Femme Armor Sacrifices Safety for Sex Appeal

[Icehearted]

I wouldn't consider Samus a viable example, since even in the first game there was a bikini code, and now most of her fandom seem to prefer her in that painted on blue Zero Suit.

Funny video though.

 

[Lissa-QUON]

Old joke but definitely true.

That joke is so old I no longer even have a rant for it.

Though there is a reason why I typically end up pitching Mass Effect to my fellow female gamers with "and female Shepard's armor actually covers as much flesh as the male armor" It's an event that seems so rare I have to actually mention it when it happens.

 

[TheDooD]

With armor it comes down to protection vs mobility, which is why Roman and Greek soldiers didn't have armored mid-rifts (so they could bend at the middle), wore slatted leather or cloth skirts, and had little arm or leg armor (maybe bracers and/or greaves).

Really full body armor didn't appear until the mid-to-late Medieval period, and full heavy armor was generally too bulky for anything but tournaments (even knights preferred more mobile armor in combat). The only time you'd see full armor was a mix of plate and chain, and only rich knights would have that. Most soldiers fought with little or no armor at all, so in reality, a chainmail bikini would offer more protection than basically nothing and most warriors should be dressed in cloth with maybe a leather jacket.

Also having worn heavy plate (tournament plate), I'd bet on the girl in the chainmail bikini - you can't see out of those helmets, you're almost immobile encased in 300lbs of iron, and it is easy to be knocked off balance. Once you're on the ground, you're as good as dead because it is pretty much impossible to stand without the help of a squire, so all they have to do is find a seam and stick a sword in.

quoted for truth.

 

[geizr]

R.O.F.L.M.F.A.O!!!

 

[Tharwen]

Samus Aran is kind of a nerd sex symbol, and she wears a full suit of power armor! Usually, anyways.

Not on DeviantArt...

We don't go there any more.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Oh, this has been going on for a long, long time.

Spoiler: From a fantasy/sci-fi book club mailer in the late 80's (potentially NSFW)

The stereotypical male psyche has a difficult time according women the strength to be on the front line of combat, so therefore the women they imagine wear armor designed only to titillate the protector rather than protect the tits. [small]That was bad and I am very very sorry.[/small] The closest I've seen to equality on the fantasy-art front are artists like Luis Royo and Boris Vallejo, who aren't shy about having their male subjects wearing nothing but a sheen of sweat and a few incidental cuts. (And it makes not the slightest bit more sense for them either.)

Now I could understand that a woman, who is biologically unable to gain the physical strength to match an athletic man, might go with lighter armor. But "lighter armor" does not mean "safeguard the nipples, forsake all else".

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I actually liked how Dragon Age handled this. The only skimpy armor around is the leather, and that really doesn't get that skimpy. Hell, Fallout 3 showed more skin than that. Full plate stays full plate, no matter who it's on.

 

[Faux Furry]

This kind of makes me think about all of the guys in martial arts movies who take their shirts off when fighting hordes of baddies with bladed weapons,guys in mythic fantasy who fight monsters covered in pointy bits with their own bits not particularly adequately shielded from coming into contact with said pointy bits by anything more obstructive than a loincloth, and burly commando-types that were so popular during the 1980s who presumably radiated an aura of machismo so thick that no bullets could penetrate them.
None of those was as ridiculous(ly stylish?) as the whole Heroic Nude motif, though. It's all about style.

Armor is useless for heroes, anyway. That's for the throngs of easily slain armies of darkness to putter around in.

 

[LaughingAtlas]

Personally, I don't think armor is all it's cracked up to be. In most any game I find you can more or less forsake metal/leather suits and either use enchanted clothes (morrowind and Oblivion) or take the damage like the human monster truck you are, (being a player character and everything) returning your foe's assault ten-fold, the Kratos method, I think.

They might look cool, at the very least.

 

[Daveman]

Still, I'm not sure that female characters really need to show so much skin. I mean, Samus Aran is kind of a nerd sex symbol, and she wears a full suit of power armor! Usually, anyways.

But then in SSBB her most powerful attack involves her undressing. Then you have the lame REdressing attack. I mean sure she can fire missiles again but it's still disappointing to use a final smash for THAT.

