Female Game Characters Photoshopped to Average American Proportions

[Karadalis]

Heres another problem with those "realistic" proportions:

No one wants to play as "realistic" people in video games because people are not interested in everyday realism in their games.

They play games as a form of escapism, to relax and forget about the everyday BS they have to slog through. They want to play as the hero... or in some cases the villain.

They dont want to play as Bob the overweight office guy... they want to be Nathan Drake

They dont want to play as Berta the store clerk with weight problems, they want to play as Lara croft

This whole premise of "Games cause things / Games reinforce things" has been disproven countless times, yet people still dont tire to repeat the same disproven arguments.

Fictional characters, no matter how idealized they are, do not affect the normal human being in this kind of sense.

The thing that does influence people... is other people:

Lets take the Modeling industry:

The entirety of the model industry had (and perhaps still has) a more detrimental effect on women and caused more anorexia and bulemia then the entirety of the video game industry could possibly ever have because in the case of the modeling industry you have REAL people, REAL and SUCCESSFULL people mind you. And these rich, beautifull and famous REAL people show little girls that if you torture yourselfe just enough you can gain fame and fortune and be loved by everyone, all it takes is hungering yourselfe half to death (and in some tragic cases even beyond)

Video games? I have NEVER ever heard someone around me, or on TV docus or news reports or online say that they want to become just like character XYZ (that is besides cosplaying but then again its more about the costumes and less about the ideal body proportions)

These "unrealistic" depictions of idealized body proportions are not harmfull simply BECAUSE they are unrealistic. Everyone knows that you cannot achieve these body types (in most cases) in RL no matter how much you excercise or hunger.

But those skinny supermodels who rake in the fame and fortune and are on every magazine cover? Yeah those body standards ARE achievable.. after all you have the real thing right there right?

Video games dont inspire people to change their lives in any negative or positive ways and they certainly dont reinforce such notions, just like comic books about super heros dont inspire vigialintism or reinforce the notion that such behavior is more acceptable.

 

[maninahat]

[snip]

That is not the question I asked. And that is not what the article claims was the intent. Is it about bulimia, or is it about game shapes?

You asked why they don't just use realistic models. I told you it is because sexy, skinny women are generally seen as more marketable.

Bulimia and game shapes go hand in hand. Bulimia is a consequence of a person's anxiety about what is the "proper way to look". This proper look is dictated by the world around you, in that we are bombarded with endless depictions of idealized, sexy women in advertising, entertainment and human interaction. We are trained from childhood to measure a person's value or worth on their appearance. It's why Susan Boyle got famous; she shocked people who believed the patently absurd (yet widely accepted) idea that only good looking people are capable of singing.

To combat bulimia, you have to let these anxious people know that - actually - not being skinny isn't a bad thing. You can help that by not making fat people invisible in entertainment.

So what you're saying is to combat a real world problem, we must use solely fictional examples of fictional characters?

No.

We are bombarded much more by real-world media than we are game media, and yet this article uses SOLELY game characters(heck, most of them aren't even recent or even much more than niche games). It doesn't use celebrity shops, real people in the world that are both healthy and have a variety of body shapes that aren't the "skinny norm" as you put it, they don't even use cosplayers to get the same idea across while also having the geeky edge.

I mean, are you saying that games have a bigger impact on body shapes than...the real world, live-action media, and parts of first-world society combined? And that we need to fight game shapes first?

I'm going to assume that anorexia/bulemia organisations have other methods of combating damaging self images beyond editing pictures of game characters. The fact that the article only talks about the game character method doesn't mean they don't do anything else - however if everything else they do isn't really game related, it may not get a mention in an article on a gaming website.

 

[chikusho]

An organisation makes an illustrative point regarding body standards for girls with eating disorders.
Gamers flip the fuck out for no concievable reason, once again showcasing the tact and grace they so vehemently deny exists within the culture.
At some point you have to wonder if it's less about "games don't affect the real world" and more "the real worlds doesn't even matter to me".

Stay classy, gamers.

 

[Zontar]

An organisation makes an illustrative point regarding body standards for girls with eating disorders.
Gamers flip the fuck out for no concievable reason, once again showcasing the tact and grace they so vehemently deny exists within the culture.
At some point you have to wonder if it's less about "games don't affect the real world" and more "the real worlds doesn't even matter to me".

Stay classy, gamers.

Is there really a point to be made regarding body image standards when fictional characters who are either healthy looking or stylized are made to look so overweight that they have serious health risks? Even ignoring the fact that this is yet another point on the long list of attempts to make being more fat then the human body was meant to be accepted instead of dealing with the issue, it begs the question of why another instance of non-gamers trying to mess around with game characters to put a world view is being tolerated.

