Lingerie is not Armor - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

“Amazing.”
“My god, look at that.”

“Good night nurse!”

“Ooh! That’s definitely stimulating my economy.”

In the late 90s, developer Rare wanted to replicate

the success of their landmark 1997 shooter GoldenEye,

but didn’t want to make another James Bond game.

Instead they began work on a science fiction spy thriller

called Perfect Dark.

For the game’s star,

they wanted to create a striking new type of special agent

who wouldn’t just live in James Bond’s shadow,

so they drew inspiration from figures

ranging from Joan of Arc to The X-Files’ Dana Scully.

Her name was Joanna Dark.

A few years earlier, Eidos Interactive’s Lara Croft

had rapidly become one of the most famous

and recognizable game characters of all time,

so it was reasonable to think that an action game

with a female protagonist could be a smash hit.

Alas, Joanna Dark never reached quite the levels

of fame occupied by Lara Croft,

but Perfect Dark was still a big success.

Let’s take a look at a commercial for the game:

"Welcome to 2023.

Big businesses now merge with alien nations.

An ancient war is being fought under the sea.

The president is about to be cloned

And it’s your job to try and save the world.

So you’ve got an important decision to make:

What are you going to wear to work?

From the team you brought you GoldenEye for N64,

meet special agent Joanna Dark in Perfect Dark,

where you’ll find out that the only person man enough

to handle a job like this..

is a woman.”

Can you imagine an ad exactly like this,

only with Marcus Fenix or Master Chief,

getting out of bed naked,

taking a sexy slow-motion shower,

putting on his sexy underwear,

and the narrator saying

that he has an important decision to make:

what is he going to wear to work?

"Welcome to 2016.

There’s a war out there...somewhere.

You’re not sure where, exactly.

Anyway, the important thing is,

you’re Special Agent Jake Grimshadow.

It’s your job to save the world.

The only question is: What are you going to wear?

…. WAIT... WHAT??

A commercial like that would never happen,

nor should it.

But Joanna is treated differently

than her male counterparts.

Even though Perfect Dark is a first-person shooter

and, as a result, you rarely see her in the game itself,

by focusing on her getting dressed,

this ad encouraged players to think of Joanna’s appeal

as being rooted in her sexual desirability

rather than her skill as a special agent.

A character’s clothing is one of the first things we notice.

It’s an important part of our first impression

of who that character is, and as such,

it’s a way for designers

to immediately communicate to players

what is most important and noteworthy about them.

Female heroes in video games might be special agents

or soldiers or treasure hunters by trade.

They often find themselves in dangerous,

physically demanding situations,

fighting off bad guys and saving the world.

They are typically performing activities that call for

practical or protective clothing.

But when we look at the types of outfits

that female characters are made to wear,

we can see that they are often

both sexualized and completely absurd.

Ivy from the Soulcalibur games is a bold warrior

who finds herself in battles

where sharp, deadly weapons are being used

and protective armor would be a must,

but the clothing she wears--or lack thereof-

-is not exactly intended to keep her safe.

Cammy from the Street Fighter series

is a British special forces operative

whose thong leotard does a better job

of calling attention to her butt

than of offering any kind of protection.

Jessica Sherawat from Resident Evil: Revelations

is a member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance

and regularly faces deadly infected mutants in combat,

but her outfits appear to be designed for...

yeah, I don’t even know.

And this is just a small fraction of the vast number

of female characters who are forced into

impractical and objectifying clothing while in dangerous situations.

“You’ll learn respect!”

“You’re a fool to come back here.”

“All right, let’s begin!

“And instead of donning a shirt plate,

you dash into battle, shirt open, navel and…

whatnot exposed!”

Because clothing can shape our first impressions of a character

and has a tremendous influence

on our sense of who they are

every time they are on screen,

sexualized outfits can contribute to what’s called

the hyper-sexualization of female characters.

Hyper-sexualization in the media occurs

when a character is designed to be valued primarily

for their sexual characteristics or behaviors.

In hypersexualized characters, these attributes

are highlighted above all else

and made the center of attention,

while everything else about the character is made secondary.

Games and other media often work

to frame this sexualization as a positive thing for women.

They blur the distinction between female sexualization

and female power, and as a result,

sexualized female characters are sometimes celebrated

for being perceived as “owning” their sexuality

in a way that is empowering.

But it isn’t actually empowering

because the sexuality these characters exude

is manufactured for, and presented as existing for,

the presumed straight male player.

Bayonetta is a quintessential example of such a character.

