

Uh, I've never really heard "fat is healthy" More along the lines of "Don't mock the fat" and "being fat isn't immoral." Hell, on the Tumblr I frequent, I've seen a lot of links dedicated to proper exercise.

Ok first of all, they weren't obese. This is obese.

http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article2971526.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/%C2%A3%C2%A3%C2%A3-Britains-fattest-teenager-Georgia-Davis.jpg

Second of all, they flat out spelled out the point. On average video game women are thinner than real women. Oh and third, half of them weren't really that fat. They were more around normal size.

 

[Redryhno]

This ISN'T fat:


This is what people who can " do stuff" look like.

And yet, the pre-shopped images look closer to that than the after-shopped images...Both have problems, but I'd say the shopped ones have more.I'm going to keep saying this: If they'd given them just a bit more to their waists and made their muscles more obvious instead of focusing on the soft fat, it probably would've gone over better. Or if they'd taken purely American characters, or even if they'd taken real people instead.

Animation in general has trained us to take the lack of muscle as really telling you nothing, outside of some late 80's things, insane amounts of strength are portrayed with how much someone can stop/do and not so much their physique itself most of the time anymore.

 

[Beliyal]

I was just defending American women by saying that that the average American woman is NOT as fat as these female character adaptations are. The photoshoppers are insulting American women by insinuating that these fat figures represent the average American women.

Well, I'm googling right now, and average weight for women in America is pretty high (higher than in other regions). I don't see how are these images insulting. They were created specifically by applying average measurements to those characters to put it in perspective.

Some links: 1 [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm], 2 [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2006-12-04-size-age_x.htm], 3 [http://www.theaveragebody.com/average_weight.php]. These numbers from various sources seem consistent.

Also, an average is an average. That doesn't mean that everyone is like this, nor is anyone implying that. I'm not American, but I don't fit the average statistics for Europe either. I'm slightly shorter and weigh less than average. But the average still stands regardless of me. Not every American woman is over 160 pounds, but clearly many are, because when counting all the numbers together, we get a certain average.

Also, in my opinion, none of the photoshoped images are morbidly fat. I've seen and I know women who look like that who are perfectly healthy people. I think we use the word "obese" and "overweight" a bit too lightly and I think that media has skewed our perspective on how a real woman actually looks like. Even famous actresses get airbrushed and photoshoped for magazine covers, meaning that not even they look like the images we consume every single day. Apparently, Jennifer Lawrence [http://cdn.viralscape.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Jennifer-Lawrence-Before-After-Photoshop.jpg] is too fat [http://a4.files.xojane.com/image/upload/MTI0ODc1NTcyMjk5MTE1MTM5.gif] to be in the magazine without being photoshoped.

Other than that, some original designs are outright ridiculous. Sonya Blade for example. She has hips so narrow that not even pre-teen girls can compare, let alone girls going through puberty which specifically widens the hips in order to make the body capable of childbearing. She looks uncannily distorted in the original image, while in the photoshop, she looks like someone who can actually kick my ass. Though, if it showed a bit of muscle like actual female wrestlers, boxers or weight lifters, it would be even better. Some other photoshops are a bit meh (Rikku looks like she's presented from a weird angle which makes her look distorted in the altered image).

Captcha: heated debate. ... Seriously, it's becoming self-aware.

 

[vallorn]

The proper response to stupid flamebait articles like this is to photoshop a series of videogame characters with realistic gun and sword proportions because we've been objectifying 90 pound one-handed guns and 10 foot swords for far too long.

It's disgusting and terrifying to think that the average 135lb 13 year-old will grow up believing that 6 foot long swords are the cut off for proper one-handed swords and guns should be nearly as large as the average big block car engine.

Let's not forget how swords are often ridiculously thick, Skyrim's swords make a good example since many of them would serve better as oars than proper blades.

And stupidly silly spikes everywhere too. And horns on helmets. And silly Pauldron sizes (Looking at you GeeDubs and Blizzard!)...

Ok I'm done niggling about that. It WOULD be a fun project though I think.

 

[Xeros]

They're not insulting, or condemning these characters for being fit, as obviously they would be from the lifestyles they lead. They're simply showing what they would look like as an average American.

They're not saying all Americans are fat, it's an average; the middle-ground. If the former were the case, the average would be a hell of a lot worse off.

Their call for more realistic body type diversity does not condemn healthy lifestyles, or the characters that lead them. They just feel it would add to our constant drive to better digitally replicate our reality.

Those average body types are damn sexy.

The thing is, those aren't realistic body type diversity. They didn't reduce the boobage, they didn't tone them up, they didn't shift weight around, they just added a bunch of soft fat to them and called it a day.

