Female Game Characters Photoshopped to Average American Proportions

[Leon Royce]

Sorry about the double post. How do you delete posts?

 

[elvor0]

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.

So....she eats junk food and you eat a healthy diet, and she's fatter? Gee, who'da thunk it. Magic Organic food hasn't got anything to do with that. GMO food can actually be /more/ nutritious because y'know they can modify it to be so. Like the blueberry Tomato. http://www.medicaldaily.com/purple-gmo-tomatoes-healthier-nature-coming-soon-grocery-shelves-canada-uk-268021

Heck, even the argument that you don't do any exercise isn't fair, I do NO exercise, but I am lucky enough to be blessed with a metabolism like The Flash, which you could be too. Jack shit, I go to the shops to buy cigarettes and buy shopping. I weigh 9 and a half stone, or 60KG. I buy nothing constituting organic food, and I buy non organic food to cook everything I make. You're not fucking supposed to eat junk food for every meal, GMOs have got nothing to do with it. I eat pretty well, buying all those GMO and non organic ingredients that are so evil. GMOs should not be equated to highly processed junk food. Not only that, organic food is fucking expensive. I could not afford to live on an all organic diet.

But y'know whatever, GMOs are evil.

 

[viranimus]

Ive always kind of wondered about this.

You know I am sorry if you cant look at another human being without picking up an inferiority complex because they do not look like you.

But all this trying to make things "realistic" leaves me to wonder is it equally as damaging to those who DO fit that "impossible body image"? Or maybe it is actually something deeper that has little or nothing to do with that.

Even as outlandish as gaming art is, I have yet to fail to find a human counterpart that is reasonably proportionally similar.

As for "Average American Proportions" As someone living in America, (and one of the notoriously "fattest" regions in the country, got to say that those examples are no where near fat enough. So it begs the question should the locals here get up in arms about those unrealistic unattainable "average American" images too?

 

[FirstNameLastName]

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!

Someone should have told the media that [http://i.imgur.com/AVrGEtB.png].

"Realistic body"
"Real woman"
"Real woman's body"
"Real women"

Seriously, fuck these news sites. It seems that those who fight the hardest for body acceptance and against fat shaming are the most judgemental and worst culprits of thin shaming (yes, that is a real thing).

Most of these bodies aren't the type I would expect most women to have, but they are far from unrealistic (with the exception of those with a more stylised design). If they want to claim they're fighting for body acceptance perhaps they might not want to imply that women with these types of bodies aren't real women.

 

[Yan007]

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!

Someone should have told the media that [http://i.imgur.com/AVrGEtB.png].

"Realistic body"
"Real woman"
"Real woman's body"
"Real women"

Seriously, fuck these news sites. It seems that those who fight the hardest for body acceptance and against fat shaming are the most judgemental and worst culprits of thin shaming (yes, that is a real thing).

Most of these bodies aren't the type I would expect most women to have, but they are far from unrealistic (with the exception of those with a more stylised design). If they want to claim they're fighting for body acceptance perhaps they might not want to imply that women with these types of bodies aren't real women.

I love you. Seriously.

I'm not sure anyone made the point I'm going to make because I don't feel like reading past page 4, but please hear me out everyone:

The issue is not one of "average size". In itself, average is just that, average. It is boring, and is not really attractive because the average person is living a shitty,empty life devoid of purpose and happiness.

The real issue is that the original characters give an image of what it looks like to be a woman most men would like to have sex and spend time with, based solely on their physical appearance. Now that being overweight or obese has become the new normal, we have to change what is acceptable for men to enjoy and women to strive for. Unfortunately, you might be able to change the latter, but every man knows the little head never ever lies: you like what you see or you don't.

I used to be fat and out of shape for most of my pre-adult life. Can you guess what kind of girlfriends I would be getting, if I was able to get one at all? By going to the gym and hiring a trainer who helped me plan for my goal and help me eat what needs to be eaten to get there, I became much more desirable to the women I found most desirable. I realized something: if you like people who are in good shape, the least you can do, if not for yourself, is to be in good physical shape to begin with.

