Rivalry

Sometime ago a game like Marvel Rivals emerged and quickly endeared itself to many gamers, or did it? It turns out some gamers and especially female gamers have objected to the way the superheroines are portrayed there, if I was honest most of the female characters there are ridiculously busty. They also tend to be leaner than their male counterparts, which makes them seem more palatable to certain male gamers. Though it’s true not all male gamers are sexist perverts, let alone for life, but a number of games in the past have set the tone for certain things. Not just in depicting helpless women a lot, but also sexualised heroines fairly often too. In the cases with characters like Kitana, Sonya Blade, Cammy White and Lara Croft, though these characters are ostensibly admirable heroines this is undercut by unnecessary sexualisation at times, well until recently with newer games featuring the three of them appearing to be less sexualised than they did in recent memory. Though unfortunately this isn’t well-received by other male gamers, despite their respective developers’ sincere attempts to concede to feminist criticism.

Actually even in games that don’t sexualise female characters a lot, either that they simply don’t show up in the games at all, are made functionally interchangeable with their male counterparts in gameplay (though this is a grey area), and are also glorified NPCs as well. Based on my meagre gaming experience on PBS Kids of all things, but it’s kind of telling that when it comes to depicting and creating female characters in video games with most game developers being male that it’s going to be a hit or miss at times. Sometimes it gets complicated that even when the game doesn’t seem to be outright sexist, it’s subtly sexist in that the female characters either simply don’t show up at all or are practically NPCs at most. Conversely speaking, especially in the Japanese video game industry, there are games that technically fail the Bechdel Test but are highly aimed at the female gamer demographic in terms of the ways the male characters are portrayed as to appease to them (something like Ensemble All Stars).

Although the Japanese video game industry isn’t any better, this is something the US counterpart missed out on. Well for most of the part as it’s going to be hard naming what is the US equivalent to the Ensemble Stars game that the US equivalent would have to be created instead, but this implies the US equivalents to these games are either nonexistent or very rare at most. In the sense of a video game that’s unabashedly aimed at women that objectifies male characters a lot, that it may not necessarily be a popstar raising game the way Ensemble Stars is, but something that’s kind of upfront about pandering to cishet female preferences a lot. Or if there ought to be a way to push the envelope with male character designs that is somewhat closer to what their female counterparts get, like what would happen if you were to chance upon a male character who goes about pairing an Italian suit with a dog collar, it wouldn’t seem particularly that sexualised compared to what the womenfolk get.

But it is pushing things when compared to the way male characters are usually depicted, that does speak volumes about the rampant sexualisation of female characters in ACG media a lot. Where if you have a male character going about in a suit but where the tie’s replaced by a bondage collar/choker, it is pushing things in a way that’s barely if ever done to male characters. Or that it’s been done to male characters before but not for long (mind you I’ve seen Hank Pym wear bondage clothing before), whereas it’s painfully commonplace to see female characters go about in skimpy and really sexualised outfits, to the point where Super Mario’s Princess Peach stands out more for usually wearing more modest dresses. There are some people who feel that young girls shouldn’t wear skimpy clothing, to the point where it makes the character designs for early-teen characters like Misty feel iffier in this light. She’s supposed to be in the 10-14 age range so far, but dresses in a crop top and short shorts that make one wonder if she’s going to risk injuring herself more if she does something by accident when going out on a trip.

Princess Peach is very much an adult woman but she usually is more covered up, which goes to you show you given her prominence in the video game canon that a female character needn’t to be too sexualised to have any renown or impact. One other contender within the early video game canon would be Princess Zelda, who in her official appearances, barely if ever dresses this skimpily either. Though it could be argued that the sexualisation of female characters in the video game industry also started out early, it seems to have surged in tandem with having more agentic female characters around, that it feels like an attempt to compensate for having potentially emasculating fictional womenfolk around. Marvel Rivals seems like a more recent permutation of this meme, surely there are a lot of playable female characters around. But they tend to have absurd proportions, a number of them dress in a very sexualised manner and fewer still are stuck with the same colour scheme, despite being ostensibly very different women respectively.

