R&C Art, the Women of R&C

[Steely Dan]

Way too many gems splashed everywhere.

Never saw that cover.

I mean pretty much all of his covers – just look at the amount of gems everybody has on their armour and what not (I'm serious).

 

[Wyrmshadows]

I mean pretty much all of his covers – just look at the amount of gems everybody has on their armour and what not (I’m serious).

I agree.

Not only too many gems, but big, gaudy, glassy gems. No facets to any of them. They look like junk jewelry.

But enough about Clyde....I don't want to derail the thread entirely.



Wyrmshadows

 

[Werebat]

To be fair, as good a movie as Finding Nemo is, the whole point of the movie is that the father is too nurting, too timid and he spends the entire movie "de-mommifying" in order to be a better dad.

Yeah, I know -- but his character flaws as a father are very refreshing compared to the Hollywood standard of "wife-beating child molester", or even just "deadbeat deserter".

I do not agree that these things "hurt" as a function of what they are, rather than as a reflection of how individual people see them because of ways they already are.

There are only so many ways anyone can take a portrayal of a father as deserter (Treasure Planet), violent ogre (pick a television drama), or dummy (Berenstein Bears).

I am a dad, too, and I love my kids more than anything in the world. But that doesn't mean I have to be less masculine in order be a good dad -- just smarter than I was when I was 25.

Feminine and masculine strengths are not a zero-sum game. Being better at nurturing does not make a man less masculine, other than in the myth of those who believe so.

In absolute seriousness, I am so sorry you had to go through such a thing. But the idealized portrayal of things masculine and feminine didn't cause your situation -- it was a culture that vilifies and attempts to emasculate men that did that to you.

I agree with your final statement, but the portrayal fed the culture. I think we can agree on that.

It can't be used to justify their inclusion either. Indivual artists will create the images they desire and the consuming public will determine what fits our wants, needs and dreams. People like to complain about the images of men and women we see, but if you look closely, you see lots of different kinds of images, different stereotypes and archtypes. Spend an evening watching network TV. Forget the shows. Watch the commercials. You'll see how diverse our unrealities really are.

You're dead on about commercials, but what images of fatherhood do you typically see in commercials? Dummies and dopes who are domestically incompetent at best. This feeds the culture and keeps (for example) anti-male bias in the family courts strong (but not nearly so much as the financial incentives in place to keep the system the way it is).

[Edit -- something I learned from research as an indirect result of this discussion is that recently Australia changed its family law system in a major way to support a rebuttable presumption of joint physical placement in divorce/custody cases. Now this is a rare bit of good news for fathers everywhere! The entire nation of Australia joins 5 US states (hopefully all 50 before I die) in an enlightened view of fatherhood. This isn't the end of the fight (family court lawyers, gender feminists, and related rodentia in Oz are already trying to overturn the new law), but it is an important step in the right direction!]

- Ron ^*^

 

[Werebat]

Ask any mature and serious girl/woman her opinion on such fantasy cheese art.

I smell a tautology...

- Ron ^*^

 

[Werebat]

most geek girls I know are pretty easy going about this kind of thing. so I am pretty shocked that boob armor has such a negative standing. But so far its been mostly men (on this forum at least) that have taken a stand against it. are their any woman here that dislike like boob armor in rpg art. are thier any that do?

Most men learn (consciously or not) to say what they think women want them to say, particularly if doing so doesn't appear to inconvenience them in a concrete way. I have no doubt that this fact has a significant impact on this and similar discussions.

- Ron ^*^

 

[Barastrondo]

From my perspective, that term is far more insulting than the art it's supposed to ridicule. The implication that a woman that dresses in a sexual manner is a whore or a prostitute is both priggish and mysoginistic.

Yet, again, context. "Hookerplate" (which I cannot take credit for) is something I hear women use. Again, note that I'm in a WoW guild, and in WoW a pair of armor pants that provides full protection on a male character becomes a metal bikini bottom and scanty legplates on a female. Same exact armor: only women receive an illogical cut. They don't call it "hookerplate" because they mean to imply that their characters are turning tricks in the dungeon: they call it that because it looks as though it was designed by people who think all women dress like hookers, regardless of the situation. Cries that these women are misogynistic and by default self-loathing don't seem accurate to me. If anything, I'd say their protests have a stronger refrain of "We are not sex objects just because we are female: why do you insist on dressing us as though the opposite were true?"

Now, when armor that is theoretically meant to provide protection is designed to look like lingerie, you really can't say it's as simple as condemning people who dress "in a sexual manner." Compare the character who wears metal armor when, say, adventuring, and a low-cut, slit-up-the-side dress when at a social function. I can't think of any of my female friends who would find such a character demeaning* — it's the implication that they should be wearing low-cut, slit-up-the-side armor in a life-or-death situation because the default "cut" for a woman's clothing is based on lingerie that they find irritating.

* Though some of their characters might, as they are prone to roleplay a wide variety of personalities, from prudish to promiscuous. Funny, that.

I tend to find girls who like this kind of stuff at anime conventions, larps and other crazy events.

Sure. But that's an entirely different context than working a day job, going to the grocery store for cat food, or pushing to advance the lines on a battlefield. I would expect the women you're talking about would dress differently for those occasions, and would tend to wear protective clothing over provocative clothing if they were doing something like welding, splitting wood or raiding a crackhouse. I'm just saying that if the art depicts people doing dangerous things, it's respectful to show them dressed accordingly. I don't know too many gamers who would kick open the doors of a temple of Kyuss with characters dressed like they were halfway through a striptease.

I also find that it tends to be the ones that can pull off boob armor themselves.

Just a note, but that looks uncomfortably like you're implying that women who don't care for Frederick's of Moria armor are jealous, and that's a short trip to "they're jealous, so their opinions don't matter as much."

 

[SteveC]

Ask any mature and serious girl/woman her opinion on such fantasy cheese art.

Wow. Just wow. I don't think I've seen such a sweeping and insulting generalization on the boards in a long time.

For the record. The last time we had this discussion, I asked my girlfriend, who, I assure you, is both a mature and serious woman this question, showing her some pictures of "cheesecake" art from WotC products. She also showed the art to several of her friends, one of whom actually does graduate work in gender studies.

The result? Combining that with the "Confessions" book, I'm going to run a D&D game for four women who've never played it before. Don't paint women in such a general way: there are all kinds of them in this world.

--Steve

 

[Piratecat]

Wow. Just wow. I don't think I've seen such a sweeping and insulting generalization on the boards in a long time.

You know, you're right: whether meant to support women or not, this implies that any women who like the art style aren't mature or serious, which clearly isn't the case. And I agreed with it when I saw it instead of recognizing the problem. Sorry about that.

Clearly, it's easy to get carried away with sweeping generalizations. Work to avoid them anyways.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm in favor of fantasy cheesecake so long as it's not exclusively female and it doesn't crowd out the more sensible depictions of serious adventurers.

I endorse this candidate for President of Sensible Art Direction. I welcome our iron-fisty overlord of reasonable indulgence. Huzzah!

 

[frankthedm]

From Unearthed Arcana

Good catch. So, there's ONE image.

- Ron ^*^

Uhm, I have always interpreted that Illo as the moment a child's play-attack inadvertently trigger's Krusks' Berserk Frenzy...