Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB
-a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
I don't quite understand this bit. >_<;
-a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or
See two bits up - I'm pretty confident that Cindy is not going to be a whore and I'm pretty sure most FF characters, if not all of them, can have the same said about them. Perhaps a few exceptions such as dancers in FFV and people you encounter within honeybee inn.
No one is saying that anyone in Final Fantasy is a whore. You are jumping to astounding conclusions and implications of what Shlup is saying. I don't want to speak for her, but what it seems that she's saying is that there is an over-abundance of unnecessary sexualization of female characters in the series, not that everyone who shows off a little bit skin or cleavage is a whore. She literally used actual definitions of these words and somehow you snagged "whore" from them? How?

Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB
So, please, if you would give me some examples of male Final Fantasy characters who are sexualized, it would help us get on the same page. Also I want you to honestly ask yourself when you look at a male character's exposed skin whether you feel that skin is being exposed in order to be tantalizing to females/homos or whether it's meant to emphasize that they are physically powerful.
I'm troubled here because every single guy I can think of that is supposed to be sexually attractive appears to be muscular (and therefore powerful) because that is what is deemed to be sexy according to most females. So I could tell you Gladiolus, and you could say "No, he's strong, that's a power thing." And I don't know where to go from there because it's down to how you personally want to interpret it. The guy legitimately looks like a male model, to me at least.

Really, I think before we can go much further, you need to send me examples of sexualised males (...probably better to do so via PM or something) so I can get a better understanding of your interpretation of what they should look like. I've grown up being told (by females) that male wrestlers in tiny pants was not something they found attractive, but I'm getting the impression that this is what you mean by sexualised, because I'm unsure what else it could be.
The problem here is that you are confusing physical attraction with sexualization. A character having muscles is not sexualization, those are simply characteristics. Someone feeling attracted to another person =/= that person is a sexualized individual. It is a fact that females in this series are outrageously sexualized in showing off cleavage, breasts, and revealing much of their bodies. I don't see how you can draw a line from "women in thongs, bras, midriffs, short skirts and short shorts and other revealing outfits showing off sexual parts of their bodies is sexualization of the gender" to "girls liking muscles makes men sexualized". The two don't match up at all.



Please explain to me how Gladiolus is a sexualized character. How exactly are parts of his body being shown off in order for women (and others) to objectify him? His shirt being open, okay, I'll give you that. Even so, such a thing doesn't imply sex appeal for all women and it still doesn't make him a sexualized character. Even with an example of his open shirt, he is a single male out of how many other males and how many other games where the males are not sexualized.

Saying that this problem plagues both sexes is not accurate; a single instance of it happening within the realm of male characters does not make it a problem for the male characters; it makes it a happenstance occurrence. The problem flat out lies with female characters and that is that.