The only ones here without class are those who made the images in the first place.

 

[RobertEHouse]

So because they couldn't the make modeling industry change their standards in the last 70 years, they expect video games to do it. The problem here is not gaming, movies or even models, but the fact that people have to learn to love who they are.

The people who suffer from certain type of eating disorders have a distorted view of the world they live in, they can't help it.
How about "actually helping" them with mental and physical treatment?

It would work a lot better then wasting time and money on a campaign which has show in the past to have no effect.

 

[K12]

An organisation makes an illustrative point regarding body standards for girls with eating disorders.
Gamers flip the fuck out for no concievable reason, once again showcasing the tact and grace they so vehemently deny exists within the culture.
At some point you have to wonder if it's less about "games don't affect the real world" and more "the real worlds doesn't even matter to me".

Stay classy, gamers.

Is there really a point to be made regarding body image standards when fictional characters who are either healthy looking or stylized are made to look so overweight that they have serious health risks? Even ignoring the fact that this is yet another point on the long list of attempts to make being more fat then the human body was meant to be accepted instead of dealing with the issue, it begs the question of why another instance of non-gamers trying to mess around with game characters to put a world view is being tolerated.

The only ones here without class are those who made the images in the first place.

Yeah, fuck those guys trying to help people suffering with eating disorders!

Realise that these were made by a group specifically working to help people who are bulimic and anorexic... i.e. people who have warped impressions of their own bodies and what's normal or appropriate.

Is there any reason to think this is a feminist "Stop making everyone attractive" attempt rather than just illustrating that video game characters are much thinner than how most people look. An obvious point to you and me perhaps but something that people with eating disorders struggle to accept. You are not the target audience for these images!

Also, the adjusted images look a bit overweight but not seriously so. They're certainly not obese.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I've gotta laugh...in most cases i find the slightly larger models far more attractive and a lot closer to real women i have had the pleasure of unwrapping in real life.

I can't imagine how disappointed people will be when they finally take a skinny girls bra off and find there is nothing to play with

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

You do realize that the image of Rikku is objectively bigger than the other one and seems to be zoomed in more, right

Which is why I used ratios to show that Rikku's measurements are much larger and not the measurements themselves.
I'm not claiming that it's some super accurate, scientific level shit I've done there, like I said in my post it's just something I threw together in Microsoft Pain in 2 minutes. But when someone claims the sky isn't blue you have to get creative in proving to them that it is.

While he is wrong, and you are correct in observing that, Kate is still actually significantly more 'normal' than the post-photoshop Rikku.

How exactly am I wrong? I wanted to show that Rikku's measurements (in that picture) are larger than in the picture of Kate Upton provided. Does my little 2 minute project not show that?

Yes, you were wrong and No, it did not. Although yes, Rikku is distorted I am not even sure what they were doing to her head in that picture, she still has comparable body fat percentages and body type to Kate Upton. IF Kate Upton is not Obese, neither is Rikku, it is the perception that Rikku is that is false.

 

[alj]

And what about the men in games ?


More feminist rubbish.

 

[Leon Royce]

If Americans didn't eat so much garbage they wouldn't be so fat.

Stop eating food imitation products, chemical products, GMO, fertilizer, pesticides and eat real food instead. Watch the fat melt away.

 

[Areloch]

If Americans didn't eat so much garbage they wouldn't be so fat.

Stop eating food imitation products, chemical products, GMO, fertilizer, pesticides and eat real food instead. Watch the fat melt away.

Man, just...what?

First, food IS chemicals.

Second, do you actually know what GMO means and stands for? Or did you hear about how they're bad for you somehow?

Third, are you actually positing that Americans eat fertilizer and pesticides? Or are you insinuating that you shouldn't use fertilizer and pesticides on crops. Because both of those are astoundingly nonsensical.

Lastly, You can have the healthiest diet in the world, and if you don't get any exercise, you'll still get fat because you're not burning any of the calories you're taking in. Healthy food isn't some magical silver bullet and that line of reasoning is actually a large part of the obesity problem for the first world.

"Exercise is hard and takes too much time. I'll just try X, Y, Z diet or this magic diet powder! Oh nooo, I'm not getting skinny!"

 

[Syzygy23]

Well, maybe this will be a threadkiller: http://imgur.com/gallery/wrDC1gu

People with those body types ACTUALLY EXIST. Not to mention all of the characters pictured lead very active lifestyles that would naturally lead to having such figures in the first place.

Just because some people are lazy, fat shits doesn't mean they can fatwash justifiably skinny characters and then say "Hurba durba durba they aren't a normal weight like me! Competitive eating should be an Olympic Sport!" as some twisted form of forcing others to accept their grotesque bodies via guilt.

