Bikini Armor Battle Damage - Hypocrites and Sexy Art

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RockVolnutt said:
Doesn't arguing shirtless men are a "power fantasy" assume the person you're talking to is a man and they're self-inserting as the character? Besides that, I would imagine women in general are attracted to strong anatomically correct men as opposed to.....idk, shirtless Chris-Chan.

Maybe if it's some shirtless guy with no personality drawn by Rob Liefield then it could very well be a power fantasy but I think assuming people only view media for self-insertion to be a flawed assumption people seem to have.
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Nope! It’s a criticism of the author, not the reader. Mostly it’s only ever relevant for comic books and MMOs and literally nothing else. Which means BABD is blanketing the statement of male power fantasy way too broadly and undermining their own point.

Also thanks for the mental image of shirtless chris chan I really needed it
 
"Mental image" they say......
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just another PMD-E member said:
2) Shirtless men is considered a power fantasy, not objectification. If someone sees a shirtless man, they think “oh he’s strong”.
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To illustrate just how very dumb this argument is, simply take a look at the romance novel shelf in any bookstore. It's actually difficult to find one that has a male character with his shirt on.

Unless you think that this genre exists to cater to male power fantasies, rather than being pornography for an almost exclusively female audience?

EDIT to add:

That's not to say that shirtless men can't be a power fantasy for male audiences to identify with. When the protagonist in an action movie rips off his shirt and kills everyone, that's pretty clearly intended to be aspirational rather than arousing. By the same token, a plain woman turning into a beautiful princess that everyone falls in love with in a Disney movie is obviously a power fantasy for female audiences to identify with, rather than titillation for men, even if she's showing a lot more skin after swapping out her rags for a bodice. Both are contextual.

just another PMD-E member said:
Big fucking yikes though if it’s being used against trans women
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Poe's law means I unfortunately cannot tell if this sentiment is ironic or genuine.
 
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just another PMD-E member said:
After reading through this whole thread, a few quick thoughts:

1) BABD has a point but they make it poorly. Yes, male artists constantly sexualize women. The point isn’t “skin is bad”, the point is “hey, is there any autonomy involved in this, like, at all?”. Though it’s amusing knowing BABD’s sexy men and things like magicmeatweek are definitely, absolutely satire and no one is making those designs with legitimate sexual intent, but some of you guys still fall for it. Cheers.

2) Shirtless men is considered a power fantasy, not objectification. If someone sees a shirtless man, they think “oh he’s strong”. Whereas seeing boobs has... very little to do with strength.

3) BABD does a horrible job of differentiating between objectification and the “empowerment” they want, and often share female characters created by female artists. By their standards, it’s empowerment if a betitted person creates a titty armor design. Therefore they should shut the fuck up when it happens. Eroticism isn’t always bad and evil.

4) Some of these a) are art theft and b) take the redesign much further than just “fixing the clothes”. If you want a blog dedicated to turning nonfunctional armor functional, then why stray so far from that goal? Nobody would have cared if BABD kept it about the actual functionality of these outfits in a fight, which is an ok point, but then sharing that shirtless female Conan went against pretty much everything they supposedly stand for. She’s a walking pincushion.
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just another PMD-E member said:
Oh, “magic meat week” is a satire event for fantasy artists where they draw men in bikinis and bad armor. (Edit: it’s not run by BABD but they do participate, since it’s “relevant”)

Big fucking yikes though if it’s being used against trans women
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Please just stick with shitting up the PK thread.

Prompt Critical said:
Poe's law means I unfortunately cannot tell if this sentiment is ironic or genuine.
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It's genuine.
 
just another PMD-E member said:
1) BABD has a point but they make it poorly. Yes, male artists constantly sexualize women. The point isn’t “skin is bad”, the point is “hey, is there any autonomy involved in this, like, at all?”. Though it’s amusing knowing BABD’s sexy men and things like magicmeatweek are definitely, absolutely satire and no one is making those designs with legitimate sexual intent, but some of you guys still fall for it. Cheers.
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That's the thing. I get it's some sort of satire but what are they satirizing? Men look dumb in women's clothes?
 
John Titor said:
That's the thing. I get it's some sort of satire but what are they satirizing? Men look dumb in women's clothes?
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Satirizing women as sex appeal in violent games or media (ie bikini armor). Pointing specifically out that girls designed for battle aren’t very well protected in favor of being sexy, and then reversing the gender to prove a point. Vaguely gestures at the blog icon of a girl getting impaled through the boob window.

Though I still have nothing to say in defense of how they’ve actually executed the concept.
 
just another PMD-E member said:
Satirizing women as sex appeal in violent games or media (ie bikini armor). Pointing specifically out that girls designed for battle aren’t very well protected in favor of being sexy, and then reversing the gender to prove a point. Vaguely gestures at the blog icon of a girl getting impaled through the boob window.

Though I still have nothing to say in defense of how they’ve actually executed the concept.
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Sexuality is power. Think of Conan, no one thought he was unprotected because he had no armor. Logically he should considering he has no way of deflecting any possible killing blows. But the showing of skin, the showing of muscle exudes power, in the same way, women exude sexuality in their nakedness, that is power. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. "Sex sells" isn't just a catchphrase, it works, it's power.
 
just another PMD-E member said:
Pointing specifically out that girls designed for battle aren’t very well protected in favor of being sexy, and then reversing the gender to prove a point.
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Yes, and by doing so they're illustrating that their lack of knowledge about aesthetics, human sexuality and marketing also extends to knowing very little about martial arts or military history. They have no fucking clue what practical, functional military equipment actually looks like from any era, and it shows both in what they identify as "problems" and their proposed "fixes".

