I'm not anti-cheesecake, so much as I'm against the amount of cheesecake, to the point where anything else is the exception. I'm against cheesecake where it makes no sense, where it's gratuitous, and especially (in the context of video games) where it's forced on me either without alternative or in such a way that the alternatives leave me at a significant disadvantage or keep me from playing the what I actually want to play. A desire to actually wear clothes on my female character should never factor into my basic mechanical decisions in character building (like, say, class selection).

Cheesecake is fine. Cheesecake forced on me is not. Cheesecake saturating the market to the point where I have to hunt for exceptions makes me cry.

Don't cry. Here, this'll make you feel better...

I can understand this. My 9yo daughter likes to sit with me and help when I play WoW. When she wants to participate, I run her favorite toon, a female. She recently got pants that let half her buttocks stick out on the side. Fortunately, we just smirk and agree that is looks silly. Then we keep playing. But it would be nice to have alternatives.
Mostly, there are enough alternatives that is doesn't bug me.

This. SO MUCH this.

Hmm.. Quoting myself. Egotist much?

Anyway, I thought of an example. Red Monika from Battle Chasers. The other characters are pretty mainstream, and the cheesecake bad girl boobs out her ears character just looks silly. If the other characters were similarly over-the-top, it would work.

An example of this were the bracers John Byrne designed for Wonder Woman. They came to points at the top of her wrist, just behind the back of the hand. If she tried to do pushups, she would impale her hands. The fact that she's wearing a one piece bathing suit into battle doesn't bother me in the slightest, since fighting in your underwear is a convention of the genre.
Superhero comics are largely about beautiful naked people hitting each other.

First of all, Keith, seriously--you have no idea just how much you made my day by quoting me in your sig.

And I do agree with you that context matters a lot. If the setting leans towards cake (be it beef or cheese), then so be it. As a fast-and-dirty rule, start by comparing buttcheeks--if you get the same percentage of visibility, then there's at least an absence of bias, regardless of what the actual number is.

Similarly, in a 'realistic' setting, if an artist wants to draw cheesecake, then fine, all he has to do is think situationally--the warrior rising in the dawn (possibly in a castle, with the [serious] armor on its rack next to the bed, and a window showing the seiging army in the field below?), or midway through girding their armor before a battle, or relaxing afterwards with a flagon of mead in a tub? All fantastic visuals (and note, they'd work just fine either as beefcake or cheesecake--I went gender-neutral language there for a reason), giving the opportunity to hint at a depth and humanity to the character that might be missing from just "Dramatic Armored Pose #7".

But if you've got Red Sonja standing next to a classic Lancelot, then there's an issue--the artist is, in essence, saying "Women in this world are really too stupid to be good warriors; the only reason they don't get their guts spilled is because their smarter male opponents are taking it easy on them and trying not to damage their smexy bodies. Also, boobs."

EDIT ADD:



Heh. In the case of the new Starfire, I think I'd actually find her fighting naked more plausible than that Rio Mardi Gras thing she's got going on now.



Seriously--this girl can, IIRC, fly through space unaided. So I've got no trouble at all with the notion that she doesn't need clothing for protective purposes, no matter how hot/cold/windy/etc. the conditions are. But then why NOT naked, other than to maintain the delusion that this isn't somehow meant to be sexually titillating? Hell, logically, it would make sense for her entire race to go around naked, other than whatever badges of office or ceremonial garb they might need.

So why should she be running around in an outfit that would require either glue on her nipples, or stiff wiring folded to conceal the 'naughty bits'? If it's to accommodate to the more prudish Earth society, then she should at least be wearing something that would be remotely comfortable to put on and move around in.

The "buttcheek test" is logically sound. I approve of your math (even if the reasoning is slightly indicative of a minor case of "white man's guilt" - focusing on quantitative equality).




Also...
... wait, what were we talking about?

That obviously lifts and separates which, as we all know, is a universal cultural value.

I don't know what is up with your version of Google, as those were all line 2 on mine. Line 1 was entirely armor, along with this:

Even that is focused on the armor.

Moreover, while it is more than Google, Google is a pretty good indicator of what is being looked at, and while the blatant cheese cake armor is very much there, it tends to be fairly far down. Plus, for every Soul Calibur, there is a Super Smash Bros, in which dresses and such are the norm, and the occasional skin tight suit might well be on a male character. I'm not saying that the quantity of cheese cake isn't a problem, merely that the average isn't nearly as bad as you are indicating it is. That an alarmingly large minority exists doesn't change that, but is still cause for consternation.

Moreover, in the vast majority of mediums, you don't have to hunt for portrayals of reasonable armor. Most films get reasonable - by the standards which ignore practicalities most wouldn't catch - just fine. Most books get reasonable just fine. So on and so forth down the line. The only real exception seems to be video games, along with, possibly RPG art. I don't know why video games tend to be so far behind in this regard, but they are undoubtedly behind, and it can't be used in regards to the establishment of what is average.

I don't have much to add to the discussion other than this: leave the metal bikinis to Star Wars. Armor is for protection in a fight and can look pretty/feminine without showing a bit of skin. For instance:

kerembeyit






http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=95281




http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=95338