 

[NemotheElvenPanda]

Okay.....well, a lot of these ladies are pretty active, so they wouldn't have the "average american" body since the "average american" doesn't punch and do backflips for a living. These ladies should have trimmed muscle instead of being so petite if anything else. Also, has it yet been mentioned that just as how some bodies are naturally generous, some bodies just happen to be trim? There are people out there, like myself and a number of my relatives, who stay pretty svelte throughout their life without much diet control or activity.

I'm all for more variety in games, body types included. The possibility that a game like Fallout 4 lets you customize your weapons in hundreds of different ways to designing entire towns while every character has the same build unlike in Skyrim is a little ridiculous. However, this just looks like lazy activism because there is no such thing as a "typical body type". While this may look typical to some Americans, people from Japan would see this as obese. There is a valid discussion on how media can impact body perceptions and unhealthy ideals for guys and girls alike, but demonizing a specific body type that people in real life do have by putting another on a pedestal isn't addressing the problem which is plenty more complicated than girls seeing ladies in a specific build in a video game.

 

[Leon Royce]

If Americans didn't eat so much garbage they wouldn't be so fat.

Stop eating food imitation products, chemical products, GMO, fertilizer, pesticides and eat real food instead. Watch the fat melt away.

Man, just...what?

First, food IS chemicals.

Second, do you actually know what GMO means and stands for? Or did you hear about how they're bad for you somehow?

Third, are you actually positing that Americans eat fertilizer and pesticides? Or are you insinuating that you shouldn't use fertilizer and pesticides on crops. Because both of those are astoundingly nonsensical.

Lastly, You can have the healthiest diet in the world, and if you don't get any exercise, you'll still get fat because you're not burning any of the calories you're taking in. Healthy food isn't some magical silver bullet and that line of reasoning is actually a large part of the obesity problem for the first world.

"Exercise is hard and takes too much time. I'll just try X, Y, Z diet or this magic diet powder! Oh nooo, I'm not getting skinny!"

McDonalds come to China, and a few years later an obesity epidemic breaks out among young people. Why? Low quality food, like that served in McDonalds (which can be easily identified because it doesn't rote if you leave it) is simply unhealthy filth. You saturate your body with crap and your appearance will manifest it. We have starting living in the last couple of decades the consequences of three generations eating processed, doctored, chemical foods, something which began after the second world war, a result of a simultaneous population explosion and a desire from consumers to lower expenses on food to have more disposable income for toys.

If you drink Red Bull and Coke instead of water, Doritos and doughnuts instead of fresh bread, eat TV diners and fast food instead of hand cooked meals with high quality ingredients and fruit loops and skittles instead of real fruit, not only will you put on weight but after a few decades your body will become riddled with disease (diabetes, cancer, and more recently crones disease which has been linked to GMO foods in studies on bovines)

Exercise is overrated. It's pushed to sell things. Walking is all most human beings really need. I know a fat woman who has been exercising for 20 years, but eats low quality food from cheap supermarkets and has never put off the weight. I eat organic food and go for the occasional walks, and have remained on the lean muscular side my whole life without doing any sport, other than one and a half years of weight lifting.

I switched years ago from typical western supermarket food. Since then I've cut my daily meals from three to one and a half while retaining the same level of energy, in fact more. Since natural high quality food is richer and fresher, you don't have to eat more to get the same amount of vitamins, minerals and calories. Pasteurized foods are the worst. We pasteurize almost everything to extend shelf-life, but pasteurization kills close to 99% of all the healthy elements in food, like in orange juice for example.

While there are factors beyond simply eating and exercise that influence a body's ability to put on and retain weight, the fact is the quality of the fuel is a great place to start. Neglect quality in favor of quantity, and shove large amounts of it into your body, and you will pay a price for it eventually. The larger the food company (Nestle, General Mills, Kraft, Pepsico etc...) the more they push for low quality, GMO and lower government oversight of quality in any country they operate. Why do they lobby for lower quality?

I agree with you though that most diets are bullshit. Diets are always looking for that one chemical (cholesterol, gluten, salt etc...) that is causing everyone's problems. Given enough time, it's proven that naturally present elements in food (like those cited previously) are not a problem. The only time something has to be removed is when it comes from a lab, like trans-fats.

Dieting tips never recommend to improve the quality of the food eaten, only changes in the types eaten.

Having lived in the states a year (from Europe), and seeing army cadets drink gatorade for electrolytes (another term for mineral salts present in water) for breakfast while picking the yoke out of their eggs for fear of cholesterol has given me plenty of incite into American (and increasingly Western) eating habits.