Does it mean you need abs that show? No. Mine show for a month every year because I work hard for them to show during the beach season. My girlfriend loves it. Everyone who trains hard knows having abs that show is not the epitome of fitness, just something to strive for if you feel like it. My girlfriend is shaped a bit like Zelda in Skyward Sword and also has the long golden hair to go with the style ;p . Would I love her still if she got fatter? Maybe. Would I still want to have sex with her? My sex drive says no.

Ladies, it's easy to look good for guys: Run outside 20 minutes a day, lift some weights 30 minutes a day and pick a physical hobby. You'll have more energy, look better and finally have something interesting to talk about next time you meet a guy. Yes, guys care about how you look. If you can't turn us on immediately, no amount of your personality will do the trick. Sorry.

 

[kyp275]

The purpose of organic food is to limit the body's exposure to artificial chemicals that the body was never meant to ingest.

If that's your goal for "organic food", then you've failed terribly. Whether something is "organic" or GMO has little to no bearing on how much chemical is used by the farmer during cultivation. You want the least amount of fertilizer/pesticide used to grow your food? grow it yourself, otherwise there is no difference between organic or GMO or whatever. Frankly, if your fear is exposure to chemicals, you best pack your bags and move to somewhere deep in the mountains and cut off all contact with modern civilization.

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 think the rising obesity rate in China is due to McDonalds, you are sorely mistaken. The improving economic condition (for those living in the coastal regions anyway) allows for a more sedentary lifestyle, just like they have in the US and Europe. It's a simple math equation, how much are you taking in vs how much are you using up.

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.

If you eat nothing but fresh bread and hand cooked meal with high quality ingredients and fruits, but too much of it and sit on your ass all day, you're still going to blow up and your body fall apart. Exercising isn't some magic weight loss bullet, it takes a lot longer to burn off calories than to take them in. If you don't watch the amount you're taking in, regardless of the form, you're never going to lose that weight. That said, I know a guy who did just that, but his fat ass still managed to outrun half of the platoon.

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.

Lots of hot air, but not much substance here. Are you trying to tell me that if I buy that "organic banana" there as opposed to the regular banana, I'm going to get more vitamins and calories out of the organic one? The number of meals and your "energy level" means jack, especially without contextual information such as lifestyle and daily work/activity.

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.

I have no idea what you mean by "army cadet" , are you talking about ROTC or actualy Academy Cadets? Either way, you realize that electrolyte/salt is actually quite important if you're expecting vigorous exercise right? Hell, I remember having to putting salt on everything in bootcamp because otherwise I'd get cramps from lack of sodium, because of how much we sweat all the time. As for egg yolks... I'd pluck them out just because of how terrible they taste, chow halls aren't exactly known as masters of the hard-boiled egg, or much of anything for that matter.

But you know, obviously that's just terrible western eating habits, I totally should've gone for the low-sodium-and-fall-over-on-the-side-of-the-road-from-cramps diet.

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.

Well, they basically enlarged her head and erased her neck in the process. As far as the rest, I doubt you know Kate Upton's body fat percentages, and certainly not Rikku's. As for them being the same... let's just say that if Kate Upton have the same body proportion of photoshop Rikku, her career would be finished overnight. Whether photoshop Rikku is obese or not is hard to say, but anyone, male or female, with that kind of body proportion would be very close at the least, I don't think people realize how easy it is to cross that line from simply overweight to being obese, or that people who are obese doesn't always look like those 400 pound morbidly obese people. I linked a picture of myself from a few years back earlier in this thread, I looked perfectly normal, yet I was definitely obese, and Rikku looks even worse than I was.

Those images have been posted before, and I still say that Sonya Blade cosplayer looks unhealthily thin.

Not her fault if you've never seen healthy thin woman before.

 

[Dyf91]

Whilst the pictures were - to me - just a comparison for a bit of fun, I don't see the problem with having "unrealistic" or "impossible" body types in video games. I mean they are games, they're a fantasy world, the characters in them shouldn't have to conform to our reality or what we perceive to be the "average" size for a man or woman. Heck some characters have backstories, personalities or professions that just straight up require them to have their "unrealistic" body type.

Personally, I don't especially care how characters look in video games, as long as their look makes sense with what their character is supposed to be.

