D*mn. I just can't think of decent title for this blog entry.

You were right to quote me if you want me to read, since I never look at blogs. I only point out this: both stereotypes are a male creation. The thin, narrow-waisted woman with big boobs, lips and ass typically represents the female as a pure sexual object and object of enjoyment, to be used, exploited and flaunted. The man with bulging pecs, developed biceps and well-delineated abdominal muscles is the Greek ideal of beauty, aiming solely not at the health of the body, but at ostentation, bragging, being admired, and aggressive comparison with other men.
So, both are of male creation and the results of a patriarchal and competitive culture.
And the woman often, rather than reacting with despair and resignation, often tends instead to conform to this ideal in order to please the man, and already during adolescence begins her tortuous path of cosmetic operations and retouching here and there: and here in Italy it has now become not uncommon, unfortunately.
But in the end it is all a matter of strength of character, intelligence and emotional maturity: most people observe these exaggerated and unattainable ideals, make a grimace or a smirk, turn the other way and continue on their way, not being touched much and devoting themselves to far more serious and important things, thank goodness.

Hello!
I hope it's okay for me to comment.
It talks to me, when I read "I'm really bad at understanding most of the pictures in the funny pictures and memes threads (and most of the time I stay quiet for that reason)" from your blog entry. I totally feel the same!

I watched a serie of videos about 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games' from the website of Feminist Frequency two years ago maybe. The topic you open in your entry talks to me and I make links in my mind with some of these videos and what you're talking about the women representation vs. the men representation.

It's hard for me to find the right words.
[Edit] What I wanted to say simply, is that - My example is very binary to start off, sorry about that. - Even if 'male' and 'female' characters are often portrayed in a more or less similar way (muscles, breasts, thin, white skin, etc.), the message received by the audience is different if you are 'male' compared to 'female'. To make it short, on the 'female side' diversity is lacking and the same stereotypes are repetitively occuring which, I think, can be oppressing and tiring. From my experience, I feel annoyed often and I continue playing, sometimes but less often, I prefer leaving this game aside.

Games were for a long time often oriented to the 'male' audience, but it's important to remember that gamers are very diverse. I am enthusiastic to see more diversity in more recent games, including certainly indie games. [end of edit]


Just wanted to conclude saying that I agree with you. Thanks for posting this blog entry!

benone said:

Hello!
I hope it's okay for me to comment.
It talks to me, when I read "I'm really bad at understanding most of the pictures in the funny pictures and memes threads (and most of the time I stay quiet for that reason)" from your blog entry. I totally feel the same!

I watched a serie of videos about 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games' from the website of Feminist Frequency two years ago maybe. The topic you open in your entry talks to me and I make links in my mind with some of these videos and what you're talking about the women representation vs. the men representation.

It's hard for me to find the right words.
Just wanted to conclude saying that I agree with you. Thanks for posting this blog entry!

Click to expand...

Wow, you actually mentioned Feminist Frequency without immediately barfing; never expected that garbage to be mentioned again.

You guys do know not every female character looks like the examples provided, right? Especially these days, when "action women" are the popular thing - women just as overly-muscled as the men, doing the same combat activities as men.
Also, even when women aren't depicted as overly-muscular, they're still more in-line with what can be achieved, and is healthy - let's face it, being thin is far healthier than being fat, which is why all the female-adventuring types aren't fat.
It also just so happens that thin women (and men) are also more visually attractive to our monkey brains, as it means less chance of the woman (or man) having some kind of disease like diabetes, and not being lazy and thus more capable of the physical demands that come with raising children.

Sure, there's plenty of examples of female characters designed to be titillating to men through being overtly sexualised, but also plenty that aren't. Xenoblade 3 omits the sexualisation present in 2, for example, and not to mention Mary Jane Watson in Marvel's Spider-Man, and probably the player characters in Hellblade and Horizon.
Along with most women in movies, these days, due to pandering to feminists - would anyone call Rey or Captain Marvel 'sexualised'? Or the women in the newest Terminator movie, or pretty much any other action flick? I doubt it.

