All the Slender Ladies: Body Diversity in Video Games

At their annual BlizzCon event in 2014

the wildly successful game studio

Blizzard Entertainment showed off a new

game they had in the works called Overwatch.

And from that first reveal it was clear

the appeal of Overwatch

resided in its cast of characters:

a diverse assortment of heroes, each with

unique traits and abilities.

The roster revealed at BlizzCon included

men and women,

sentient robots, and super intelligent gorillas.

However, for all

apparent variety and diversity

in the heroes Blizzard showed off at

the game's debut, there wasn't much

diversity to be seen in the body types

represented by the female heroes.

The male characters introduced that day

included the towering knight Reinhardt,

the sturdy engineer Torbjorn,

the agile archer Hanzo,

and the hulking simian scientist, Winston,

among others.

The five female characters introduced

consisted of the slender adventurer, Tracer

the slender healer, Mercy

the slender support character, Symmetra

the slender sniper, Widowmaker

and the slender but well-armored

security chief, Pharah.

Overwatch was hardly alone in

having all of its female characters

share a similar physique.

In Ultra Street Fighter IV

characters such as Dhalsim, Hakan, E. Honda

Rufus, and Vega

represent a significant range

of male body types.

Looking at the roster

of female characters, however

while some may be

a bit taller than others, or have

...slightly larger thighs, not one of

them represents a notable departure

from the slender body type that has been

established as the standard of

conventional female attractiveness.

Similiarly, when we look at the

champions on offer in the hugely popular

MOBA, League of Legends, we see the

designers employing a wonderful range of

body shapes and proportions across

dozens of male characters, from the

classic muscular warrior physique of Taric,

to the hefty beer belly of Gragas,

to the cartoonishly disproportionate

body of Dr. Mundo.

There isn't any one

male body type that is presented as the

standard default male body type, and the

value of these characters is definitely not

connected to their sexual desirability.

But when we look at the female heroes,

there is nothing approaching the

diversity we see on the male side of the roster.

There are few noteworthy variations from

the standard.

Illaoi is somewhat more muscular

than many of the female characters

Jinx has smaller breasts

and there’s the cute, gnome-like Tristana.

But the overwhelming majority of female

characters make it clear that

a slender figure with prominent breasts

is viewed as the standard

for female character design.

Likewise, in Dota 2, male heroes can be

handsome or comical

outlandish or grotesque,

while female heroes are

mostly relegated to being standard

humanoid characters with conventionally

attractive facial features.

Where are all the female rock creatures,

skeletal priests, and...

whatever this thing is?

This isn't just an issue in fighting

games, MOBAs, and other titles that give

players a range of characters to choose from.

Female characters across the board

are often limited to that same specific

body type.

"I should kill you."

"Doing all right there?"

(singing)

"Stay away from her!"

"Sure you want to let him go?"

(singing) "You are..."

"And this guy wants me to trust him..."

It's as if male characters are free to

embody whatever physique best

communicates their personality or abilities.

But when it comes to the

designs of female characters,

that kind of imagination and creativity

often doesn't seem to exist.

Rather than seeing

such an exciting range of female

characters, we mostly get the same body

type, over and over again:

one designed to be sexually appealing

to the presumed straight male player.

This reliance on the same

same body type for so many female characters

isn't just boring;

it's harmful.

It links our value as human beings

within the culture

to our desirability to men,

and it reinforces our culturally-influenced ideas

about who gets to be considered desirable

and who doesn't.

The problem is exacerbated

by the fact that when we do

see representations of women

with different body types,

they're often presented as

a joke, as in Fat Princess,

(fart noises)

or they're pathologized and presented as

a twisted transgression

of the established feminine ideal

as in the case of the

evil, lesbian, psychopath, Jo Slade

in Dead Rising.

"Let’s see just how shameless you are,

you dirty little skank!

Say hello to my little friend!”

“Oh, no.. not again!”

When the majority of the women who

populate these game worlds are designed

from the same narrow template, the problem

isn't just what we're seeing in games:

it's what we're not seeing.

The fact that fat women,

and women with different body shapes

aren't featured in these worlds,

reinforces the false notion that these

women are less valuable, and less worthy

of recognition, than those women whose

bodies come closer to matching the

cultural beauty standard.

These limitations on creativity when it comes

to female characters don't stop with

body type.

We also don't see the same

range of ages commonly represented as

we do with male characters.

It's not unheard of to see

male soldiers, fighters, and heroes

who appear to be in their 40s, 50s, and even older.

"You're right."

Playable female characters, on the other hand,

are almost always young;

and it's for the same reason

that so many of them

have the same body type.

They're intended to be sexually appealing

to straight male players.

The result is that we have

plenty of representations of male

characters who communicate that men

can continue to be active, vital, and

powerful over the course of their lives.

Meanwhile, the absence of older, playable

female characters wrongly suggests that

women's value is tied directly to their

beauty and youth, and that when they

are older, that value is all used up.

There aren't many good examples of

prominent, positive representations of

women with different body types in major

contemporary games. In Life is Strange,

there’s the minor character Alyssa, a

classmate of Max, the protagonist.

“I didn't know you were a

sci-fi geek like us.

What’s your favorite?”

In Assasin’s Creed Syndicate, there’s

Agnes MacBean, owner of the train which

becomes the heroes’ base of operations.

"And may I present to you,

Agnes and Bertha: lady and locomotive.”

And in Star Wars:

Knights of the Old Republic II,

Kreia is a great example of a capable,

powerful, older, female character.

“I am Kreia, and I am your rescuer.

As you are mine.”

Let's go back to Overwatch for a moment.

Since that initial reveal, a few female

heroes have been added to the roster.

There’s Mei and Zarya, both of whom have

body types that are notably different

from those of the originally announced

female characters.

"Ana, reporting for duty."

And more recently, Blizzard announced

the game's next hero, Ana, who is both

an older woman and a woman of color.

These characters are welcome and

encouraging additions, but really they're

just a start. Game developers need to

continue to actively working towards

creating the same range and diversity of

female body representations that we see

among male characters.

When female characters' bodies

are liberated from the need

to uphold narrow, limiting cultural

beauty standards, the resulting range

of representations can not only make

games themselves more interesting,

it can encourage us

to see all women as the

desirable, valuable, autonomous,

fully human individuals that we are.