- “She CHOSE to dress like that!”
No she did not. Let me quote rheiders:
A strong female character is still a character—she has no agency, she has no choice. Everything about her appearance and actions is dictated by her creator. It is only through good storytelling and character writing that we begin to believe the character is alive and possessing of free will, but that’s just an illusion. SHE IS STILL JUST A CHARACTER, created by someone else.And unless the character is supposed to be a suicidal warrior seeking a glorious death, she wouldn’t choose to dress like that for combat - and if she was a suicidal warrior seeking a glorious death she wouldn’t be worrying about her sex appeal because she’d be expecting it to get messy.
- “She CHOSE to dress like that!”
No she did not. Let me quote rheiders:
A strong female character is still a character—she has no agency, she has no choice. Everything about her appearance and actions is dictated by her creator. It is only through good storytelling and character writing that we begin to believe the character is alive and possessing of free will, but that’s just an illusion. SHE IS STILL JUST A CHARACTER, created by someone else.And unless the character is supposed to be a suicidal warrior seeking a glorious death, she wouldn’t choose to dress like that for combat - and if she was a suicidal warrior seeking a glorious death she wouldn’t be worrying about her sex appeal because she’d be expecting it to get messy.
In regards to men as sexualized, while that may not be as numerous as females, I remember at least seeing a Skyrim and an Oblivion mod that gives the male equivalent of sexy armor. Not only that, some works like this has men in impractical
armor (Alexander the great has his legs and lower torso exposed and no helmet. The Phalanx army he has on the other hand look well covered).
Not every female in skimpy armor wears chainmail or plate. Even then, while their armor may still come off a sexy, if one were to bring in boobplate kills, one can say the leather armor in our fantasy games would be weak as hell unless it was freaking
cuir boulli. And if they say add plate or chain, that means the character has to sacrifice agility because the metal armor would weigh them down. Even then, a world with magic can make things less realistic and these are games where we have people in armor fighting flying lizards.
While we make a character and they didn't necessarily chose the way they dress, it doesn't excuse the fact that when we write our characters, we write of their stories and motivations, what makes one guy be a spear thrusting soldier in a gambeson. Even then, if the work is in a fictional world, whose to say the characters aren't like a human of our world? Even then, whose to say the character is some suicidal warrior. My female character can't be some female version of a landschneckt whose style of dress while making some people groan or snicker and think she is an easy kill because "physics and boobplate" can't be someone that would share some traits like a landschneckt even though her outfit is part of what her character could be (wanting to stick out in the battlefield so people know who she is, armor and clothes are taking from dead or pillaged which explains foppish appearance)? Even then, whose to say a poorly dressed character isn't just some berserker or a person that doesn't need to really wear plate?