RichardTheKing said:

It also just so happens that thin women (and men) are also more visually attractive to our monkey brains, as it means less chance of the woman (or man) having some kind of disease like diabetes, and not being lazy and thus more capable of the physical demands that come with raising children.

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Have you seen the venus of wilendorf? Beauty standards change according to culture, when food is scarce society tends to value the idea of having plenty and thus a "fuller" figure. In a modern society, where food is not as scarce, (for middle class society anyways) a thin figure tends to represent effort and self control and thus be more "beautiful". I don't think that beauty ideals are as ingrained in nature as you think they are.

N10A said:

Have you seen the venus of wilendorf? Beauty standards change according to culture, when food is scarce society tends to value the idea of having plenty and thus a "fuller" figure. In a modern society, where food is not as scarce, (for middle class society anyways) a thin figure tends to represent effort and self control and thus be more "beautiful". I don't think that beauty ideals are as ingrained in nature as you think they are.

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I was not aware of Wilendorf, actually; huh. Well, that's part of my point debunked.
Still, a thin figure is a sign of healthiness these days, and of self-control as you mentioned, and thus more attractive. Also, more capable of doing hard work too, such as (for example) adventuring and fighting, like most movies and games feature.

While I agree with sinchen that the image she's chosen to feature is not particularly funny, that is because cartoons are not ideals, but exaggerations. Aspiring to look like a cartoon is kinda wack. I suppose that it's hard to dismiss the obvious sexualized style of these characters, but I don't think this really disproves my point because as humans tend to be sexual, cartoon characters exaggerate that trait, as they do with other character traits that a designer decides to add to a character.
In other words I think commentary worth giving is more on the creator of this meme, rather than broader culture.

You might be overthinking it.

It is more the double standard of women being seen to whine (there was one that went semi viral about the new street fighter DLC returning a character to a legacy "too sexy" thing, far from the first instance of such a thing in media either ("are you beach body ready" for another). This is also to say nothing of the healthy at every size utter tripe that some try to advance.) while men might ignore it or use it as a cause to take some action, certainly never whine about unrealistic standards and get laughed at if they do. Tit size vs muscles (being a counterpoint to the "I like tall men vs I don't like fatties" of female vs male dating preferences if going back for double standards) being biologically driven (or maybe created by a doctor rather than hard work) possibly troubling some aspects of logic, though I will say 8 pack abs are an impossibility for some and usually also see you have to do some quite extreme things like water fasting rather than just do hour of these exercises a day for 6 months and eat well that general strength would improve massively during. While that example might be slightly exaggerated (dare I say cartoonish) I have never the less seen women like that in the real world.

Re standards changing by society. Yes but not that much -- the "there are tribes in Africa that think some fat is good" and indeed there are, it is not however the pear shaped nastiness that the average people of walmart post might showcase and instead more akin to what some might consider still in healthy range in the US but not quite heroin chic of the 90s supermodel. Tans being the more interesting one -- when the plebs work in the fields all day they are all tanned, when they work under office lights then tan is a sign of holidays and richness, similar things for long nails. Trends in naming over time also being an interesting one to how people like to ape the rich.

@Noctosphere has some explaining to do..

Tl;dr
But my answer to what i"ve read is that this thread should NOT be taken seriously

BTW, just saying that what I posted is called "anime logic" which is kinda fully illogic
Example of anime logic
When a woman is young, she is beautiful





But no matter what, when she gets old, she turns into this

FAST6191 said:

Re standards changing by society. Yes but not that much -- the "there are tribes in Africa that think some fat is good" and indeed there are, it is not however the pear shaped nastiness that the average people of walmart post might showcase and instead more akin to what some might consider still in healthy range in the US but not quite heroin chic of the 90s supermodel. Tans being the more interesting one -- when the plebs work in the fields all day they are all tanned, when they work under office lights then tan is a sign of holidays and richness, similar things for long nails. Trends in naming over time also being an interesting one to how people like to ape the rich.

