Sarah LeBoeuf said:
Rise of the Tomb Raider Preview: Woman vs. Wild
Lara Croft has grown since her last game; she?s got more skills, more confidence, and actual pants.
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And she still lacks the physique to do any of the feats that she supposedly does in the game.
This is one thing that has really annoyed me about the changes over time to Lara as a character. On one hand they slut-shamed her because she had pair of "big polygons" when she was first conceived, but under the argument of course that it's "unrealistic". Fine, it's unrealistic. But then again so is someone with the physique of a hipster starbucks barista scaling the side of a mountain. One look at her character and you can tell she doesn't have the upper body strength to bench press a six pack of beer. How is this not "unrealistic"? And yes, she has pants now - probably to hide the doughy appendages she calls "legs" that wouldn't be able to propel her more than a few centimeters into the air if she gave it a good shot.
It's very strange to me, it's like every iteration of Lara she gets more waifish and less like someone who ought to be a highly physical globe trotting adventurer - yet for some reason this is "progress" because her chest isn't big or because she is wearing pants instead of shorts. Her latest iteration has her slightly bouncing back from the previous one where she had limbs so thin she looked like a heroin addled pole dancer, but it's hardly a positive body image, because god forbid a woman actually look athletic in a game - you know, with muscles and stuff. But no, let's focus on
pants because really, what a woman wears is how we define them in society so obviously we need to make sure we get this right.
I have to admit to being one of the people who bought the argument the first time around from these people, but now I've come to the conclusion that they were essentially just slut shaming a video game character of all things. It somewhat baffles me, but having witnessed every iteration of this series (and yes, I own every game) I've come to the appreciation that poor Lara Croft has been used as a battleground for trying to control the representation of female bodies in video games and that this "battle" if you will has far out-stripped this series general contribution to gaming. When people say "realism" what they're really saying is, "How we want her to be", since there is absolutely fucking nothing "realistic" about Lara Croft - hell one look at her and you can tell that if she ever fired one of those huge hand cannons she has she'd give herself a concussion from smashing her face in with the recoil.
Look, I'm not saying every game needs to be as realistic as humanly possible, they're video games after all and a healthy dose of suspension of belief is required. However when people criticize a game or a game character over things like their wardrobe, I'm absolutely calling it out as puerile nonsense and Lara Croft is a great damn example because as a character in a video game she has a hell of a lot more problems with her "representation" than if she is wearing long pants or not.