Female Game Characters Photoshopped to Average American Proportions

[rosac]

erm

To quote our lord and saviour skepta "thats not me"

 

[munx13]

"Average American Proportions"

There's your problem right there.

 

[AgedGrunt]

I am not arguing that Upton is an example of a " Normal woman", I am arguing that the photo shopped Rikku is not obese. Healthy is a separate issue

Ok, I get that, but don't you think it's important to look at Rikku as who she is, not what she looks like? Rikku is:

1) 15 years old in FF-X. For her age, being quite thin is not unusual. Size will also help convey this youthful age to gamers, especially compared to the male protagonist who is a small, whiny *****.

2) A thief! (ok, technically skilled in alchemy and chemistry, but her battle command is Steal). She steals items from enemies and can destroy machina easily. So she needs legs as quick as her hands.

Whether you're male or female and have a "healthy" weight and appearance, if you're too big and slow you can't do the same work as someone smaller and faster. Stealing, fighting, sports, big and bulky can only do so much.

In a video game the player should believe what they see. I could not believe that a fat Rikku could have the speed, agility and dexterity as portrayed (and compared to other party members, and you'll have to ignore the sphere grid, but that's more or less magic).

Husky boys and girls are totally fine people, but in fictional roles that require physical standards, it doesn't make sense.

 

[ILikeEggs]

I am not arguing that Upton is an example of a " Normal woman", I am arguing that the photo shopped Rikku is not obese. Healthy is a separate issue,a s we even have Olympians that are not healthy as well even with intensive training. If they are calling Rikku Obese, they would be calling Upton obese as well due to comparable body fat percentages. It is absurd to call Rikku obese and think Kate is not. Their perception of what is and what is not obese is the issue.

Fair enough.

.....you don't have a significant other do you? Sounds like something out of the GAF.

Most people are likely to have those issues to a certain degree later in life, it's called getting old. that's a fact of life. Upton isn't exactly fit, but she's hardly unhealthy.

Nice ad hominem you got there. Kate Upton may look like she's healthy, and at this stage in her life can surely function sufficiently to pass for 'healthy' by current standards(which are terrible standards, btw), but what about 15 years from now? 20? Heck, while her diet is certainly better than the standard American diet, it's still a long way off from being optimal and still has stupid things like cleanses thrown in. Her exercise routine is effectively no better than low intensity aerobics, and will barely help her improve her joint and bone strength. Regardless, how likely is she to follow her current lifestyle when her career no longer depends on it a decade from now? You seem to be of the opinion that everyone turns into this fragile, paper scarecrow as they age. Below are two of many studies that prove you can do plenty to significantly improve quality of life, even as you age.

http://www.bettermovement.org/2012/use-or-lose-looks-like/
As you can see in this study, the cross sections of the two triathletes aged 40 and 70 have near identical muscle mass, bone mass and bodyfat percentage. The sedentary 74 year old man, however has pitifully narrow bones, high bodyfat and poor muscle mass that looks like it's actively degenerating.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22872695
This study shows that a simple, functional exercise and strength training routing can reduce falls in seniors by a singificant 30%. There are also other studies showing similar significant reductions in injuries(fatal and non-fatal) resulting from falls.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18595904
Lastly, this study shows how muscle strength is inversely associated with all-cause mortality in men.

My point is not to single out Kate Upton, or even women like her. My point is that most people are living unhealthy lifestyles and eating unhealthy food, and telling them that it's ok to look like the post-photoshop characters or Kate Upton is a problem. It's a problem because their aesthetics are irrelevant; what matters is that the general public needs to be living functionally healthy lives.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

I am not arguing that Upton is an example of a " Normal woman", I am arguing that the photo shopped Rikku is not obese. Healthy is a separate issue

Ok, I get that, but don't you think it's important to look at Rikku as who she is, not what she looks like? Rikku is:

1) 15 years old in FF-X. For her age, being quite thin is not unusual. Size will also help convey this youthful age to gamers, especially compared to the male protagonist who is a small, whiny *****.