To pick a single example, the armies of most ancient Greek city-states went into battle wearing a tiny leather skirt called a pteruges over a short one-shoulder cloth tunic called a chiton, and a bronze helmet. Underwear was apparently uncommon. Arms and legs were bare, with footwear consisting of laced open-toed half boots called cothurnus. The wealthy could afford to add literal boob armor in the form of a heavy bronze form-fitting breastplate which usually featured sculpted pecs, abdominal muscles and exaggerated nipples, and perhaps a set of knimides (shin guards) worn over the shoes. The amount of exposed skin involved would give the retards at BABD an aneurysm but it's how human beings fought and won wars for centuries - it might look skimpy, but the exceptional protection their equipment provided without compromising mobility was actually one of the Hoplite's biggest advantages when fighting against contemporary opponents.

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That isn't even getting into the Spartans who traditionally fought dicks-out with everything flapping in the breeze.
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Basic research is hard though, so it's probably best for BABD to make inaccurate generalizations about what's "practical" based some vague notions of how late medieval plate armor works and some props they saw in a fantasy movie once.
 
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The irony about medieval armor is that it's protectiveness has been vastly overstated imo.

There's a reason it was largely phased out by the 17th century.

And any argument about boob windows being flashing neon signs for arrows is stupid considering arrows and later bullets are the main reason metal armor was phased out.
 
CheezzyMach said:
The irony about medieval armor is that it's protectiveness has been vastly overstated imo.

There's a reason it was largely phased out by the 17th century.

And any argument about boob windows being flashing neon signs for arrows is stupid considering arrows and later bullets are the main reason metal armor was phased out.
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Well we can’t have women in Kevlar shirts! How would they be sexy and empowered then?
 
CheezzyMach said:
The irony about medieval armor is that it's protectiveness has been vastly overstated imo.
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I sort of agree with this and sort of don't. Late medieval era armor (alwyte and gothic plate styles, what generic fantasy usually calls "full plate") was remarkably effective at protecting the wearer from stabbing and slashing weapons, and even provided fair protection against contemporary firearms, with many surviving suits of this type having a "bullet proof" where manufacturer tested the armor against an arquebus at close range to demonstrate its strength to the client. I suppose their level of protection is probably overstated by casual viewers, but I don't think it's by much.

As late as the Franco-Prussian War, many countries were still making use of armored cavalry regiments (cuirassiers) wearing breastplates and helmets that were expected to be capable of withstanding a hit from a musket at normal combat range. The French didn't fully dispense with armored cuirassiers until 1915!

The problem is that this type of armor is not particularly useful for combat on foot, because of the encumbrance. It's simply not practical for infantry to carry it around on the march, let alone fight in it, even if a nation could somehow afford to equip everyone so lavishly. It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a very specific piece of kit that only really belongs on a certain type of soldier (rich mounted troops) in a very narrowly defined period of weapons technology development (after development of early modern metallurgy and heavy urbanization, but before proliferation of effective firearms).

If you care about practicality in character design (which BABD allegedly does) then armor of this type is almost certainly not going to be the right thing to use.
 
Prompt Critical said:
I sort of agree with this and sort of don't. Late medieval era armor (alwyte and gothic plate styles, what generic fantasy usually calls "full plate") was remarkably effective at protecting the wearer from stabbing and slashing weapons, and even provided fair protection against contemporary firearms, with many surviving suits of this type having a "bullet proof" where manufacturer tested the armor against an arquebus at close range to demonstrate its strength to the client. I suppose their level of protection is probably overstated by casual viewers, but I don't think it's by much.

As late as the Franco-Prussian War, many countries were still making use of armored cavalry regiments (cuirassiers) wearing breastplates and helmets that were expected to be capable of withstanding a hit from a musket at normal combat range. The French didn't fully dispense with armored cuirassiers until 1915!

The problem is that this type of armor is not particularly useful for combat on foot, because of the encumbrance. It's simply not practical for infantry to carry it around on the march, let alone fight in it, even if a nation could somehow afford to equip everyone so lavishly. It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a very specific piece of kit that only really belongs on a certain type of soldier (rich mounted troops) in a very narrowly defined period of weapons technology development (after development of early modern metallurgy and heavy urbanization, but before proliferation of effective firearms).

If you care about practicality in character design (which BABD allegedly does) then armor of this type is almost certainly not going to be the right thing to use.
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That's kind of what I was getting at most full plate metal armor as we think of it was mostly effective against swords but was apparently less effective against weapons that relied on crushing force like axes and hammers and was absolutely abysmal against arrows.

Like you said it could be designed to circumvent this but the trade off in mobility wasn't worth it.

It's even worse in fantasy settings where you have things like dragons,balrogs and spellcasters.

Basically I don't see how Red Sonja not getting an arrow in her cleavage is less realistic than say a knight not being turned into cooked meat in a can when he fights a fire breathing dragon or a giant lightning rod when they fight a storm enchanter.
 
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Love how they shit on the movie WW design, but tip toe around how the women who actually wore those amazonian outfits said they felt powerful and sexy in them.
 
Catgirl IRL said:
Love how they shit on the movie WW design, but tip toe around how the women who actually wore those amazonian outfits said they felt powerful and sexy in them.
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Something... something "internalized misogyny". Something... something "false equivalencies".

That is, if they ever bother trying to justify their hypocrisy. They'll probably just ignore it for convenience.
 
Catgirl IRL said:
Love how they shit on the movie WW design, but tip toe around how the women who actually wore those amazonian outfits said they felt powerful and sexy in them.
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Because just like the cat ladies currently at Marvel/DC this isn't really about realism or "respecting wamahm" but a bunch of insecure fat bints jealous of women who are hotter than them.
 
It reminds me of our favourite tranny Brian a screeching and howling about how terrible "booth babes" were at E3, but ignored those exact women when they spoke up, lmao.
 
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