Actually, they did. You can clearly see reduced breast size in some (Bikini Girl - GTA V), increased in others (Rikku - FFX-2), Tifa and Sonya Blade still have very toned bodies, and Helena Douglas has an easily-noticeable shift in the weight they added.

And while I like girls to be heavier and not be twigs, I'd much rather it be in muscle or at the very least hard fat. Not to mention their arms and legs are STILL twigs in proportion and they've got paunches, not bellies. They don't have necks, they've got jowls, which can be fine, but normally people that are fit only really have them from certain angles, not from looking straight ahead.

Not sure where you're seeing these twigs, as weight has obviously been added to all of their limbs to even the proportions out. True, it's not the best photoshop work, but it's a start; a general idea. To truly recreate these characters with the body types they had in mind would take much more than a photoshopped picture.

And this is ignoring the fact that there's only two that even fit the criteria they're judging them by. That of AMERICANS. When nearly every character up there is not American in their country of origin. Which really sickens me because most of the people I've seen that call for this crap also talk about appropriation half the damn time like it's the worst thing to ever happen, and that's exactly what they're doing with this here and they don't even realize it, or if they do, they ignore it because it's them doing it.

They're not being judged, and certainly not based on their nationality. As I stated before, they're simply showing what they would look like with the average body type of an American. Considering the problems they're raising awareness for (bulimia and anorexia), which were the main purpose of the whole stunt, are primarily, though by no means wholly American, these characters' countries of origin are irrelevant.

This isn't some egregious plot. It's just to raise awareness for health problems in America by calling out to one of our largest communities, as well as hoping we see the benefit in a more diverse set of body types. Obviously the hardened adventurers and gravity-defying melee combat god(esse)s are going to be in peak physical shape, but maybe throw the desk jockeys and bystanders some sexy, plus-sized love every now and then.

 

[Des-Esseintes]

But they did that by making established characters obese, and now everyone is saying how much worse they look by comparison. They probably should have thought about it more.

In all fairness, mate, I doubt this Bulimia group thought their intended audience would say 'Eww, fatties.'

I kind of, maybe, half-agree with you on this? Maybe? If their audience is people who vomit because they're worried people won't find them attractive, having the 'average weight' look unattractive in comparison ain't gonna do much help. Half the problem comes from simply adding fat to a very specific body type that doesn't hold it right. Like, almost all of these have an unnatural structure to them to begin with. The GTAV lady is the closest to looking like an actual human to begin with, and so adding weight causes her to continue looking like a normal human - but this time she isn't holding in her gut.

They'd have done a better job if they had re-worked their body-shapes entirely from the ground up. Give Tifa a pear shaped body, give Lara an actual hourglass rather than being a stick with an even smaller waist to simulate 'curves'. As is, they all look unnatural. A more fitting title to the article would be 'female characters photoshopped so their tits are actually in proportion to what their fattiness would most likely be'.

The intended message is still good though, I think. And the pictures still illustrate 'Don't stress too much about being a size zero with a negative waist, the vast majority of people don't actually look like that."

The aggravation probably comes from this not being an isolated incident. This is simply part of an ongoing trend people are seeing where certain groups (especially in America) try to push their politically correct messages onto everyone around them, usually stomping on things that are already there in the process. It's kinda annoying.

I don't wanna get in a big thing over this, bud. Any discussion over PCness is just a shitshow.

Me personally, I don't think whatever body-fat-acceptance-PC-throat-forcing going on is really serious enough to warrant 200 posts getting moody about a good intentioned slideshow. Especially when most of the moodiness has nothing to do with what the message is but rather what it represents inside their heads. Know what I mean? This has nothing to do with the PC brigade trying to make your favourite characters into human shaped bouncy castles, it's just some pictures about bulimia.

 

[weirdee]

tldr they should have just adjusted the bust size to match the body type and have more folds/wrinkles/smoothed out curves and ribs to reflect realism

except for cortana which some horndog nerd probably made anyway

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

This ISN'T fat:


This is what people who can " do stuff" look like.

And yet, the pre-shopped images look closer to that than the after-shopped images...Both have problems, but I'd say the shopped ones have more.I'm going to keep saying this: If they'd given them just a bit more to their waists and made their muscles more obvious instead of focusing on the soft fat, it probably would've gone over better. Or if they'd taken purely American characters, or even if they'd taken real people instead.

Animation in general has trained us to take the lack of muscle as really telling you nothing, outside of some late 80's things, insane amounts of strength are portrayed with how much someone can stop/do and not so much their physique itself most of the time anymore.

No, the preshop ones do not look more like them. If you notice here:

Bellies do not always sit flat...