When the camera caresses her body

as it does in the opening scene of Bayonetta 2,

establishing the player’s relationship with the character,

she is frozen in time,

the passive object of the male gaze.

The camera is putting her and Jeanne

on display for the player,

breaking them down into what the game

is communicating is most important about them:

their sexualized parts.

And when Bayonetta starts moving,

it’s the player who has the power

to control her sexuality as a weapon throughout the game,

both literally and figuratively.

She has an assortment of special moves

called “torture attacks” which involve devices

meant to suggest BDSM and that look like something

you might expect to see

in an exaggerated stereotype of a sex dungeon.

But these sexualized moves

have nothing to do with sex:

they just obliterate her enemies.

And a number of her attacks literally leave her naked,

because, you see, she’s attacking the enemies

with her hair and her hair is also her clothing

so when she’s using her hair to attack her enemies

it can’t be covering her body and…

In these ways, the game deliberately links

Bayonetta’s sexuality to power,

selling a version of sexual objectification

that we’re all supposed to feel good about

and find “empowering.”

Every aspect of Bayonetta’s existence,

from the way the camera is magnetically drawn

to her sexualized body parts

to the pole dance reward for completing the game,

is expertly designed to be sexually affirming

and satisfying for a presumed straight male audience.

If it seems like I’m frequently repeating the fact

that the player is presumed to be a straight male,

that’s because it’s vital to remember.

This presumption influences and shapes

so many creative decisions that are made

in the development of many games.

“Let’s see, target market - mostly male,

18-24 years old, interests - senseless violence,

high tech weaponry, pain, humiliation…

hey! Maybe this’ll do the trick.”

Of course, characters like Bayonetta are a fictional fantasy

But in reality, we exist in a culture where women are often valued

primarily for their sexual desirability to men.

So while characters like these are incredibly powerful in the physical sense

able to slay entire armies and bring down gods,

there’s nothing empowering about the fact that they are sexually objectified.

In fact, this connection between objectification

and empowerment is extremely damaging.

It’s harmful to women because rather than

asserting that women have intrinsic value as people,

it communicates that the kind of power available

to women comes from men finding them desirable.

And it’s damaging to men because it suggests

that women who are liberated and empowered

are also women whose sexuality is always available to men.

When we conflate the sexualization of women

with power for women,

we internalize this harmful myth

and begin to think sexualization is the only way

to achieve gender equality.

But the truth is that sexualization doesn’t actually

bring us any closer to equality.

In her book Enlightened Sexism,

Susan J. Douglas sums up the issue.

”Under the guise of escapism and pleasure,

we are getting images of imagined power that mask,

and even erase, how much still remains to be done

for girls and women,

images that make sexism seem fine, even fun,

and insist that feminism is now utterly pointless--

even bad for you.

True power here has nothing to do with

economic independence or professional achievement:

it has to do with getting men to lust after you

and other women to envy you.”

Some gaming fans have come up with all sorts of

ridiculous defenses for the sexualized costumes

female characters are often made to wear,

like the idea that they dress in these outfits as a tactic

to help them distract their male opponents.

It’s not unheard of for developers

to sometimes rely on this harmful logic, too.

The superintelligent AI companion Cortana

from the Halo franchise

has always been depicted as naked,

and when asked about why this is,

franchise director Frank O’Connor said,

"One of the reasons she does it is to attract and demand attention.

And she does it to put people off so they’re on their guard

when they’re talking to her

and that she has the upper hand in those conversations.

It’s kind of almost like the opposite of that nightmare

you have where you go to school in the nude,

and you’re terrified and embarrassed.

She’s kind of projecting that back out to her audience

and winning intellectual points as a result."

Meanwhile, male AIs in the Halo universe do wear clothing;

the idea of them trying to “win intellectual points”

by walking around naked is ridiculous.

But we rarely question

the extremely widespread association

of sexualization and power

when it’s applied to female characters.

Usually, the games themselves don’t go into much detail

to explain or justify why

female characters are sexualized.

Players are simply meant to unquestioningly accept

the impractical outfits these characters are wearing.

Sometimes, however, as in the case of Quiet

from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain,

developers build convoluted and absurd tales

about a character’s past into the game

in an attempt to justify their blatant sexualization.

“She, uh, refuses to wear clothes.

The last staff member who tried to dress her -

breathing through tubes.

Other than that, she’s completely cooperative.

She understands English, she never speaks, sweats, or breathes.”

“What?”

“Well, not with lungs at least.

She breathes through her skin.

Clothing would suffocate her.

