Psy: xD As much as I love boobs, and have no denying of that, I'm not "wanting to marginalise women because boobs", I'm just tryin' to get my head around all this in a way that helps me understand where the ladies are coming from better because a loooot of stuff in this thread has had my head going around in circles.
None. Haven't seen many soldiers in the real world who enter combat dressed in an open jacket either - silly costumes is something that I consider normal in FF. And often silly = for the sake of increasing physical attractiveness or general "coolness".Originally Posted by Aulayna
Well, a borat suit isn't exactly very attractive by any length. If it was a guy dressed in, say, boxers of some kind, I'd think it was really silly. But I wouldn't get upset, I'd just think it's a stupid outfit for a mechanic. Of course, I see guys working on cars with no shirt in the media all the time which may not help the issue there (I'm stupid when it comes to that end of things) and it probably doesn't help my natural understanding of this stuff when guys, if anything, might not mind being treated like sex objects every now and then. >_> Or at least I wouldn't. I'm not what many people refer to as sexy so on the few occasions a girl has looked at me and made some kind of comment about my physical appearance I've been pretty chuffed (sadly to this day it is limited to my hands, my abs when I was 15 and shivering from a cold pool - RIP my 15 year old abs - and my butt which I never understand because to this day I just don't understand why people like butts).Then this new game comes along and goes "hey guys look Cid is male this time" and all he's wearing is a Borat G-string to show off his bulge, some goggles and has a few splashes of oil on his face to warrant being called a mechanic. Pretty unbelievable right?
Experience tells me otherwise when girls say something like this.This is the issue here, Cidney is the first time Cid has been female and she is a) not wearing attire remotely suitable for an actual mechanic (this would potentially be a minor point, but this is a game that's supposed to be more grounded in reality after all - and the other females we've seen like Luna and Stella are modestly dressed... one could even go so far as using the word "normally" dressed) and b) has huge boobs that are gratuitiously held out in what could only be described as a gravity defying push-up bra.For her frame, they're definitely big, though.
To be fair, Kaylee - looks aside - was a pretty sexual creature when compared to Cindy.So yay, Cid is female for a change - but also had to be overly sexualised as a result. Because just putting her into mechanics overalls (ala Kaylee from FireFly) would be far too unrealistic. Right?
But yeah, I get where you're coming from with the "historic" stuff. It's the first time she's been sexualised and she's a girl. I would call it a bad choice by SE because of the natural backlash it was going to get. If it were the second girl, or if a Cid had previously been a mechanic and topless, would there have been the same fuss? I do wonder. As for "Fantasy based on reality" - I take that with a gigantic pinch of salt (and I'm grateful it's not set in reality) because aside from the shape of cities and the fact that while the clothes are absurd for what they're doing, they're still clothes you see in the real world... it's all still blatantly fantasy. Which is a relief for me.
I get this argument a lot better than I get the rest of the sexualising arguments vs. gender arguments. I think that's the part that has me thrown for a loop.
I do think a lot of this comes from a completely different way of looking at sexualisation between genders, though. Firstly that guys just don't mind being sexualised nearly as much as girls (probably for social/cultural/historic reasons), secondly that boobs are something that differ between genders and therefore there is a kind of double standard based on that (which I personally disagree with but accept that I can't snap my fingers and change society, culture or decades of history and beliefs or whatever), and finally that we typically (according to studies!) find different kinds of states of dress more/less attractive than each other.
But as for "was it a bad call?" - yeah, if they wanted to get someone skimpy clothing they should probably have gone for a different character, I guess, to avoid the historic ties to Cid and a backlash based on that.
However, if there were no historic ties to Cid to consider, if I had never known of Cid's history... I don't think I'd have blinked. If it were any other character, I wonder if anyone would have blinked. I certainly don't think that it's something to do with wearing reasonable clothes for a job because that's something that is par for the course at Final Fantasy and this being a "fantasy based on reality" doesn't mean all the clothes are going to be reasonable. I'd say the guys don't all have reasonable clothing, one girl so far doesn't, and I'm pretty confident we'll see more characters with stupid clothing before we're done with 'em.
Shlup (you snuck in after I'd typed up the above): I think I get it a little better now although I'm still not 100% certain. Is it simply a case of sexualised = has what are considered sexual organs being "on display" when there is no story-relevant reason to do so? So it's like... Tifa is fine because she works at a bar so wears clothes typical to that job (although the question could be raised whether they should be relevant to that job, but that's waaaaay off topic), Kimahri is fine because he's tribal, Fran is fine because she's tribal, Vanille is fine because it's some special attire for a ceremony she was going through for her tribal thing, but Rikku in a bikini for FFX-2 is not, Kuja in a codpiece while acting as a gundealer is not, Ultimecia's boobs are blatantly sexualised and you can throw your Cidney into the pile for the reasons mentioned throughout this thread?
Something like that, I'm gathering.