 

[teh_Canape]

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!

Someone should have told the media that [http://i.imgur.com/AVrGEtB.png].

"Realistic body"
"Real woman"
"Real woman's body"
"Real women"

oh man
"What Lara Croft would look like if she was a REAL woman"
I guess Angelina Jolie doesn't exist now

Spoiler

 

[McMarbles]

These aren't realistic, they're fat.

Oh, absolutely. Look at that triple chin on Tifa there. Look at that bulging gut on Nabooru. Look out how disgusting Lara is. So gross. Such fat. Wow.

 

[someguy1231]

These aren't realistic, they're fat.

Sadly, given how common obesity has become, "realistic" nowadays IS "fat".

Of course, it isn't "realistic" for highly active women to be fat, as many of these video game characters are. But if they're supposed to represent how the "average American woman" looks, then yes, these are definitely "realistic".....unfortunately.

 

[someguy1231]

Whilst the pictures were - to me - just a comparison for a bit of fun, I don't see the problem with having "unrealistic" or "impossible" body types in video games. I mean they are games, they're a fantasy world, the characters in them shouldn't have to conform to our reality or what we perceive to be the "average" size for a man or woman. Heck some characters have backstories, personalities or professions that just straight up require them to have their "unrealistic" body type.

Personally, I don't especially care how characters look in video games, as long as their look makes sense with what their character is supposed to be.

Exactly. Video games are not real life, so complaining they aren't "realistic" is absurd. Video games aren't a live-action medium, so they don't even have to be constrained by how real-life actors and actresses look. Everything they do is built from the ground up, so it's just as easy to make a very heavily fantasy or sci-fi game as it is to make a "realistic" game. This fact is a big reason video games have a disproportionately higher amount of sci-fi/fantasy games than most other mediums, and is also a big reason I love them. It's no surprise they'd apply the same principle to the body types of their characters. Face it, very few people want to see fat people in their games, except maybe as comic relief.

Besides, as other posters have pointed out, many of these women DO have realistic bodies - at least, "realistic" in the sense that there are real women with very similar bodies.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

But then you can do the same thing for male characters. Making him fat, give them beer bellies and zero muscle mass. Not sure what the point this thread is meant to make? Yes all game characters are not realistic, both male and female. So its thin, big boobed woman or overly muscled men - its the same with actors and models in magazines. Regardless, people should be more worried about photo shopped models in magazines given girls eating disorders trying to get that same/impossible body shape than a game that is obviously not realistic.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Jeez I need to check the news page more often. I missed a 17 page thread.

So...if I'm being critical of this...and I'm going to be critical of this...this is what I'd be critical of.

1. This seems to be endorsing a single "average American" body type. Not average in other cultures, or at different poverty levels. Not "average" as in showing a wide range that makes up a global average. Just "average" for one very specific culture at a median income level, assuming no special dedication to fitness or diet. I'm not sure what point that is trying to make, really. Perhaps it is pointing out a lack of variation and imagination in gaming body types by perpetuating the same crime? Seems an odd way to go about it but OK I guess.

2. The art isn't particularly well done. Some of the characters just look...off. Particularly the anime ones, which are hyper stylized and don't do a transition to "real" particularly comfortably.

3. The majority (if not all) of these characters are in professions or engaged in activities that require exceptional physical fitness. It is not unusual or problematic to display a professional athlete as trim and fit, or a soldier, or a ROBOT. Naturally proportions should still be sensible (and not all of the "before" pictures can boast of this) if you want to avoid charges of artistic exaggeration. There was a recent photo series of Olympic athletes that displayed the wide range of body types that extremely fit people can have. It seems to me that this exercise...done properly...would have shown a similar range, rather than just a single narrow archetype.

This could've actually been quite interesting, but feels a bit...lazy? Poorly considered? Missed opportunity IMO.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

people sound so angry in this thread. my tupence; some of the after pics look attractive after being altered, I just fell in love with Helena.

how about something more useful like here's how they'd look at an obtainable healthy weight through a balance diet and exercise

Because that would probably require more work than a day fiddling around in Photoshop....

sure it wasn't MS Paint?

i would love some size definitions we could all follow. anyone ever search chubby on a porn search? you get anything from skinny to obese and everything in between.