2) A thief! (ok, technically skilled in alchemy and chemistry, but her battle command is Steal). She steals items from enemies and can destroy machina easily. So she needs legs as quick as her hands.

Whether you're male or female and have a "healthy" weight and appearance, if you're too big and slow you can't do the same work as someone smaller and faster. Stealing, fighting, sports, big and bulky can only do so much.

In a video game the player should believe what they see. I could not believe that a fat Rikku could have the speed, agility and dexterity as portrayed (and compared to other party members, and you'll have to ignore the sphere grid, but that's more or less magic).

Husky boys and girls are totally fine people, but in fictional roles that require physical standards, it doesn't make sense.

The characters role is also a separate issue than the one I was discussing, as for a better fitting character model for a character like Rikku, I think the petite agile muscular gymnast would be much more fitting. More like this :

Petite, strong, quick, With high agility would fit her much better. I think her original character could use much more muscle.

 

[Redryhno]

I am not arguing that Upton is an example of a " Normal woman", I am arguing that the photo shopped Rikku is not obese. Healthy is a separate issue

Ok, I get that, but don't you think it's important to look at Rikku as who she is, not what she looks like? Rikku is:

1) 15 years old in FF-X. For her age, being quite thin is not unusual. Size will also help convey this youthful age to gamers, especially compared to the male protagonist who is a small, whiny *****.

2) A thief! (ok, technically skilled in alchemy and chemistry, but her battle command is Steal). She steals items from enemies and can destroy machina easily. So she needs legs as quick as her hands.

Whether you're male or female and have a "healthy" weight and appearance, if you're too big and slow you can't do the same work as someone smaller and faster. Stealing, fighting, sports, big and bulky can only do so much.

In a video game the player should believe what they see. I could not believe that a fat Rikku could have the speed, agility and dexterity as portrayed (and compared to other party members, and you'll have to ignore the sphere grid, but that's more or less magic).

Husky boys and girls are totally fine people, but in fictional roles that require physical standards, it doesn't make sense.

The characters role is also a separate issue than the one I was discussing, as for a better fitting character model for a character like Rikku, I think the petite agile muscular gymnast would be much more fitting. More like this :

Petite, strong, quick, With high agility would fit her much better. I think her original character could use much more muscle.

Eh, it's FF, heavily inspired by anime,specifically shounen, which is in itself largely inspired by legends and the like. Strength is more expressed by what the character can do than what they look like anymore since around the mid-80's.

 

[Metadigital]

I know a lot of girls that are a similar build to Rikku on the left, they exercise regularly and eat well. Seriously, she's just slim/toned and shockingly for a vidja game character doesn't have tits the size of my head whilst being ridiculously skinny.

She also has an abnormally enlarged head and eyes. Anatomically, she's off in a variety of ways all over her body, though. Rikku, like most animated characters, is not realistically proportioned. It allows characters like that to be more iconic, emotive, and idealized. Nothing wrong with any of that.

The argument that the left image of Rikku is some "healthy ideal" really demonstrates why articles like that exist in the first place. Healthy people don't look like anime characters. They also don't look like badly photoshopped anime characters. Neither is realistic. That's the point I'm making. Both sides of this situation are flinging poop.

Now, if we were talking about a piece of animation that were attempting realism, like this:

Or maybe this:

Then we might be getting closer to something to talk about. FFX isn't attempting realism, though. Neither are the other edited images from the article. On the one hand, society does give women a strong message about how their bodies should look, and that should be taken seriously. On the other hand, though, we have to understand that animated characters aren't supposed to represent how we should be expected to actually look. That kind of commentary really needs to be directed at the photoshopped images of models in marketing or the kinds of actresses / hostesses / etc that can get work. Editing a bunch of cartoon characters to look fat / deformed isn't the right way to go about it and only serves to make the criticism of women's representation in media look petty or mislead.

 

[DarkBlood626]

Oh, so the country with the highest obesity rate in the world is complaining about unrealistic standers of beauty?

If these people put half the effort into actually losing weight as they put into trying to force everyone else to see their ever slipping standard of health as ?normal? they wouldn?t be an obesity problem.

 

[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.