Your rebuttal is to name some men who aren't body builders and none of whom look like the stereotypical super hero body type? You missed the point BoB. Completely missed it actually.Originally Posted by Loony BoB
As for Fassbender, Jackman, Efron...?The movie Commando was not made with the intent of any women seeing it besides those forced to watch it by their boyfriends. And Arnold doesn't spend half the movie killing folks with his shirt off because women want a bodybuilder sexually. Men wanted to be Arnold. Most women don't want a guy that jacked.
Just saying.
I'm not sure why it's so hard to understand that a man having his shirt open or off, particularly a playable character who's meant to be a hero and is significantly muscular isn't equal to a woman mechanic with giant tits hanging out of her top because she's a female character in a video game so of course she does. With the former it's meant to make him look tough. Like he can handle himself in a fight because they're showing off his muscles, and it's intended in exactly the same fashion as someone like Arnold or characters like Superman being built like a tank. Because men frequently enjoy watching/playing the tough guy. But why are Cidney's tits hanging out? Because regardless of whatever qualities she may have as a character, guys like tits. So they're going to throw in some eye candy, even when it makes no sense. Like legitimately makes no sense at all.
Your problem is you're trying to look at depictions of men and women as being equal based on the amount of skin that's shown while ignoring hundreds of years of history and societal norms which dictated that men and women aren't equal, and still continue to do so to a much greater extent than you seem to realize today (take a trip to any beach in an english speaking first world nation and tell me how many men have no shirt on and how many women have their boobs showing and tell me that men and women aren't still treated differently. I dare you).
So it's not a problem to take female characters who may very well be strong, well written characters in their own right, and sexualize them for absolutely no reason? To turn them into sexual objects even when doing so is not only unnecessary, but actually undermines their other attributes as a character by turning them into nothing but eye candy from a visual perspective? You don't think that that, and people being okay with it happening all of the time, demonstrates that we have a problem in society right now with how people view men and women differently? Never even mind that people frequently take social cues from what they are exposed to in their life. And before anyone gets into the idea that it's hypocritical to believe that sexualizing women in games might impact people's behaviour in the real world but not believe that violence in games does the same thing, let's remember that violence is much, much different than how people view other people. Most people can figure out that murder is bad because, if nothing else, we have some very strict laws against it and most people don't want to be murdered themselves. But how the different genders are portrayed in media is a much greyer area, and infinitely more subversive in that it takes some degree of actual thought to realize that treating women as objects is bad when you don't have anyone telling you it is save for people who tend to get written off as being lunatics, feminist extremists, social justice warriors, or any other derisive moniker people choose to use these days.In the end, I just think that it's not a problem to sexualise fictional people.
So yes, I firmly believe that many of the male characters in action movies aren't being sexualized, and that sexualizing female characters for no other reason than they have breasts is a bad thing. As Shlup said, that does not mean that sex and sexy are bad things. But this isn't a case of that. Sex and sexy used well will benefit the story and the characters in some way. It will be an element that helps drive things forward in a way that makes sense and isn't just some cheap titillation for the sake of titillation. Cidney's clothes, however, are the exact opposite of that. They serve no practical purpose (and as I said before, are actually counter productive to her profession in so many ways she's probably dying of cancer) aside from showing off her boobs. Why are her boobs being shown off? Do we need to see them for her to be sexy? That arguments already been addressed and is a resounding no. Does she need those clothes to engage in an actual well used sex scene or demonstrate some sexual tension with another character? Also no. So why is she dressed that way? If the only answer anyone can come up with is because boners then she probably shouldn't be dressed that way.