If characters like Aloy are any indication, if you have a female character who’s both strong and not that sexualised, she’d intimidate some guy gamers a lot. Further compounding the problem is that even when the female character is sexy, but if she doesn’t have certain proportions then she’s not sexy enough. There’s this blogger who insinuated that such players aren’t even interested in good character design, they’re more interested in wanting the womenfolk to be as arousing as possible. Believe or not, I actually know of somebody who’s attracted to redheads, fat women, muscular women and giantesses, but the same fellow draws the line at ugly women and short-haired women that he seems to prove her point right. Sound character design might as well be traded for whatever that’s immediately arousing, especially in female characters, that contributes to an unnecessarily sexualised environment. I suppose if it were possible to push the envelope with male characters, that even when it doesn’t seem provocative compared to the women, it would still be daring compared to the way male characters are usually portrayed.

Let’s say that the upshot politican Colin Sallow wears a mustard-coloured Italian pantsuit with a very tight shirt that ironically leaves practically nothing to the imagination, despite being coloured black, then there’s forensic scientist Fabrice Tientcheu who also wears something similar. Then comes financial adviser Ilmar Tuglas who’s the most modest of the three men, if because he wears a buttoned up bottle green trenchcoat that’s paired with a violet dress-shirt, bottle green trousers and a violet choker with an emerald gem at the centre. He doesn’t seem that particularly provocatively dressed when compared to a female character, it would still be a rather odd character design choice despite not being this sexualised either. It’s not just that he wears a choker and jewel-toned garments, but that he also actually wears jewellery at all. When it comes to something like body dysmorphic disorder, this is kind of exacerbated in the ACG canon where such character designers can readily whip up the ideal woman. I even argued elsewhere that such depictions might even be more harmful than fashion magazines.

One can appreciate a well-done dress, but it’s kind of hard measuring up to a cartoon heroine with more sexualised proportions than you, goes about in a very sexualised manner despite appearances to the contrary and is sometimes depicted as if she were a porn star, that would be much more drastic than if she were confronted by a woman wearing a modest but nice gown. It’s easier for others to let these ACG depictions slide but in the sense they either think it’s imaginary or a mere mistake, without knowing it could be even more harmful as it more effectively communicates a certain message. With clothing you could learn to make something that suits your likings, or to create something for somebody else. But with cartooning and the like, one could cook up the ideal woman. It’s like if somebody’s so exposed to a near lifetime of looking at naked and scantily clad women in artbooks, comics and video games that it feels unfeminine for a woman to dress much more modestly, to the point where it might even be more provocative for a woman to go about dressed in a roomy abaya in public.

This isn’t always the case for Muslim-majority characters like Malaysia and plausibly Iran, Turkey and Morocco where you’re bound to have women who’ll find ways of undermining the modesty mandate in some other way, pushing things despite appearances to the contrary, though not for long. But supposing if things like Malaysian folk clothing, hanfu/traditional Han Chinese clothing, Indonesian folk clothing, precolonial clothing and Burmese folk clothing were to get popularised in the Philippines, especially after America collapses, that Filipinas might dress more provocatively if many of them went about in panlingpaos, changaos, baju kurung, ruqun and the like in public, than if they wore short shorts and leggings just the same. If because it would be really odd seeing more Filipinas dressing much more modestly than they did, where it would surely freak out a lot of people if a lot of young Philippine women wore panlingpao and baju kurung to the streets. There could be issues of cultural appropriation, but it’s essentially no different if white women went about in sexualised versions of Native American clothing.

But it does bring up the question if women in sexualised clothing is so normalised, what does it take to dress provocatively then? Could it be that the sight of say Sonya Blade in a more modest outfit be more provactive than if she went about dressed as if she were a dominatrix? Going back to the other example, because it’s so common seeing Philippine women in short shorts and leggings, that they’d dress more provocatively if they went about dressed in baju kurung and sarong in public. If because what they’ll be wearing would be so shocking and strange that it polarises people at first, because it’s something the Philippine public’s not particularly this used to. It would be similarly bizarre if something like Swedish, Danish and Finnish folk clothing get so popularised among Canadian women, that it would also draw in accusations of cultural appropriation at any point. Even if these same garments don’t get sexualised at all, it would still be weird seeing Canadian women going about in Danish folk clothing in public spaces like malls and restaurants.