 

[Batou667]

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.

The alternative is to stay stoically silent and through a lack of denial give tacit approval to whatever political point is being scored at the expense of gaming and gamers. If somebody was slandering you, your family, or your business, you'd vigorously deny the accusations, right? So why is it forbidden to speak up in defence of one's hobby?

Also, please do elaborate on "flip the fuck out", because it seems that when criticism of games comes from a certain ideological compass direction, any and all rebuttal is instantly classed as "trolling" or "harassment" or "tearful manchild tantrums". If there's one nice thing I can say about Jack Thompson and other moralising conservative mouthpieces, it's that they don't run blubbing from the conversation crying victim the minute somebody dares answer them back.

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

I think most people hugely overestimate just how fat somebody has to be to qualify as clinically obese. For a 5'6" woman, 190lbs is obese - and to give a visual representation, those are the measurements of this lady here, who is significantly slimmer than many of the "real woman" reimaginings:

Spoiler

Possibly because fat bodies have become so normalised in the West, "obese" has changed in everyday usage to mean something closer to "morbidly obese", for example somebody whose mobility is clearly being affected by their weight. On the other end of the scale, and possibly because thin and athletic physiques are becoming rarer in adults, people tend to label people who are at a medically normal weight as "skinny" or even "anorexic".

Not having a pop at you personally, just an observation.

 

[Azure23]

What a splendid diversity of opinions in this thread, the debate is very spirited, and salty, surpassingly salty. Why are people so worked up about this?

After following the linked article and reading through the original on Bulimia.com (unlike I suspect, a lot of people engaged in this thread) I found it to be a rather simple and harmless article about body image issues in young women and the negative health effects of eating disorders. There were a few mild comments about the comparative lack of body diversity in female characters, so all you true believers can get worked up over those SJW eating disorder advocates. But seriously, how hard is it to understand that this article and these images simply weren't made for most of us? If you're an introverted young teen with body image issues, it's probably nice to see yourself represented heroically, even in images of characters you realize don't look like that all the time. The article isn't even against fitness, it's against unhealthy methods of pursuing fitness. "Don't develop eating disorders chasing a body image, it's dangerous and sometimes lethal" that's the simple message for a specific group of people. They never said that these characters should've been designed this way, it doesn't matter if "RIKU IS A THIEF SO SHE WOULD LOOK LIKE THIS GRRRRR," because Riku being a thief has nothing to do with stopping young people from developing eating disorders, which is again, what the article is about.

Also, I just gotta say this; but I've seen people arguing that these characters are obese or whatever based on their measurements or whatever but c'mon, most video game character(fighting games in particular) measurements are absolute nonsense, in one of the Soul Caliburs Siegfried is listed as like 5"6 and 130 lbs. Riku is not really 5"2 in game, Helena is built like an Amazon and stands as tall as most of the male characters. It's just impossible to make some sort of bmi estimate and label these based on that.

 

[Azure23]

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.

The alternative is to stay stoically silent and through a lack of denial give tacit approval to whatever political point is being scored at the expense of gaming and gamers. If somebody was slandering you, your family, or your business, you'd vigorously deny the accusations, right? So why is it forbidden to speak up in defence of one's hobby?

Also, please do elaborate on "flip the fuck out", because it seems that when criticism of games comes from a certain ideological compass direction, any and all rebuttal is instantly classed as "trolling" or "harassment" or "tearful manchild tantrums". If there's one nice thing I can say about Jack Thompson and other moralising conservative mouthpieces, it's that they don't run blubbing from the conversation crying victim the minute somebody dares answer them back.

It's really more of a social point, that point being "eating disorders can be lethal, don't develop one by pursuing a body image in an unhealthy manner." I mean who can't get behind that? And no one is taking shots at gamers with this, that's just our collective reflexive paranoia talking. Seriously the worst thing in this article is a mild request that game devs include more body diversity. Which, you know, you're free to feel like that's a bad thing if you want. Mostly it just talks about how dangerous eating disorders are and provides a bunch of information on identifying them and finding help. Because this IS Bulimia.com doing this, not some moralizing conservative mouthpiece or killjoy feminist. Although, considering they've dedicated themselves to helping people with eating disorders, a problem which disproportionately affects young women, they probably are feminists.

