"The second panel is unironically a much better design"
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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"real fucking women" don't look like something out of Big Booty Hoes 14, either. i'm telling you - this will FOREVER be an uphill battle as long as our counterpoint to the masculinization of women in media is little other than extremized, pornographic depictions of them.
it would be so effective to argue instead for actual average-looking (that is, regularly pretty and attractive) women that i've long suspected this movement, which constantly espouses games like Dead Or Alive as the peak depiction of girls in media, is in fact controlled opposition. it just makes us look like pornsick retards trying to get our rocks off.
Mate, women like this exist. It's not porn brain, there's women with big asses and big tits, these women always seem to be erased in modern movies, games and shows. Apparently looking sexy is now Le bad.
The thing with average women is: define average. It's very much an issue if women have to define it when they rate hambeasts 10/10 beautiful, some women cannot even make up their mind there. In men's eyes it works but guess what? You will be shot down for "the male gaze". There's no winning this fight, better to push against the uggos than to find a middle ground, America isn't dealing with terrorists either why should we?
Average for now or average for the 50s.
And what media is depicting the average? Or do you mean 'Hollywood plain'?
the image on the left did not exist in the 50s, because instagram thottery and photoshop had both not yet been invented
buddy i mean just pretty women you find walking around...
Why does fantasy need to be anywhere near reality?
I sympathize with your point to some extent, but I have to point out a couple things. One, there's truly nothing unrealistic about the girls in DOA and in fact, their proportions aren't exaggerated at all. They're realistic depictions of fit, obscenely hot women. Did this cause some kind of negative effect or hollowing out of nerd culture? I don't know, I don't think so. The DOA part of ye olde Fighting Game Community has historically been more normal and sane than the Super Smash Bros part. Funny enough, that's the only example I can think of a real woman who was competitive in the FGC or esports in general (Kasumi-chan).
I think your point is more properly applied to the hypersexualization of anime culture through the 2000s and the genre of shows that are basically figurine vehicles.
Also, the pursuit of "average-looking" girls is actually quixotic. The best idea anyone has of "average" is "less hot than X ideal in my head" which just leads to a communist race to the bottom as designers strive to include as many unattractive features as possible in their modeling. Maybe what you have in mind is 90s beauty standards? There's something to be said for that, but nobody had the word "average" in mind at that time either. Winona Ryder in motion is one of the prettiest little darlings to walk across a screen.
I spend about half of each year in Latin America.
Women with this body type are everywhere.
No, the bad-faith reframing of a couple millennia old tendency towards enjoying beauty as something base is what does that, and you're giving it airplay.
Take a walk through the Louvre. A sizable portion of its contents are designed to titillate, and do so with far more nudity than you'll find in any game. Should we burn it to the ground in a misguided attempt to avoid what is essentially an insult, designed to shame in lieu of an actual argument?
Grande Odalisque
vs
Dead or Alive 6
vs
Moero Crystal H
practically the same, i know. one is some guy painting a turkish concubine, another is an industrialized pornography magazine reference, and another is prompting the user to "rub vigorously" to get to view more pornography.
And what exactly is the point of your cherry picking? Everyday women, aristocracy, queens, semi-divine beings and goddesses all where subject to sexualisation. There's a very long history of people appreciating idealised, even sexualised beauty in non-sexual ways.
So no, I don't think hentai is the same thing as classical art. Nor am I making an argument in favour of it. I just think the notion that people enjoy idealised or even sexualised characters in games solely as a substitute for pornography is retarded. Given that it's the go-to means of dismissing criticisms of the intentional androgynisation of characters, I'm certainly not going to support it, even if we can agree on the excess of porn in modern society.
do you think the oft-pornographic engagement with modern-day sexy media is exactly equal to looking at a piece of art in the Louvre? is Rule 34 just one big art project?
it is neither the intent nor effect of those sculptures/paintings to cause extreme arousal in their viewers to the point where it can affect the way they act and think, and especially not on a cultural level - i do not see kids learning to sculpt so they can have naked Venus in their bedrooms.
you could argue it is not the intent of sexy video games to do that either (if you ignore things like Yoko Taro asking people to send pornography of the main character of Nier: Automata to him), but it certainly is the effect, and the ultimate purpose of a system is what it does, not what it intends. when even frankly tame examples of this stuff can balloon out of control and become a huge chunk of pornography culture, like Overwatch, i think we should be wary as hell of the more daring instances, like Stellar Blade sticking asses in your face the entire time or Dead or Alive just dressing their characters up like they're in an actual real-world pornography magazine.
either we agree on the excess of porn in modern society, or we don't. there cannot be a "but my enemies don't like this porn", that's how you end up with transgender pornstars claiming to be conservative right-wingers because they aren't liked by the left.