A lot weirder than if they went about in American clothing, because it’s been popularised for years. So it would be super strange seeing a character like Kitana go about wearing a Song dynasty panlingpao with Song dynasty trousers to boot, especially if others are more used to seeing her in more form-fitting or skimpier outfits before. It would be really strange seeing Tanya go about wearing a boubou/kaftan in Ankara print whilst finishing her opponents in kombat, one would only wonder if players have (to develop) the patience to put up with seeing Sophitita in a modest Norwegian bunad (or even Ivy Valentine wearing the same garment). It would be pretty controversial for many reasons, but the fact that so many people are desensitised to highly sexualised depictions, that it would be super out of the blue seeing more women (both fictional and real) dress much more modestly than they used to. Marvel Rivals seems like the latest iteration of an earlier but ongoing phenomenon when it comes to sexualised depictions of women, that it would potentially serve to normalise/popularise these things again.

Is sartorial impracticality in character design objectifying?

I feel when it comes to what constitutes as a practical character design and whether if sexual objectification has anything to do with it, at other times it doesn’t seem to be what it ought to be. One could be dressed modestly and still dress impractically, speaking from personal experience wearing really baggy sleeves that get in the way of eating. In the context of superhero stories and the like (i.e. a good number of video games), it usually refers to highly sexualised character designs that get in the way of fighting or whatsoever. From my personal experience, it might be possible to dress demurely yet also impractically, that it does make one wonder if our understanding of impractical dressing’s largely limited to just dressing sexily.

But that would mean the subject matter’s more nuanced than the dichotomy of sexy/ugly, even this has shown up multiple times in video games before in some way. Most notably what both Princesses Zelda and Peach wear, though from a certain standpoint what they wear’s positively anodyne compared to the more sexualised likes of Samus Aran (even before she wore a catsuit, she kind of dressed skimpily and also the way some illustrators depict her catsuit risks pushing things), Lara Croft, Cammy White and Kitana. Actually with Lara Croft, it’s a more complicated by now. Especially when you have lots of women dressing like her in real life, whether the leggings or the shorts, that at this point the way Lara Croft dresses is very unremarkable.

Not necessarily any less sexualised, but highly unremarkable in this day. It would be all the more provocative to see another female character dress in a more demure yet stylish manner, given we’re practically desensitised to sexualised female designs both in ACG media and in real life, especially if it’s a character design that’s barely seen in years that it’s kind of monstrous in its own right. In the sense of being very out of the ordinary, like say supposing if this character named Jemima Szara goes about in a demure black turtleneck blouse and red maxiskirt paired with black tights and red shoes, it wouldn’t exactly be monstrous. It would (still) come off as kind of unusual, because we’re not used to seeing a civilian dress this way.

Let alone an investigative journalist a la Lois Lane and also Insomniac’s Mary Jane Watson, but that’s got to do with American culture favouring both sexiness and comfort in dress over ornamentation and demureness as it is in Japan. Especially among Japanese women in real life that makes the differences between them and their ACG counterparts all the more drastic, but it also means that sometimes dressing impractically doesn’t necessarily mean the character’s sexualised. Princess Peach could be seen as dressing impractically despite dressing modestly, especially if she does certain things contrary to the way she dresses. Lara Croft could be seen as dressing comfortably, despite also dressing skimpily, especially if she starts going about in hot, damp places as there are women who do dress like her for this purpose alone.

It kind of upends one’s understanding of what it means to dress in such a manner, since sometimes dressing impractically might sometimes mean the character dresses too fancily for something. Princess Peach is generally like this and there could’ve been instances where she did dress too impractically for the occasion, just by wearing a nice gown alone and one of my sisters point out that I dress impractically because I habitually wear blouses with baggy sleeves a lot. I don’t play video games much but just by going from my own experiences dressing in such a manner that sometimes dressing impractically might also mean dressing in a way that’s too fancy or gets in the way of eating in my case, not necessarily because the character’s outfit is sexualised.

