Another gripe of mine is the way women are often presented – more accurately, dressed (or not!) – in fantasy media (TV Tropes lists it as Breast Plate). Women warriors in particular are clad in the most ridiculously impractical outfits. Such images are usually male fantasies though, so grumbling about this is ultimate pointless – but my relentlessly practical nature finds such images irritating nonetheless. Below are a couple of random images.
An otherwise-good painting by fantasy artist Larry Elmore demonstrates this cliché perfectly:
Wearing even less (if that’s possible) is this image from a comicbook, Queen Sonja №1:
- No protection against weapons or weather
- Metal armor against bare skin will burn or freeze it in extreme conditions, not to mention being uncomfortable anyway
- Ladies with large busts need adequate support, which these outfits don’t give – running must be very uncomfortable!
- Admittedly, if fighting against men, such an outfit would likely distract them long enough for her to slaughter them before they could gather their wits enough to react ;-)
Onto a slightly different topic (but still female-related), there is an interview with James Cameron at Playboy magazine (a bit NSFW for obvious reasons!). He has previously stated that the main female Na’vi character, Neytiri, was designed to be attractive to men (to phrase it politely). This, however, incites fanboys (pathetically immature nerds) to post the nastiest lewd comments imaginable – an example is “Here's A Blueish Pic Of Zoe’s AVATAR Character!!” at Aint’t It Cool (NSFW because of the inane comments). I really wish JC had designed the Na’vi to be more alien – perhaps looking like the “Prawns” in District 9 – this would certainly be more challenging for the audience!
Such comments make me more than a little queasy, perhaps because in some vague way it is threatening to me as a female. A few weeks ago there was a MetaFilter thread, “Hi. Whatcha reading?” on why women can find remarks or looks from strange men threatening, despite how innocent the latter might be – and there are a lot of responses. Women can never entirely trust male strangers (until proven otherwise) because there is always the prospect of rape. Young men in particular, especially groups of them, are threatening – something I have experienced (from a distance) over the years. If you are a women walking alone and pass a group of young men, they will almost always make lewd comments, even if you are dressed in baggy unattractive clothing. I have quite a few violent fantasies of what I would like to do to them (usually involving dismemberment, disembowelment, throat-cutting, explosions, etc.! If they could see into my mind as I was walking past, they might be more than a little disturbed). Unfortunately, such behavior seems to be inherently (human) male, so I don’t think all the education in the world will change it.
While women certainly do admire men on their physical appearance (I certainly do!), that is different, perhaps because such attention is not potentially threatening to men. Despite what I wrote above, I don’t hate men – but I do despise the badly-behaving ones (of whom there are too many!).
