This is a topic I touched on in my Final Fantasy XV analysis/retrospective thing, and the Mass Effect downgrade thread stirred it up in my mind again, so I figured maybe I'd put my thoughts down on the subject as a whole and we could talk about it. I'll write it up into a more formal essay type thing at some point but for now I just wanted to share thoughts and gather ideas.
The tl;dr version is that prominent female characters in video games are not allowed to be ugly, because they're designed with the gaze of the presumed straight male player in mind.
This is far from being inherent only to gaming. We see it in Hollywood and the music industries, where female celebrities often feel the need to try to maintain their looks through extensive plastic surgery (Madonna, Megan Fox, off the top of my head) because they're painfully aware that their looks are a tradeable commodity on the showbiz stage. Once a female actress gets old, unless she's a revered dame like Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, etc., chances are she's going to fall into obscurity. Because she's old, and old women can't be ugly, and what value does a woman have without her looks? Meanwhile, ageing actors like George Clooney and Harrison Ford still have successful careers, because they are not viewed with the male gaze - the presumed default audience - and thus do not have the same pressure to be attractive.
We see it very much in video games too. I pointed out that in FFXV, the male characters are very varied in their designs, in terms of facial features - big noses, scars, pores, wrinkles, greasy skin, chapped lips. Meanwhile, all the female characters are flawless mannequins, with flawless groomed hair and perfectly applied makeup.
An old picture, but it makes the point pretty well. While the main characters are fairly realistic, if anime-ised, Luna and Gentiana have perfect porcelain-doll features, almost to the point of uncanny valley.
Now, like I said, the ME: Andromeda downgrade thread reminded me of this. People were complaining about Fem!Ryder's derpface, and some claimed that the complainers' real problem was that Ryder wasn't a flawless model created for the male gaze. (By the way, it's both.)
So I went looking at the character pages for the original Mass Effect trilogy, wondering if there would be a noticeable difference in the designs of male and female characters. And hoo boy were there.
We can have female aliens, but only if they're hot blue bisexual female aliens! No weird lizard ladies for us.
Then I looked at The Witcher 3:
Definitely seeing a pattern....
Yup.
It isn't just these. Most games you can think of, this will be the case, whether Japanese or Western. Because in Japan, and in the US and UK and Europe and everywhere else games are made - we live in patriarchal societies where women are objectified, literally turned into "things", for the sexual titillation of men. This trend is endemic in most media, be it TV, film, games, and so on. It commodifies the female body, assigns a woman a perceived worth based on how attractive she is to men. And (this is probably my favourite phrase by now) media reflects and reinforces the norms of society. In only allowing "attractive" women into games, in order to satisfy the presumed straight male player, not only do devs continue to exclude the 48% of gamers who are women, but they also reinforce the toxic notion that a woman's sole value and worth lies in her desirability to men.
The thing with this trend is - not only is it offensive to women, a reinforcement of those unattainable beauty standards we're constantly measured against, that "ordinary" women are somehow lesser, but it's also offensive to men; it implies that men only perceive female characters as fap material, and wouldn't be able to handle the presence of an "ordinary" female character. But then, on the flipside of the coin, we have men who complain when a female character doesn't measure up to their standards of attractiveness, thus seemingly proving the devs' point and putting female representation back even further.
(credit to wee for the amazing thread title idea <3)
The tl;dr version is that prominent female characters in video games are not allowed to be ugly, because they're designed with the gaze of the presumed straight male player in mind.
This is far from being inherent only to gaming. We see it in Hollywood and the music industries, where female celebrities often feel the need to try to maintain their looks through extensive plastic surgery (Madonna, Megan Fox, off the top of my head) because they're painfully aware that their looks are a tradeable commodity on the showbiz stage. Once a female actress gets old, unless she's a revered dame like Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, etc., chances are she's going to fall into obscurity. Because she's old, and old women can't be ugly, and what value does a woman have without her looks? Meanwhile, ageing actors like George Clooney and Harrison Ford still have successful careers, because they are not viewed with the male gaze - the presumed default audience - and thus do not have the same pressure to be attractive.
We see it very much in video games too. I pointed out that in FFXV, the male characters are very varied in their designs, in terms of facial features - big noses, scars, pores, wrinkles, greasy skin, chapped lips. Meanwhile, all the female characters are flawless mannequins, with flawless groomed hair and perfectly applied makeup.
An old picture, but it makes the point pretty well. While the main characters are fairly realistic, if anime-ised, Luna and Gentiana have perfect porcelain-doll features, almost to the point of uncanny valley.
Now, like I said, the ME: Andromeda downgrade thread reminded me of this. People were complaining about Fem!Ryder's derpface, and some claimed that the complainers' real problem was that Ryder wasn't a flawless model created for the male gaze. (By the way, it's both.)
So I went looking at the character pages for the original Mass Effect trilogy, wondering if there would be a noticeable difference in the designs of male and female characters. And hoo boy were there.
We can have female aliens, but only if they're hot blue bisexual female aliens! No weird lizard ladies for us.
Then I looked at The Witcher 3:
Definitely seeing a pattern....
Yup.
It isn't just these. Most games you can think of, this will be the case, whether Japanese or Western. Because in Japan, and in the US and UK and Europe and everywhere else games are made - we live in patriarchal societies where women are objectified, literally turned into "things", for the sexual titillation of men. This trend is endemic in most media, be it TV, film, games, and so on. It commodifies the female body, assigns a woman a perceived worth based on how attractive she is to men. And (this is probably my favourite phrase by now) media reflects and reinforces the norms of society. In only allowing "attractive" women into games, in order to satisfy the presumed straight male player, not only do devs continue to exclude the 48% of gamers who are women, but they also reinforce the toxic notion that a woman's sole value and worth lies in her desirability to men.
The thing with this trend is - not only is it offensive to women, a reinforcement of those unattainable beauty standards we're constantly measured against, that "ordinary" women are somehow lesser, but it's also offensive to men; it implies that men only perceive female characters as fap material, and wouldn't be able to handle the presence of an "ordinary" female character. But then, on the flipside of the coin, we have men who complain when a female character doesn't measure up to their standards of attractiveness, thus seemingly proving the devs' point and putting female representation back even further.
(credit to wee for the amazing thread title idea <3)
