The "Male Power Fantasy": what do women generally and actually find sexy?

[Ariseishirou]

Based on my own experiences, as a woman? And talking to the many other women I've known?

Muscular, generally, but far, far less so than the extremes that tend to be presented in male power fantasy. Think less "bodybuilder" and more "athlete/model". Of course there are those women who love beefcake and those women who love heroin chic - like men, women have different tastes. It also varies by culture; women and girls in the West tend to like their men more built than women in Asia do. I've lived in Japan for a while, and my female friends there prefer a type they call "slim & athletic" but which would be downright scrawny back home.

But the biggest difference is that, just like with men, the face is very, very important to us. An attractive face on a mediocre body can go a long, long way, and the male power fantasy type characters (see: Gears of War) are often aging, grizzled, or fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. It's not hot to us. Those characters are designed entirely for men.

Again, it varies: some women like legs (and these women often love to watch soccer/football) some like arms, some like hands and feet, most like pecs and abs, some are all about the dick and others couldn't care less so long as it works, some hate long hair and others swoon over it, but just about all of them want an attractive face. That's probably the biggest tell: look at works by women, for women, like the romance novels you posted above, or yaoi/BL. Look at video game characters that have countless female fans, like Dante or Leon Kennedy. Their build might vary, but they won't be old, grizzled, or unattractive.

 

[Lotet]

That's a hard question to answer, mostly because women will rarely give straight answers due to the whole social acceptability bias. She will usually give the 'proper' answer.

Two women: have two distinct need sets. They want a strong biologically sound partner that will pass on strong genes to her child increasing the success of that offspring as an adult, but they also need someone they can feel safe and comfortable around with her child and who will help with the raising of said child so it survives childhood. The phrases is, screw the sinner marry the saint.

Three: What a woman desires depends entirely on her current hormonal state. Factors like, where she is on her ovulation cycle, is she pregnant, is she nursing, does she have a young child, is she on the pill. All these things believe it or not affect what a woman looks for in a man...since all these things affect the hormonal wiring and thusly what they desire.

This is not a bad thing, it's just biology and science can back me up on all of that. The research has been done. Women chose partner based on hardwired needs and these needs will hift depending on the woman's current life state.

You sound like a 60 year old "scientist/biologist" describing women. Suggesting that women could not think out matters coolly and calmly as they are at the whims of their hormones.

 

[Brian Tams]

The fact that guys don't realise what a male power fantasy is means that developers could easily make men that appeal to women, therefore increasing their market, and male gamers would be none the wiser.

Interestingly enough, as a male, I've never understood the appeal to wanting to be someone like kratos, or a Gears of War whatever (I can't remember his name for the life of me, but they all look the same). Perhaps its because as a kid, my Dad exposed me to a lot of James Bond (and he was a great Dad for doing so), so I've always wanted to be a more suave, deadly smart sort of guy.

So, if the game industry would instead churn out more James Bond's instead of Marine Meat-Head #6, then I would love it. (Of topic, but your comment made me think about that.)

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Problem is typecasting woman. Some love nerds, others huge muscles and then others that like more emotional men. I think its the same thing with typecasting men in games and movies and we men just accepted it in away. Same as woman accept all the size zero rubbish in magazines. But then when it comes to popularity stakes a muscly strong man and a thin sexy woman is what sells....neither are real life but i guess we all aspire to that and it means something otherwise it wouldnt sell.

 

[DevilWithaHalo]

That's a hard question to answer, mostly because women will rarely give straight answers due to the whole social acceptability bias. She will usually give the 'proper' answer.

Two women: have two distinct need sets. They want a strong biologically sound partner that will pass on strong genes to her child increasing the success of that offspring as an adult, but they also need someone they can feel safe and comfortable around with her child and who will help with the raising of said child so it survives childhood. The phrases is, screw the sinner marry the saint.

Three: What a woman desires depends entirely on her current hormonal state. Factors like, where she is on her ovulation cycle, is she pregnant, is she nursing, does she have a young child, is she on the pill. All these things believe it or not affect what a woman looks for in a man...since all these things affect the hormonal wiring and thusly what they desire.

This is not a bad thing, it's just biology and science can back me up on all of that. The research has been done. Women chose partner based on hardwired needs and these needs will hift depending on the woman's current life state.

You sound like a 60 year old "scientist/biologist" describing women. Suggesting that women could not think out matters coolly and calmly as they are at the whims of their hormones.

Are you not familiar with the studies on female behavior based on her ovulation cycle? It's actually quite fascinating. There is certainly a difference from the notion of determination as opposed to influence though. Our hormones affect our abilities to perceive things from a rational perspective and how receptive we are to varied stimuli.

Not suggesting that you can't think coolly and calmly, but that you will think differently based on a variety of circumstances, one of them being your current balance of hormones.