Showers are okay, but she can’t be submerged.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s drinking. Through her skin.”

So you see, she can’t wear clothing

because she breathes through her skin!

These ludicrous narrative justifications don’t “make it okay.”

Regardless of whatever absurd explanation

a game might provide,

it should go without saying that

the only real functionality of outfits like this is to

titillate the presumed young straight male player base.

Out of all the arguments that are tossed out

to defend the impractical and objectifying

clothing that women are made to wear in games,

there is one in particular that I hear the most often

and that is perhaps the most pernicious.

That argument is:

“Maybe that’s what she wants to wear!”

Which is ridiculous.

These women are fictional constructs.

That means that they don’t dress themselves

or pick out their own clothing.

I can’t believe I have to say this.

All these visual designs are deliberate choices

made by the developers,

and they serve a specific purpose:

they communicate to straight male players

that these characters exist primarily as sex objects

to be consumed.

In doing so, they also reinforce the larger notion

in our culture that the value of real human women

is determined largely by their sexual desirability to men.

It’s not hard to imagine

what more practical clothing options

might look like for some of these characters.

But if you’re having a hard time envisioning that,

I will let you in on a little secret:

For those of you who aren’t familiar,

there is this thing called a sports bra.

Sports bras are designed to keep breasts held in place

to better facilitate athletic activities.

In other words, they are used

to prevent “jiggle physics” in real life.

In the real world, there are many female

martial artists, athletes, and women in combat roles

that developers could use as inspiration

when designing and dressing their female characters.

It’s important to note that the amount of skin shown

is not the crux of the problem.

Many female athletes wear minimal form-fitting clothing

because it’s more conducive to their activities.

However, their outfits are not designed

with the primary goal of sexualizing the athletes

for the benefit of spectators.

The problem of female characters wearing impractical,

sexualized and objectifying attire and being

put on display for players is not a difficult one to solve,

and developers already know how to do it.

Even many fighting games that have

several sexualized female characters on the roster

often have one female option who is in more practical attire.

The Dark Souls games are generally pretty good

about not making armor appear significantly different

on female characters than it does on male characters.

Natural Selection 2 and XCOM also have

examples of women in practical armor.

And Assassin’s Creed Syndicate put female

gang members in outfits very similar

to those worn by the male gang members.

None of this is to say that characters in games

should never be sexual; far from it.

Sexuality and sexualization are very different things.

The sexualization of female characters is about

designing them, dressing them or framing them

in ways that are specifically intended to be

sexually appealing to presumed male viewers or players.

Women’s sexuality, on the other hand,

exists for themselves, and for those

they care to consensually share it with.

And sexuality can be expressed or experienced

in any kind of attire.

“Come here lover boy!”

Unfortunately, examples in games of female characters

expressing sexual desire in ways that aren’t sexualized

are exceedingly rare.

These next few examples aren’t great depictions

of what we’re talking about.

They’re just some of the only examples that exist at all,

which serves to illustrate how rare it is

for female sexuality in games to be presented in ways

that are humanizing rather than sexualizing.

The Last of Us: Left Behind features female characters

who express romantic feelings for each other,

rather than exuding a sexualized energy

that is directed outward at the player.

“What do we do now?

“We’ll figure it out.”

And in Firewatch, though it’s only heard and not seen

Delilah expresses sexual desire for the player character, Henry.

“I wish I was over there.”

“I wish you were too.”

“We could sit outside, we could talk,

without these radios. We could, um, you know.”

These moments aren’t presented

as titillating morsels of sexuality for players.

Rather, they function as expressions

of the characters’ sexuality that deepen our investment

in the characters and their relationships to each other.

To clarify, the act of sex isn’t the problem,

but rather how its presented.

I’d love to see great representations

of healthy, consensual sex in games.

But sadly, when consensual sex does occur,

it’s often presented as a transaction

or as a reward for player accomplishment.

Whether that accomplishment is completing quests

or just choosing all the right dialogue options

to get the sex cutscene to play.

When fictional female characters in games are dressed

in impractical armor or clothing,

it encourages players to view them as sex objects,

and reinforces the already pervasive and harmful notion

in our culture that sexualization is the most viable

or only real route to power for women.

By contrast, when those characters are dressed

in clothing that is truly practical and functional

for the work that they are doing,

and when they express sexuality and sexual desire

in ways that aren’t served up as sexualized treats

designed primarily for straight male players

to consume and enjoy,

it encourages players of all genders

not to view those characters as sexual objects

but to be invested in them as people.