Not necessarily always because the character’s outfit is sexualised, which means our understanding of what it means to dress practically is kind of context-dependent. Somebody like Lara Croft might actually tend towards comfort over dressing fancily, the sort who feels more comfortable wearing shorts or leggings over a super nice dress, when she’s out looking for adventures in far off places. It happens to be rather skimpy or sexualised, given how they risk coming off as at inopportune times. A hypothetical character like Jemima Szara could be seen as dressing impractically, because she opts to dress in a black blouse and long red skirt with red shoes and black tights, as to look kind out of place and too fancy for the occasion.

Characters like Zelda and Peach, both Nintendo princesses by the way, do upend one’s understanding of what an impractical character design’s like, in that they needn’t to be sexualised to be impractical for the situation they’re put into. They also upend the sexy/ugly dichotomy so falsely assumed by a number of gamers when it comes to coming up with nonsexualised female character designs, similar things can be said of Lara Croft herself who dresses quite practically for the situation, despite being also rather sexualised at the same time (favouring shorts or leggings), there are even women who dress like her in the real world by the way. So it seems what is impractical needn’t to be sexualised, since this can involve dressing too fancily for the circumstances they’re in.

But one that fundamentally upends our understanding of things like these.

Male character designs and sexualisation of women

When it comes to the way male characters are designed in video games and other media, it’s rare to find them being anywhere as sexualised as their female counterparts are, rarer still is if they wear something as racy as their female counterparts do. I’m thinking in the lines of making somebody like Graham Knightley wear a bondage-inspired suit, where it’d be really odd seeing a salesman wear bondage trousers. But in reality they should’ve been just as incenced with Cammy White being a female soldier who used to go about in a thong leotard for a long time, though I feel it speaks volumes about how desensitised people are to rampant female objectification that male objectification feels more remarkable and shocking in this regard.

I suppose if you have a male scientist like Fabrice Tientcheu pair a fashionable version of a lab coat with a really tight shirt and tight trousers to show off his muscles, you’d think he’s pushing it and what he’s wearing is inappropriate. But then again Abby Sciutto has been shown wearing skimpy dresses and she’s also a scientist, like as if sexualised femininity’s the sugar made to sweeten medicine. One would only wonder if people can take to a politician like Colin Sallow wearing not only a tight shirt and tight trousers but also a jacket short enough to showcase his muscular bum, the way they would with Lara Croft being an archaeologist who goes about in booty shorts. As if being sexualised is a way of indicating that characters like Abby Sciutto and Lara Croft are female/feminine, because dressing otherwise would either make them look unsexy or unfeminine.

It’s as if femininity with these characters is communicated by dressing in a very sexualised way, instead of being feminine in a less sexualised manner (something like long and loose, floral garments or think Supergirl in a Chanel suit). If because I suppose it would make both Abby and Lara look frumpy, imagine if Abby Sciutto had the same personality and job but swapped miniskirts for a Gothed up version of the Chanel suit that she’d risk looking matronly. Maybe she has dressed more modestly before, but as it stands, the way characters like her, Cammy and Lara have been portrayed risks communicating a message that to be feminine in occupations like science and the military is to be sexualised. Ironically when Goths do enter certain occupations, they tone down their looks to be accepted and not draw too much attention to themselves.

Supposing if we have a police officer like John Zelensky who’s also Goth like Abby, but the fact that he dresses like a leather gay would make one wonder why she has to wear skimpy dresses whilst working in forensics in the first place. The argument that she’s Goth wouldn’t work when actual Goths have to tone down their fashion sense to get employed in more respectable occupations, so John Zelensky dressing like a leather gay is no different from what she wears onscreen: wearing sexualised garments in occupations that would preclude those. But that would involve realising how sexualised she actually is (from time to time), that they wouldn’t do at all to her had she been male. It still communicates a certain message that to be feminine is to be sexualised, even if one could be feminine without being sexualised.

