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If you’re a modern gamer of any sort, and definitely if you are a gamer of the fantasy sort, you’ve seen the memes and complaints about armor designs for female characters. Namely, the complaint rests around how little the armor actually covers.
It’s about time this topic got the treatment it deserves here.
And illustrated, too.
I go pretty skimpy on my WoW toons. Most people think I’m a dude. :x
Some people avoid controversy, but I dive right in!
Another illustration from Edgar Rice Burrough’s The Gods of Mars. Not that the Thark is wearing more than our hero, John Carter, which is to say he’s wearing something as opposed to Carter fighting in his birthday suit.
Me, too! I built a warrior just so I could get that chain mail bikini, only to have it disappear from Azeroth by the time my weary 20-something made it to Westfall!
I really enjoyed this post. I enjoyed the attention to the display of the physical form.
Adequate armor can hide imperfect forms where less puts on display the full power of a well-built body. It creates a display of power, rather than utility.
Right, which is what artists like Frazetta, Vallejo, and Bell are all celebrating in their art. It works so well for the Conan or Mars stories because the strength of those characters comes not from the tools of civilization but in their primal nature or in their strength of character (and superhuman abilities because a guy happens to be from Earth).
Why, I ask? It doesn’t make much sense,
That a man of my stature should have to wear a dress.
I’d comment, but then I’d be telling more than I care to on a public forum.
I think it must be a law that there is someone associated with every film produced whose job it is to get all the armor wrong.
I only played gnomes because they had the only male toons that didn’t look like sloth.
My human warrior made me feel good about my thighs.
Seriously, did you ever notice how *big* they were?
My guild’s name is Aspect of the Sloth.
Technical Advisor: This armor is all wrong. And he’s not even wearing it right.
Director: Looks cool. Great job, wardrobe!
The 2004 movie King Arthur had the knights (actually the last Roman forces in Britannia) riding around on horses and equipped with stirrups. Except that stirrups weren’t introduced to Europe for at least another century and didn’t instantly catch on when they were.
These mopes look like they looted the dumpster back behind a Visigoth army surplus store.
What was I watching last week? Oh, right: the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice. During the finale, a Bond girl accompanies an invading army — all whom are dressed in identical gray jumpsuits — wearing a bikini. My almost-9-year-old daughter sat down next to me and commented on how what she was wearing was inappropriate for a battle. I told her that in James Bond movies, the women wear very little clothing. “Why?” Well, James Bond and a lot of the men who watch his movies like to look at pretty women wearing very little clothing. She looked at me, scoldingly, and said, “Even you, dad?” I shrugged.
Like most fathers, I don’t want my daughters to feel demeaned by growing up in a sexualized society, but I also want them to accept and become comfortable with themselves as part of the world we live in, and that includes, for women, knowing how to present yourself for certain occasions. Someday, it will be a good thing for one (or many) men to find both of them sexy, and I think it enriches our culture to celebrate the beauty of women outside and in (but, c’mon, the outside is a lot more fun in superficial contexts). I shouldn’t have to feel ashamed to admit to my own daughter that a James Bond girl is a glorious thing in a silly and fun kind of way, and it’s OK for girls to think that it’s fun, too.
I know what you mean, but the mental picture of wearing a bikini while men are in uniform being “how to present yourself for certain occasions” is really too funny!
I quit playing WoW with a million gold and a guild bank full of mats if anyone needs anything.
Man. I was going to say that I got up to level 38 on Tetris…
…but suddenly I don’t feel like quite the big shot I thought I was.
I think the best guild name I ever saw was Sultans of Swing. Though I liked my personal one, too: Baker Street Irregulars.
Oh, I wasn’t a very good player, just a good hoarder.
Actually, in one of my favorite Japanese movie series, Lone Wolf and Cub, there is a female assassin who uses nudity as an effective weapon. She has a demon tattooed on her breasts and will flash her opponents to disorient and frighten them before going in for the kill. She knows what’s what and uses it to her advantage.
There’s probably something even predating the barbarian virility image. Roman gladiators wore armor that is remarkably close to the chain mail bikini in its form. The chest was unprotected, and only a heavy belt protected the lower abdomen. Their sword arm might be armored, and they wore a helmet (sometimes). Also, they appear to have eaten a very carb-heavy diet, so they were probably had a layer of fat over their muscles (which were still pretty impressive: they did fight for a living).
The hypothesized effect of this is that the gladiator battles were very bloody, but also lasted long enough to be entertaining and demonstrate the heroic resolve of the fighters.
The sword arm is protected, so you can’t just disable your opponent and finish them off at leisure. Likewise, the helmet is protected, so you can’t kill them quickly with a blow to the head. A strike at the chest would have to be perfect, or else likely glance off the ribs. A blow at the abdomen will be caught by the belt and directed away from the guts and to the flanks -which are covered in a layer of fat that will bleed beautifully, but not actually slow the gladiator down.
It is an armor kit intended not to protect the wearer, but to prevent a quick fight. It is armor intended for entertainment.
That the Gauls and Germans that the Romans fought also tended not to wear much armor (mostly just using a shield, except for the chiefs) probably added to the entertainment value.
Nice article. There were not enough illustrations for us to disapprove of though.
I always admired ‘Gnomeland Security’.
My sever has “US Horder Control.”
Armor is expensive. It also requires a minimum level of skilled craft. Each ring of chain mail has to be fashioned individually then attached. It shouldn’t be surprising loosely organized tribes did not have the industry to make armor. Spears, shields and swords are simpler and can be produced much easier.
Realism? Women even fighting is silly and they’re in a story purely for prurient reasons.