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I also agree with this point, I was mainly trying to refute the point that "american" or western beauty standards are somehow biologically driven. I don't think there has ever been an example where unhealthiness has been considered beautiful, other than by unhealthy people coping. But thin is certainly not universally attractive.
To your earlier point, I'm not sure what the problem is with having beautiful people in games. Would the opponents rather have all games (and media) feature exclusively realistically proportions? As long as it's not to the extent of being straight up porn I don't really have a problem with sexualized characters in media, and even than I can say that it's simply not to my preference and play/watch something else. (it's probably because these people tend to be rather far left leaning and see these things as opposition to their current political push)
Man, I haven't thought about these topics for a minute. Almost feels like 2017 again.

Thank you for the comments.

Just to clarify, I’ll add a few things I forgot on the entry:
First of all: I’m not against unrealistic cartoonish figures and might even watch TV series or play games (want to mention Rosenkreuzstilette here) featuring such. Feeling offended by a big boobs cartoon girl is really childish.
Despite that mentioning how unrealistic those figures are is a legitimate thing to do, not a reason to make fun of those mentioning it. Exactly this:

N10A said:

[…]In other words I think commentary worth giving is more on the creator of this meme, rather than broader culture.

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I’m criticizing the statement of that meme, not the “big tits” girls and “Hercules” men pictures in general. Women aren’t completely unable to just ignore something stupid without bursting into tears.
Reducing complex circumstances on a concise “funny picture” does not work. Alas, we are living in a time where the following is the sadly the norm:

Noctosphere said:

Tl;dr

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Attention for more than a minute is something that can not be assumed nowadays. People are just looking away. While I understand one can’t read everything and not everybody is interested in everything, I don’t get why people comment on things they did not read. Amusing.
I generally file TL;DR comments among the most stupid ones (alongside with lmgtfy and poorly disguised insults).

Nikokaro said:

[…]
So, both are of male creation and the results of a patriarchal and competitive culture.
And the woman often, rather than reacting with despair and resignation, often tends instead to conform to this ideal in order to please the man, and already during adolescence begins her tortuous path of cosmetic operations and retouching here and there: and here in Italy it has now become not uncommon, unfortunately.[…]

Click to expand...

You are underestimating the peer pressure, the pressure to conform, within female cliques. They often show herd-like behavior. Members synchronize themselves with the group comparing their appearance with the other members feeling bad when falling short. The peer pressure can reach levels of psycho-terror inducing severe depressions in unstable personalities.
While men are, by nature/hormones/sexual drive conditioned to find certain appearances of female bodies more attractive than others (and there isn’t anything one could do against this) resulting in said exaggerated pictures, they usually don’t care for subtleties:
Ask an average woman what some person was wearing on a party. High chance she will give accurate answer, enough for a profile. Ask an average man the same and his eyes will get an absent look… while he helplessly tries to recall information his brain already discarded as irrelevant.
So there is some element of truth in the picture above. Women (in average) care more for appearance and compare themselves more often. The stupid part is concluding that women will burst in ridiculous emotions when encountering unreachable goals(?) unable to differentiate between fiction and reality.

RichardTheKing said:

You guys do know not every female character looks like the examples provided, right? Especially these days, when "action women" are the popular thing - women just as overly-muscled as the men, doing the same combat activities as men.
Also, even when women aren't depicted as overly-muscular, they're still more in-line with what can be achieved, and is healthy - let's face it, being thin is far healthier than being fat, which is why all the female-adventuring types aren't fat.

Click to expand...

Not sure what to make of action movies nowadays. Franky, I stopped watching new mainstream movies about 2000.
What I marginally got (clicking it away as fast as possible) were discussions about what I file unter political correctness in movies and games. Are all groups/minorities represented accordingly (but without stereotypes!)? Does it carry any message offensive for somebody? Can it be interpreted as *phob? In the end nobody asks if the product is entertaining the least.