It’s sexist because it’s not done often with menfolk, let alone without questioning the male characters’ sexuality (sort of like how the Jobros are seen as gay in the west, even when they could’ve been straight and aren’t seen as gay in Japan) or that men are ugly. But it’s not hard to see how the rampant sexualisation of women in the media would have other women turn to slash and the like to objectify men in earnest, if because being compared to an idealised version of femininity could risk being harmful to them in some way. That perhaps not being represented at all’s preferable to being misrepresented and objectified at every turn, it’s even more terrifying to think that there’s not a single western equivalent to Ensemble All-Stars despite things like Backstreet Boys being popular back in the day.

Having a lot more video games tailor-made for women’s tastes would be nice, though it remains to be seen if the western video game industry would be open to game developers creating something in the lines of Ensemble All-Stars. Or even male equivalents to the likes of Ivy Valentine, Cammy White, Lara Croft and Abby Sciutto in terms of attire, something like salesman Graham Knightley with his BDSM inspired suit or politician Colin Sallow and scientist Fabrice Tientcheu with their tight shirts and trousers paired with more respectable jackets and coats. But this involves realising how sexualised these characters are regarding why nobody bothered to outfit a male Abby Sciutto in a tight shirt and trousers coupled with a stylised lab coat, because that would look too fruity even when he doesn’t show much skin.

I suppose in this society and world, women are meant to be seen and not heard. They’re there to be looked at, even when they shouldn’t and needn’t to be. One would only wonder how would people react to Graham Knightley appearing in a BDSM inspired suit without questioning his sexuality, motivations or very existence, but turn a blind eye to a female soldier going about in a thong leotard until recently. Which goes to show you how desensitised we are to hypersexualised visions of women.

It looks costumey

I suspect why superhero costumes don’t translate well to live action is because a lot of them look rather costumey, as in they obviously look like costumes and not something someone would actually wear in the real world. Whilst it’s true that particularly among certain fashion houses and musicians, there is a tendency to wear really outrageous outfits but even then they still more presentable than what cartoon superheroes wear. Or at least in a way that’s meant to be worn, which says a lot about clothing construction really. But this isn’t unique to cartoon superheroes, as it can apply to other kinds of cartoon characters. It’s not just a matter of designing clothes, but rather a knowledge of clothing construction itself that matters.

This may not always be the case but if we were to pick a DC Comics example, John Constantine might be one of the few whose character design holds up well in live action. But despite being kind of dated since it’s not the 1980s anymore, it’s not too odd looking and not too costumey compared to the other DC characters onboard. Similar things can be said of Death of the Endless, despite complaints over a black woman who got chosen for the role. No surprise why costume designers working on the Flash, Arrow and the like scramble to make those outfits presentable for live action, whereas there’s not much of a need to do so with both Death and John Constantine. It might be possible to do tight outfits that don’t look costumey.

But even then you’d have to not only study skintight garments that are worn fairly often in real life, but also learn to construct one yourself (if you’re willing to take a step further). That way you can create something that’s actually feasible and wearable in the real world, whereas a lot of superhero costumes tend to ignore real world logic. Why would the Flash wear a pair of rainboots to run with when a pair of sneakers would’ve sufficed? Why does the Flash catsuit even have to have a hood and gloves? The outfits worn by womenfolk tend to be really sexualised, like how and why they’re expected to bear cleavage, wear skimpy or really tight outfits and stuff.

Sort of like how so many cartoonists feel compelled to not unzip Catwoman’s outfit, but also how she doesn’t seem to wear a bra even. This may not anger all female readers and viewers, but given how women are more likely to develop body dysmorphic disorder, that the way female characters are portrayed often risks being kind of unsettling to them. Then we get to video games where we have a selection of costumey and not so costumey character designs, as evidenced by their cinematic adaptations. In the case with Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft, her outfit’s not too impossible/implausible since there are those who dress like her in the real world. No surprise why her outfit remain unchanged in the film adaptation starring Angelina Jolie.

