Gaming's Sexualisation of... Nevermind

Konami's interpretation of a man's standard physique

Seeing Lara Croft's generous bosom and miniature waist jiggle about as she wrestles with death, it is extremely easy to conclude that female characters in games are heavily sexualised. Indeed they are, Bioshock Infinite's female lead, Elizabeth, has caused uproar for her obvious breasts (so much more shocking than subtle breasts). However, being swept up in the furor of the sexualisation of female characters in games, it is overlooked that male characters are sexualised exactly the same. To argue that young players are influenced by far fetched images of women in games, so they are of males. In the traditional argument, a women is supposed to be pathetic and the man is supposed to muster a giant set of brass balls to conquer the situation. Women shouldn't be expected to be useless cling-ons, just as men shouldn't be expected to be the macho conquerers of all things. In some games, women play the traditional patriarchal damsel in distress, just waiting to be rescued by a short, tubby, brave Italian plumber. However, in some games women give it welly, e.g. Final Fantasy XIII's Lightning, who wipes the floor with all the male characters. And yes, Lightning is wearing a ridiculously short skirt, but check out Snow's attire and physique. Current research shows that the ratio of male:female gamers is 60:40, with far more women playing games than perceived. I am all for feminism, but taking the view that women are portrayed as unreal in comparison to men in games is actually putting down women's position in the gaming industry. This is assuming that male gamers can fancy female characters, but female gamers are incapable of finding male characters attractive, surely not representative of gender equality?

Jean Paul Gautier's sexualised perfume bottles

Everybody is sexualised. Everything is sexualised in the media. We like to see pretty, sexy things, regardless of our gender. We like it when we see Jessica Alba as Nancy in Sin City, we like it when we see huge images of David Beckham in the windows of H&M and we like it when we see the cutest bunny to ever grace the planet. Even perfume bottles are designed to be sexy. True portrayals of people are refreshing in film and drama, but most of the time we like to lose ourselves in unrealistic, and often warped, images of others. In reality, most characters in games would be covered in grotesque amounts of mud, sweat, blood... honestly they'd all be dead. In reality the happenings in games wouldn't be happening because they are fantasy. So yes, women in games are fantastical- but the way characters look in games is hardly something to point out as unrealistic compared to other factors such as; geography, chronology, physics, biology and them being contained in a television. Male characters are rarely weedy, or fat. They are well defined and lean, and they are designed that way deliberately to be attractive, to men and the women. Games are fantasy. Perhaps the worst feminist argument is to assume that game characters are designed only to appease the eyes of heterosexual men.