Notice how " felix's belly" is out past her shorts in the first picture, and Jeter's is in the second? That is because that is how real bodies work. They didn't suddenly "become overweight" since their belly is not flat. LOL Most people do not actually have " flat bellies", even if they train like Olympians HAHA
Part of the problem is some people actually think flat belly = healthy. Jeter is top form, and what women should aspire to, not considered " unhealthy", "overweight" or "fat" in any way. Our video game portrayals of women should look like Olympians, women in top form, not some weird somewhat resembling humans shapes.

 

[Redryhno]

This ISN'T fat:


This is what people who can " do stuff" look like.

And yet, the pre-shopped images look closer to that than the after-shopped images...Both have problems, but I'd say the shopped ones have more.I'm going to keep saying this: If they'd given them just a bit more to their waists and made their muscles more obvious instead of focusing on the soft fat, it probably would've gone over better. Or if they'd taken purely American characters, or even if they'd taken real people instead.

Animation in general has trained us to take the lack of muscle as really telling you nothing, outside of some late 80's things, insane amounts of strength are portrayed with how much someone can stop/do and not so much their physique itself most of the time anymore.

No, the preshop ones do not look more like them. If you notice here:

Bellies do not always sit flat...

Notice how " felix's belly" is out past her shorts in the first picture, and Jeter's is in the second? That is because that is how real bodies work. They didn't suddenly "become overweight" since their belly is not flat. LOL Most people do not actually have " flat bellies", even if they train like Olympians HAHA
Part of the problem is some people actually think flat belly = healthy. Jeter is top form, and what women should aspire to, not considered " unhealthy", "overweight" or "fat" in any way. Our video game portrayals of women should look like Olympians, women in top form, not some weird somewhat resembling humans shapes.

Notice how all of those women you're pointing at also have defined musculature? I never said flat belly=healthy, all I said was that the pre-shopped characters looked closer in basic shape to the pictures you keep spamming than the post-shopped rounding. Not to say that those real women don't have rounding to them, but they've also got pretty obvious "sharp" points from the muscles they've got that give them a less "wobbly-looking" shape.

And I also said they could be better and actually have muscles or at least be more toned than they are. So I think you may be barking up the wrong tree with this rhetoric. I've been around incredibly fit and buff women alot of my life, I'm well aware of what they look like, and even the ones that have alot of their shape concentrated in the abdomen look closer to many of the pre-shopped characters than they do to the post-shopped stuff.

As I said, both can be done better, but using one extreme to combat another extreme is not the way to go about this.

All is not determined by the circumference of one's waist or the diameter of their thighs.

How attractive they are to men is slightly determined by this though, and, as everyone knows, that is the ultimate judge of what is healthy and good. And, by these objective standards, any woman daring to have more than zero body fat is a disgusting, obese, fatass who has no right to appear before their no doubt Adonis-like selves.

There's just so much wrong with this post and mindset if you truly believe this...

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

This ISN'T fat:


This is what people who can " do stuff" look like.

And yet, the pre-shopped images look closer to that than the after-shopped images...Both have problems, but I'd say the shopped ones have more.I'm going to keep saying this: If they'd given them just a bit more to their waists and made their muscles more obvious instead of focusing on the soft fat, it probably would've gone over better. Or if they'd taken purely American characters, or even if they'd taken real people instead.

Animation in general has trained us to take the lack of muscle as really telling you nothing, outside of some late 80's things, insane amounts of strength are portrayed with how much someone can stop/do and not so much their physique itself most of the time anymore.

No, the preshop ones do not look more like them. If you notice here:

Bellies do not always sit flat...

Notice how " felix's belly" is out past her shorts in the first picture, and Jeter's is in the second? That is because that is how real bodies work. They didn't suddenly "become overweight" since their belly is not flat. LOL Most people do not actually have " flat bellies", even if they train like Olympians HAHA
Part of the problem is some people actually think flat belly = healthy. Jeter is top form, and what women should aspire to, not considered " unhealthy", "overweight" or "fat" in any way. Our video game portrayals of women should look like Olympians, women in top form, not some weird somewhat resembling humans shapes.

"Top form" is another point I'd like to add to what you're saying. A picture of someone who has been training for the Olympics for example, never mind in the midst of an actual race, isn't what someone normally looks like. They're at a peak of fitness, low body fat and peak O2 capacity. It doesn't last though, and in fact it's cyclical even when you're training hard (without drugs).

I have a good female friend who has been a life long marathon runner. Once every other year she drops about 20 pounds of fat, puts on about as much muscle and trains hard. By the marathon she looks like some of those photos (to a lesser degree), but that's not her default either.

No, it takes extreme training to look like this, and honestly, that intensive training is not healthy either, it is very rough on the body, and takes a toll as well. They will pay for it later. However, if we are talking about " super heroes", we think of the strongest, fastest, " top form humans" than this is what they should look like, They should look like Olympians, protruding bellies and all, because that is what top form humans look like. LOL
Of course top form Olympians isn't a " default" of what women should look like either, for the non super hero characters in games, they should look like non super hero people in real life as well.