Not so much with something like the ones in Fallout where the same outfit made from plainer, less textured fabrics and made with a simpler pattern would look really costumey, which implies that these outfits are far removed from the real world. Being far removed from the real world would often make such a garment look costumey, especially in the way it’s constructed regardless of the fabric, that a well-made garment created with something like cotton would look better than something poorly constructed made from the same fabrics used for film and television sets. Maybe not always the case but it takes more skill into making something look good, despite being made with something like cotton, I suppose.

I feel even with the best of what cosplayers do with those garments, they still look like fancy dress because they’re very far-removed from the real world. Farther removed than some intended them to be, not helped by not having a hand in making garments themselves. A lot of superhero costumes seem to be made by people who have no talent in making regular garments, for want of a better wording, so that’s why they look wrong and still look like fancy dress when done in the real world. It’s not that people don’t wear tights at all in the real world, but a cartoon superhero outfit is bound to look wrong in the real world. Not necessarily impractical as much as they’re terrible-looking really.

Maybe somewhat impractical in the sense that people need to wear something convenient should they ever take a dump or similar, when the timing calls for it, that it would be more sensible to put superheroes in similarly skintight but two piece outfits instead. Easier to do when somebody has to go to the bathroom, but that would mean that superhero costumes are often designed for form rather than function. But in the sense that there’s a big emphasis on making it look good on page, instead of something that somebody would actually wear to let’s say wrestling or sprinting. If things like football and rugby are any indication, one could dress both practically and skimpily (in a way).

Though for some odd reason, the Flash doesn’t dress like an actual sprinter, even if it would’ve made sense and enough for him to get away with that. But I suppose having him dress like a sprinter would’ve ruined the whole ‘superhero thing’ for other people, even if he does dress somewhat more modestly like say a tight shirt and tight trousers with sneakers, it wouldn’t look kind of cool on page which is part of the problem. A Flash that dresses for function than form risks looking uncool on page, even if it would actually look kind of nice and interesting in the real world. Stylish even, but then again the average superhero cartoonist doesn’t seem that into fashion either.

Neither with sports too, which often results in worse-looking outfits in live action. Whilst there are fabrics out there that do approximate the body paint look in superhero cartoons, something like micro-modal for instance (it’s for real), but it could risk oversexualising the wearers a lot. Especially regarding certain areas that they also steer away from it, even when it could’ve given us the superhero look that others yearn to see. This only compounds the problem with actualising superhero costumes onscreen, if they don’t look comically ugly they’d look too sexualised. Consider how Ben Affleck felt about his Daredevil outfit, he said that it’s a look that one would wear to something BDSM themed.

Though it’s not made of the same fabric, it still hints at the same problem. A micromodal live-action superhero outfit is possible, but it’d also make the wearer look as if they’re body-painted, even when it’s pretty close to the way superhero outfits are drawn in the funnybooks. This goes double for the way women’s outfits are portrayed in the same stories and medium, where sometimes it looks like they’re actually wearing body paint themselves. So this is possibly why superhero costume designers avoid micromodal, there’s the risk of oversexualising the wearer like they appear to be wearing next to nothing. So a thicker, harder fabric’s often used in its place instead.

Even when it’s possible to actualise superhero outfits in a way that makes them nearly identical to their cartoon representations, if a fabric like micromodal’s any indication, it’s going to be fraught with unnecessary sexualisation. Otherwise we’d get a repeat of things like the Joel Schumacher version of Batman and the early 2000s version of Daredevil, especially if it seems more like body paint due to its second skin nature. So if superhero costumes risk looking goofy in live action, they’d also risk looking too sexualised for similar reasons. Like how some female characters appear to dress in either body paint, bondage clothing, underwear or swimwear.

Consider how Laura Vandervoot felt uncomfortable dressing up as Supergirl in Smallville, because those outfits were often skimpy, that this is possibly why many (if not most) superheroine outfits don’t resemble their cartoon counterparts much. If because those cartoon outfits are too sexualised, in addition to being too costumey to wear with a straight face. So the near-perfect live action superhero outfit isn’t going to happen much, even when you now have the right fabric to get it right like micromodal. But it’s a pipe dream for now.