 

[Ariseishirou]

That's a hard question to answer, mostly because women will rarely give straight answers due to the whole social acceptability bias. She will usually give the 'proper' answer.

--biological reductionism ad absurdum, evo psych woo woo, nature uber alles, what is society?!?--

Yes, I said that women like attractive faces and a variety of body types because that's the socially acceptable answer. Not because women like attractive faces and a variety of body types. *epic facepalm*

 

[Lotet]

snip

You mean this guy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pUXH1Bye88

Haha, sorry, I know you don't want to be like the guy in that particular scene, haha... ha... right?

 

[Lotet]

snips

Oh, I know. It's just the last time I read someone talking like BigTuk it was from someone talking about why women's suffrage shouldn't be introduced. Then a feminist satirically replied with a copied and edited argument saying that men let their hormones get to them, leading them to cross continents in the thousands to kill people. So clearly men aren't of a sound mind to lead a nation.

I'm getting off topic, my point is, hormones can only influence a decision, not 'make' it.

 

[norashepard]

Yo you know it doesn't even matter what a woman's 'type' is. The issue is that over-sexualization helps perpetuate general attitudes that see women as objects to be used (erm, rape culture). That's why it's bad. Men don't have to deal with that in the regular world, so an over-sexualized man (the closest thing I can think of is Loki from the Thor movies) doesn't represent such a disgusting trend.

Like, literally, it's not ever going to be as easy as pointing to one body type and going "Oh no! Sexualized! Abort! Abort!" because the REAL problem is not the bodies, but the attitudes surrounding them.

 

[Lotet]

snipping

Boy, I said what I meant and I meant what I said. Don't try to argue against something I didn't say. You said:

What a woman desires depends entirely on her current hormonal state.

"entirely" being the key word here.
I replied with how I saw it. You didn't even seem to take into consideration, their living conditions, their financial situation, their social skills, their EXPERIENCE, no, just hormones. If you didn't mean that then you shouldn't have worded it that way.

 

[Darkmantle]

Yo you know it doesn't even matter what a woman's 'type' is. The issue is that over-sexualization helps perpetuate general attitudes that see women as objects to be used (erm, rape culture). That's why it's bad. Men don't have to deal with that in the regular world, so an over-sexualized man (the closest thing I can think of is Loki from the Thor movies) doesn't represent such a disgusting trend.

Like, literally, it's not ever going to be as easy as pointing to one body type and going "Oh no! Sexualized! Abort! Abort!" because the REAL problem is not the bodies, but the attitudes surrounding them.

So just to be clear here, You are saying that Video games influence our real life behaviour, in much the same way that video game violence cause real life violence?

You can't believe one and not the other here. Either video games shape our attitudes in life or not.\

Edit: fixed broken quote

 

[the December King]

Now that's out of the way... objectification. You have to realise it's about so much more than just body shape: it's about how they're posed/shot (the camera gratuitously lingering on Miranda's ass in Mass Effect 2 and 3), the character's motivations and reasons for existing (for example, female characters are often the token love interest - they only exist so the male lead can get some). The differences between how male and female superheroes are posed in comics is really striking. Honestly you'd have to be blind not to see it.

It would actually be funny if the camera did that to some of the men. Funny to see the reactions, that is. I mean, there's the trite joke that you spend all your time looking at the backside of a dude in a game, but it'd be interesting to see how people reacted if the camera....Hovered, almost longingly on a dude's parts.

I said it at the time, but I'd have paid serious money to see a gender-swapped version of that Hitman vs BDSM nuns trailer from a couple of years ago. The reaction would have been delicious (and the trailer itself would have been hilarious, obviously)

It's funny, but I found it such an effective attention-grabber not because the ladies were fetishized, but more for the fact that a man was actually kicking the crap out of women, instead of the other way around.

But yeah, a pack of men dressed as sexy nuns getting beaten up by a woman in a smart business suit would garner a reaction, I reckon.

 

[Zeles]

So just to be clear here, You are saying that Video games influence our real life behaviour, in much the same way that video game violence cause real life violence?

You can't believe one and not the other here. Either video games shape our attitudes in life or not.

It's not just that video games influence our real life behavior, it's that EVERYTHING influences our real life behavior. In almost all media, we equate violence as wrong, but we emulate it because we know that when violence is in games, it's separate from violence in real life. We know, going into the game, that the violence we partake in is unrealistic.

But when people go into games and see sexualization and objectification, they don't automatically think that it's unrealistic. And because of the frequency at which this occurs, everytime people see it, it reenforces the notion that that's how it is in real life.

Most people don't see violence everywhere like we see sexualization or objectification, so it's not constantly reenforced.

If all that makes sense.