As for "flipping the fuck out," you can check the comment section of any gaming lifestyle site hosting this article, you can check the previous sixteen pages in this thread, twitter is pretty ugly right now too, but it's kinda always that way.

 

[BeerTent]

Oh my god, this was an article from the 23rd and it's still going on.

I just wanted to make a joke about Americans and when I took my first glance at the Tifa pic, I thought she was holding onto a cheeseburger.

That being said, a lot of examples here, are actually kind of bad. A lot of these women in their respective settings are actually quite fit, and their proportions for a woman of that body type actually kind of fits and seems kind of proper. Yeah, the Zelda chick isn't really human. Tifa is probably not wearing a push-up, and Laura could use more meat... But other than that...

The before after pictures are just showing different body types. The people who are calling the American versions "thunder-thighs" are the ones making a point. They're just a different body type.

 

[Batou667]

It's really more of a social point, that point being "eating disorders can be lethal, don't develop one by pursuing a body image in an unhealthy manner." I mean who can't get behind that? And no one is taking shots at gamers with this, that's just our collective reflexive paranoia talking. Seriously the worst thing in this article is a mild request that game devs include more body diversity. Which, you know, you're free to feel like that's a bad thing if you want. Mostly it just talks about how dangerous eating disorders are and provides a bunch of information on identifying them and finding help. Because this IS Bulimia.com doing this, not some moralizing conservative mouthpiece or killjoy feminist. Although, considering they've dedicated themselves to helping people with eating disorders, a problem which disproportionately affects young women, they probably are feminists.

As for "flipping the fuck out," you can check the comment section of any gaming lifestyle site hosting this article, you can check the previous sixteen pages in this thread, twitter is pretty ugly right now too, but it's kinda always that way.

In fairness to the original article the intent may not have been to denigrate gaming or to imply the fatter versions were "improved" designs - although those are kind of the implications that unfortunately are associated. Certainly those are the take-away messages the media took when republishing the images: fat power! Big is beautiful! Those silly boys masturbating over their digital Barbie dolls, amirite?

People are free to take pop culture characters and subvert them in whatever way they like - there's a lot of Rule 34 and incredibly niche fetish fanart out there that attests to this being something of a time-honoured tradition. To each their own live and let live. Some goofy f*cks playing around on Photoshop affects me not an iota. But it's the implied justifications that act like nails on a chalkboard to me.

First: the idea that being unhealthily big is an acceptable alternative to being unhealthily thin. I don't have the figures to hand, but obesity-related illnesses kill FAR more people than anorexia and illnesses related to critically low BMIs. I remember reading a somewhat old source from relatively-slim Canada, and the ratio of deaths attributed to fat vs thin physiques was on the order of 100:1. I consider it crazy that obesity is being normalised and even glamourised, on the poor logic that, well, being anorexic is bad, so the opposite must be good. That's like saying that stress is bad for your wellbeing, so why not take up smoking to help unwind?

Second: if this is a call for body diversity, it's a very poor one, because the new characters are uniformly fat. A diverse ensemble of women would surely include a mix of thin, average, and fat women? Instead, the thin and athletic women are being erased. Another poster called this "fatwashing" and I tend to agree. Calling this "diversity" is simply disingenuous.

Third, perhaps us gamers are a bit of an oversensitive bunch, but with the track record of how our hobby is portrayed in the media, isn't that justified? Just about every social ill has been pinned on video games at this point. Epilepsy, hyperactivity, violence, criminality, sexism, obesity AND now body dysmorphia. Some of us are sick of our hobby being used as a political punch-bag by the lazy, the hysterical, the self-serving and the intellectually dishonest.

And lastly, what is the relevance of body-morphing the attractive and athletic female characters of games that cater primarily to a male demographic, when the justification is that the media consumed by girls and women affects their body image? Shouldn't bulimia.com be going after celebrities, beauty magazines, the actors in soaps and chick-flicks, in short the types of media that overwhelmingly cater to women?