Quote Originally Posted by Elpizo View Post
What I don't get is why most of you are saying that apparently women can't be strong and sexy at the same time. Care to explain that?
No one is saying that. I'll take one more crack at explaining.

Women can be strong and beautiful. But the various entertainment mediums have focused disproportionately on highlighting and exploiting female characters' sexiness. From the clothes and "armor" they wear to the poses they're drawn in, and especially combined with the frequent dependence on more central male characters for relevance, female characters are frequently utilized as sex objects first and foremost, with much less thought and complexity put into their characters than their male counterparts. Take Tifa from FFVII. Sure, her outfit by itself cannot be fairly considered sexist in a vacuum. But when you consider how inconsistent it was for her shy character and other choices the writers made (such as this badass fighter getting into a "catfight" slapping contest with another woman), one can't help but think that these choices were made because of her sex.

Lightning was different than that. Sure, she's not ugly, but no main characters ever are (though that is another issue). What was different was that her sex isn't exploited in the overtly sexual fashion described above. But these current choices by SE show an inconsistency with that change, and a concern that SE might be returning to form and so exploiting Lightning.

This has nothing to do with "sexy can't be strong." It's how sexy is utilized in conjunction with other aspects of the character.