EDIT: FIXED THE QUOTING THING, SORRY EVERYONE, MY BAD.

 

[Darkmantle]

So just to be clear here, You are saying that Video games influence our real life behaviour, in much the same way that video game violence cause real life violence?

You can't believe one and not the other here. Either video games shape our attitudes in life or not.

It's not just that video games influence our real life behavior, it's that EVERYTHING influences our real life behavior. In almost all media, we equate violence as wrong, but we emulate it because we know that when violence is in games, it's separate from violence in real life. We know, going into the game, that the violence we partake in is unrealistic.

But when people go into games and see sexualization and objectification, they don't automatically think that it's unrealistic. And because of the frequency at which this occurs, everytime people see it, it reenforces the notion that that's how it is in real life.

Most people don't see violence everywhere like we see sexualization or objectification, so it's not constantly reenforced.

If all that makes sense.

totally misquoted, I said that, not nora.

Anyway OT: We don't see violence everywhere in the west? There are at least as many instances of depictions of violence as depictions of so called objectification, I'd argue there are far more. Glorification of violence is practically an American past-time as far as I can tell.

I don't understand how you can sit here and tell me that it's different. Again, either you believe that media creates culture, whether violence or rape, or not. I find it hilarious that the gaming community will freak out at the suggestion of one, but praise and coddle the other.

 

[Headbiter]

I have a question for the female members of this forum.

Spoiler

Often, when the issue of objectification is discussed, there comes to be a point where critics say "Men are objectified too". The response is usually, "That's an example of false equivalence; that is not the same thing as those are figures for men to idolize", otherwise known as the male power fantasy.

But, there's been a large output of media, marketed towards women, especially on billboards and on the covers of harlequin romance novels that show men that are well-built and/or muscular. Other characters in novels such as 50 shades of Grey and Twilight focus on men's abdominals, pectorals, biceps and other areas of physique.

The mainstream generalizes that men are attracted to women with large breasts, skinny waists, and large butts (note that this is a generalization and does not apply to every man, especially those with different sexual orientation). What are physical attributes women generally find attractive in a man?

Maybe somebody mentioned it already (I'm in bit of a hurry) but just in case:

I see where your confusion comes from:

When women in games and other media are sexually appealing (according to current general standards of beuaty, yaddayadda) it's considered objectifying but if men are sexually appealing it's a "power fantasy"? Whatchoo talking 'bout, Willis?

The explanation is actually rather simple: Men have, in this particular field an advantage: Broad shoulders, a strong chin, massive biceps and a rockin' sixpack can be considered BOTH sexually appealing AND empowering, since...well, yeah, strong, powerful men usually built such a physique. The prerequisites for "sexually appealing" and "physically strong" are, for men, very close, if not identical.
So what it comes down to is how they are presented. And most male characters in modern media show nothing of titilation, unless they're explicitly designed for that. They have stern or focused eyes, are usually in some form of martial action, maybe even screaming in anger...things that demonstrate that they are capable fighters (in the broadest sense. They are never (rarely depicted pucking or licking their lips, their poses never bend them out of shape to display both front- and backside and are usually depicted without makeup of any sort.

Now let's look at women: First of all notice that a physique that shows a woman's physical strenght do in fact NOT corelate to what is considered attractive. Strong women also have visible, trained biceps, while the beauty standard includes thin, even arms. A muscular back is something strongly associated with male physique and therefore not considered "beautiful" for women. Throw in the usually TNA-backtwister, the pucked lips, the makeup, regardless of situation....you know what, just google "Ms Fortune Splash" and pick the first image.

See, there's a reason why you find pictures of most female gaming characters on most porn pic sites, yet you never see pics from Julie Bell or Boris Vallejo, despite them already drawing naked women.

And yes, yes, I know YOU don't think so (and with "you" I mean everyone who know jumps up to declare his affection or acceptance for muscular women), but just like men who find big tits unerotic, you're a minority in comparison. You might not like that, but that's how it is. That's why these things are drawn that way. That's why they work.

So yeah, the problem is that the gap between sexy and strong in art is quite a bit smaller for male than for female characters. That's why I take any bet that there are certainly a few suspiciously sticky Marvel comics featuring Black Cat but near to no girls hid an issue of "Cable" under their nightstand.

 

[Zeles]

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Snip[/quote]

That's very interesting and all but what does that have to do with the objectification and sexualization of the female form or the male power fantasy?

Also, I believe, my good sir, that white knighting is when someone blindly defends something, which is not occurring at the present time. Lotet is responding with arguments against your claims, using your own words.

If I may request aswell for clarification in your rebuttle to her quoting your own words back at you- Your responce uses the pronouns "You" and "we". Are you saying that all this information about hormones applies to people of ALL GENDERS?