 

[ryo02]

they should do a bulky barbarian in a loin cloth vid thats every bit as inpractical atleast she has some chainmail.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

I kinda think that the whole chicks in chainmail joke stems from the fact that full plate armor is renders the character sexless. That means that for video game designers, they need to give the audience a clear visual queue to tell the masculine characters from the feminine ones; and nothing says female like breasts, so enters the impractical armor bikini.

 

[Oroboros]

With armor it comes down to protection vs mobility, which is why Roman and Greek soldiers didn't have armored mid-rifts (so they could bend at the middle), wore slatted leather or cloth skirts, and had little arm or leg armor (maybe bracers and/or greaves).

Really full body armor didn't appear until the mid-to-late Medieval period, and full heavy armor was generally too bulky for anything but tournaments (even knights preferred more mobile armor in combat). The only time you'd see full armor was a mix of plate and chain, and only rich knights would have that. Most soldiers fought with little or no armor at all, so in reality, a chainmail bikini would offer more protection than basically nothing and most warriors should be dressed in cloth with maybe a leather jacket.

Also having worn heavy plate (tournament plate), I'd bet on the girl in the chainmail bikini - you can't see out of those helmets, you're almost immobile encased in 300lbs of iron, and it is easy to be knocked off balance. Once you're on the ground, you're as good as dead because it is pretty much impossible to stand without the help of a squire, so all they have to do is find a seam and stick a sword in.

The Lorica Segmenta and the Lionothorax and breastplates worn by the Romans and Greeks *did* cover their mid-riffs. Romans Legionnaires and Greek hoplites are poor as examples of lightly armored soldiers. In fact, they were very heavily armored. Some earlier suits of Greek armor cover almost as much skin as late medieval-renaissance armor.

Tournament armor is typically heavier then combat armor, but 300 lbs is a ridiculous weight, even by that standard. I have seen documentaries before that showed off the mobility of plate armor before, including such feats in full armor as push ups and jumping off a horse, tumbling, and getting back up again in seconds. The first example was in tournament plate, too.

Most successful lightly armored soldiers fought with heavy reliance on shields anyways, whether it be the Persian spara, the viking round shield, or pavises. I don't know why you would bet on a bikini-warrior over a knight, common sense alone would lead one to conclude that it would be advantageous if only because why else would knights spend so much wealth on their armor if it was worse then being unarmored?

For someone who has supposedly worn armor before, my impression is that you seem to know remarkably little about it, or its historical importance.

 

[etherlance]

I hate the whole: "Hey guys it's ok to show sex all the time now".
developers have going.

There was once a time where showing less was showing more.

By not showing the female stark naked, meant that guys had to imagine them naked and thus made the female all the more exciting and sexy, now these days it's just:


Here is a female.

Here is the female in barely anything.

Now here she is naked.

Enjoy and move on to the next.



Just put thegirls in the same armour as the guys and please give up this sad little nerdy fetish of the chainmail bikini, it lessens the female and degrades us men for constantly making it.

 

[Negatempest]

Let me ask THIS question. "Why is a 2-3 piece bikini armor have as much stopping power as a males full armor set?" Under those rules, once a woman is in a full set of "female" armor she will be a juggernaut on the battlefield. And they say that it's unfair for the woman....

 

[droppingpenny]

And I think Samus lovers are a fan of her Zero-Suit, not the armor, I mean look at it, that thing is pretty much skin-tight.

I'm a fan of her Armor... well on the other hand I am also more a fan of the Games (except GBA and Other M) and not of the character, so you may be right about the Zero suit ;-)

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

indeed...
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChainmailBikini
i am the ass who had to bring tvtropes in to this have so fun.

 

[DJ Jack]

'nuff said

HA! This is awesome!

Any who, being an unfortunate witness to the ever infamous "bikini chain mail" at the Renaissance Fair for years now. I can honestly say I would not mind if they disappeared off the face of the earth, because sometimes people try a "little" too hard to squeeze themselves into those things.
(And I am not talking about the lady types folks *shudder* *shudder*)

 

[RA92]

Yeah there's a bit of cleavage, but I thought Saskia's armor was pretty badass in The Witcher 2.

http://bulk.destructoid.com/ul/200563-meet-the-women-of-the-witcher-2/saskia1-620x.jpg

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/158/a/6/saskia_by_rexil-d3ibj3p.jpg

And she of all people shouldn't actually need an armor since she's actually...

... Saesenthessis the dragon.

http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2011/features/gameguides/witcher2/roche3/0031.jpg