Tuesday 25 March 2014

CG characters

I found a board at Pinterest today. CG Female Characters.
There is one board called CG Male Characters in whole Pinterest. It is not created by the same person who created the female character board, and it doesn't have as many pinners. (There's almost 60 pinners in the female board.)
Nevertheless... I notice one thing immediately. A glaring difference...
Did you see it?

All the women are basically copies of each other. Some might be a little longer, some shorter, some have darker skin than others... But they are all about 15-25, with flawless skin that shows a lot, big boobs, big eyes, small, pouty mouth, often slightly open, tiny waist, tiny, long barbie neck that seems almost too dainty to carry all that hair. Even monsters have perfect pin-up bodies. Among the almost 7000 pins, there's only a handful that - if they were movie roles - couldn't be played by the same person with just a wig and wardrobe change. A couple of little girls, and a couple of males... and, sure, I admit, a couple of females with a proper armor and normal chest.

"Princess Langwidere has thirty young heads that are interchangeable on her neck.
Instead of changing her clothes or jewelry every day, 
she simply changes her head to accessorize or match her current mood. 
The heads are kept in a vast bejeweled boudoir known as her "cabinet". 
All are described as being very beautiful in bone structure with striking features 
which run and vary through all combinations of hair and eye colors 
(except for gray hair and red, tired eyes), 
skin tones, and even noses of different shapes to represent different ethnicities."
Princess Langwidere appears in Ozma of Oz
this illustration is by John R. Neill


But if you go to the male board - of course, as it's pinned by only one person - there's much more variety. There are normal people and superheros, caricatures, portraits and fantasy, gods and men, old and young, paintings, maquettes, drawings, scribbles... not even 100 pins, but already more variation than in the whole female board.


Why the "fake geek girl" meme must die
6 sexist video game problems even bigger than breasts
Sexism in Video Games: Tropes, Trolls and Terrific Upstanders
Sexism and Misogyny in the Video Game Industry
An interview with Jim Sterling about sexism in game culture