 

[Oakleigh]

I understand the purpose of the art is to highlight the healthy range of the BMI scale and how people can look different and still be considered healthy. It is good for people with body dysphoria that underlie eating disorders to understand the range of healthy body types.

On the other hand, some of the skinnier video game characters shown can also be healthy, they just have muscle mass in mostly in lieu of fat. Others are just tiny, like Riku, who will naturally skirt the low range of the BMI scale. I'm one of those people as well who borders on being underweight, but at 19 BMI I am sill at a healthy weight.

It's important to also examine waist circumference, blood sugar, cholesterol, family history of disease, etc before making an assessment. Of course that's difficult and a lot harder than judging on sight alone, which is kind of our human norm XD . It just disregards individual differences in people's bodies in what is healthy for them.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

This ISN'T fat:


This is what people who can " do stuff" look like.

And yet, the pre-shopped images look closer to that than the after-shopped images...Both have problems, but I'd say the shopped ones have more.I'm going to keep saying this: If they'd given them just a bit more to their waists and made their muscles more obvious instead of focusing on the soft fat, it probably would've gone over better. Or if they'd taken purely American characters, or even if they'd taken real people instead.

Animation in general has trained us to take the lack of muscle as really telling you nothing, outside of some late 80's things, insane amounts of strength are portrayed with how much someone can stop/do and not so much their physique itself most of the time anymore.

No, the preshop ones do not look more like them. If you notice here:

Bellies do not always sit flat...

Notice how " felix's belly" is out past her shorts in the first picture, and Jeter's is in the second? That is because that is how real bodies work. They didn't suddenly "become overweight" since their belly is not flat. LOL Most people do not actually have " flat bellies", even if they train like Olympians HAHA
Part of the problem is some people actually think flat belly = healthy. Jeter is top form, and what women should aspire to, not considered " unhealthy", "overweight" or "fat" in any way. Our video game portrayals of women should look like Olympians, women in top form, not some weird somewhat resembling humans shapes.

Notice how all of those women you're pointing at also have defined musculature? I never said flat belly=healthy, all I said was that the pre-shopped characters looked closer in basic shape to the pictures you keep spamming than the post-shopped rounding. Not to say that those real women don't have rounding to them, but they've also got pretty obvious "sharp" points from the muscles they've got that give them a less "wobbly-looking" shape.

And I also said they could be better and actually have muscles or at least be more toned than they are. So I think you may be barking up the wrong tree with this rhetoric. I've been around incredibly fit and buff women alot of my life, I'm well aware of what they look like, and even the ones that have alot of their shape concentrated in the abdomen look closer to many of the pre-shopped characters than they do to the post-shopped stuff.

As I said, both can be done better, but using one extreme to combat another extreme is not the way to go about this.

All is not determined by the circumference of one's waist or the diameter of their thighs.

How attractive they are to men is slightly determined by this though, and, as everyone knows, that is the ultimate judge of what is healthy and good. And, by these objective standards, any woman daring to have more than zero body fat is a disgusting, obese, fatass who has no right to appear before their no doubt Adonis-like selves.

There's just so much wrong with this post and mindset if you truly believe this...

The lack of showing muscles on women is also another issue, however the basic shapes are more like the post pics than the pre pics, even though neither accurately shows what women's muscles look like.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I'm all for having better female character design, period, but these are very bad examples, and don't really solve the issue in any way.

For example: take Rikku and Tifa, who in their respective games were characters with emphasis on Strength, Agility and Speed.

I agree with these kind of things sometimes, but they also seem to exist that not all women look like the average American woman. Some of them are fatter, some of them are thinner.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

And I don't really see it popping up anywhere here.

There's a difference between obese and overweight, they are two different categories. To be obese you have to be 20% over your ideal weight. So you're obese when you're 30 pounds overweight only if you're ideal weight is 150 pounds or lower.

I'm pretty sure in general too. On two factors. One, obesity is on the rise in 1st world countries world wide (which makes jokes about American obesity kind of hypocritical) two, video game women tend to always look like freaking fashion models and little else, not something I'd call realistic.

Considering that one of the main causes of eating disorders is media bashing into the heads of society the concept of an unrealistic ideal body type, I beg to differ. Not just fat women. Muscular women, women that suffer from dwarfism, women that are unusually tall, ugly women, for god's sake, half of video games are so freaking uncreative when it comes to this.

I don't see what the problem is. Some people in the world are fat. The point of this was to display how women in the real world actually look. It'd make sense that some of them would be fat.