Still Sexism in costume choices? Really?

You have avatars of females with male hats and yet you begrudge others wanting other 'male costume options' for their female avatars.

You get into this discussion over and over again. And yet you take a seeming high road as you leave this discussion saying that doing precisely what you did isn't worth it.

What other contradictions are there you'd like to entertain us with?

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls.

It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world...except for Lola.

Lo-lo-lo-lo Lola.

(Sorry, I thought I'd take a stab at it).

No, I don't. I just didn't see the "sexism!!" in the developer's choices that some do nor agree with some people's claims of limitations. And I agreed that it was more fruitful for the designers to come up with parts that will enjoy wide use rather than bog themselves down in parity -- and sexy pieces are no doubt popular if one looks around the game and compares the number of slinky outfits to females dressed in heavy armor or business pants or whatever. I'm happy to have both with all the flexibility it provides but let's not kid ourselves here.

Besides, it's really one female depicted in multiple images

It wasn't worth it. Not after the first post or two to give my basic opinion. I'm not going to convince you that there's not some problem and you're not likely to convince me that there is.

Take a deep breath before posting next time

It's a self-perpetuating cycle. I have fewer armour-clad characters because there's a limited number of armour-clad choices for my character (who are almost exclusively female), so I have to find other options.

I probably have about one armoured costume for each variety of armoured set there is for females (including one SoA); were there more variety, I'd likely have more. I don't really like to repeat costumes, so once I've used each armour set once, it's pretty much done for me.

And I'm constantly disappointed by the lack of options for "civvies" for my characters.

Its no less extreme than saying all gender-specific decisions are intrinsically sexist. That if a male *or* female designer said to themselves "the male characters are getting a new suit in the next issue, but I think there's a lack of long dresses for the females so I would rather work on that than porting the male suits" that's not just a gender-influenced decision, its a sexist decision. The only question is whether its a consciously sexist decision or just an unconscious one.

I know a lot of people think this axiomatically, but I'm not one of them so I have no obligation to accept that axiom in support of anyone's arguments. In the absence of that axiom, the charge of sexism has to be justified each and every time its asserted independently of each other.

Or, I can just go by the person's self-admitted sexist reason for the decision which they put into a public forum.

I think Arcanaville might ease up if you presented hard evidence. I mean a lot of people at those meet and greets tend to archive things, is there anything like that you can provide?

Personally, I myself feel it's at least unintentionally sexist* since, as others have pointed out, they do the same costume twice for male and huge yet do something different, and consistently skimpy for women and after promises to mind things like the Baron coat in the future, they go and make it male exclusive with the steampunk booster.

*I.E. following the genre basis too closely or just being too proud of female costume idea A to realize some some would prefer a port of the male and huge costume idea B.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it ..... ah fudge, it does mean what you think it means.

Nevermind.

I'm pretty sure Arcanaville remembers the no-kilts-for-men statements which prompted a lot of linkage to utilikilts to show the devs just how dumb that was. Else she would have called me on that. I'm not going to try to dig up five year old threads.

So... you want ZombieMan to call them genderist decisions?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Because one of the actions of one person, its always true? I specifically stated multiple times that I am not saying its impossible for the devs to make a sexist decision, I'm saying its unfair and incorrect to assume that all gender-influenced decisions are sexist, or alternatively that this should be the default position until proven otherwise.

If you don't believe that *all* gender-based decisions are automatically sexist, you don't have a disagreement with me. On the other hand, if you do believe that then a single anecdote isn't probative, yet you are using a single anecdote as if it were.

This isn't a perfect inventory, but I'm just looking at the costume editor for females now, and this is what I see:

First of all, 14 different upper body primary styles: tights, tops with skin, shirts, baggy, robe, sleeveless robes, jackets, sleeveless jackets, trench coats, magic bolero, armored, and the three robotic arm types. Setting aside the robot arm types, that leaves 11. Tights seems reasonably close to the male version: the only remotely "sexist" thing I can see at a glance is the insectoid hybrid pattern which doesn't seem to exist for males and has a sort of a keyhole thing going on. None of them really say "stripper or fancy underwear" except insofar as they say the same thing for males (again: not an expert on male costumes: this is an informal look-see).

Tops with skin are, of course, tops with skin showing. Its probably the most "sexist" costume selection option, insofar as the option doesn't even exist for males per se. *Some* are rather risque ("Eden" comes to mind). Lets say I write the entire section off as "stripper or fancy underwear, even though there are costume items in there I wouldn't classify as such (i.e. "Monstrous Fur," "Tanker").

Shirts seem safe. Sure, they don't have perfect coverage, but three of the four are tame almost casual wear (student shirt, baseball shirt, vest). Only one (student short shirt) could be considered even remotely close to "stripper" (certainly, its one strong breeze away from a wardrobe malfunction). But shirts are basically all very reasonable attire (I use student shirt and vest a lot, actually).

Baggy is nothing if not covered. Not sure why Enforcer is in there, except I guess its baggy at the elbows. But the entire Baggy set is neither stripper nor underwear, unless its really really cold where you are.

All the robes are fine except for shredded martial arts. And the males get that one also. And guess what: Paragon City females have had nipples bred out of them, but not males. Actually, I score robes for the boys: they don't have to cover up under this one. I use a few from here also when I want something that says functional costume. Martial Arts 1, Warrior Fire, and Terra Fire particularly. Same deal with sleeveless robes: nothing overtly sexual there, except for the one version that looks like you just came from the set of a special episode of Mythbusters.

The jackets are all fine. Even the steampunk ones I think are fine, at least in this context. The jackets are all worn over something, so in and of themselves they aren't overtly sexual. Sure, if you combine them with Eden you have something that's very very ... lets just say very. But that's more of an issue with Eden, not the jacket itself. Ditto sleeveless.

The trenchcoat seems basically the same as the male version, and not stripper or underwear, unless you have a Matrix-themed bachelor party.

Magic Bolero is another unique female option, but I don't think its a stripperish one. My main confusion about this option has always been that it actually has a "Shoulder Fur" option, and that option has only one choice: "Fur." Well, ok.

No stripper armor. That would be interesting, but no stripper armor. No bikini chain mail.

For Lower body, you mostly have bottoms with skin again, and skirts. The mini skirts are mini, but there are other options. The flared skirts are *a tad* too short, but not stripper short. And every skirt has the option to wear something under them, including things with pant legs (my Katana scrapper uses Martial Robe 1 + Mini Skirt + Tights. The skirt kinda blends into the robe so I want it to be kinda short, and I have tights under it anyway.

I make a lot of female costumes, and I've spend probably hundreds of hours in those closets. There are some really funky things in there, particularly in "Tops with Skin" but I wouldn't categorize the female options as "stripper or underwear": it seems actually only a small percentage of options can really be described in that fashion. Most new costume options, particularly sets, have been much more functional pieces: Vanguard, Praetorian Police, Alpha - not a stripper in the lot. I think the problem is that people *remember* the overtly sexual options more than the other ones, not that they dominate the selection.

If anything, the problem isn't that there aren't enough non-stripper costumes in there, but that, ironically for this thread, there aren't enough costumes that are in between "stripper" and "uniform." I can be Girls Gone Wild or Hillary Clinton. Joan of Arc is in there also along with Samus. Where it gets tricky is when you want to make a character wearing a dress, say. Things like the magic bolero are probably there specifically to address that deficiency (actually, I kind of like the lines in the combination of Bolero + Steampunk skirt + Savage bottom).

I believe that option exists solely to allow you to color the Fur separate from the rest of the outfit. Tad bit confusing though, I'll admit .

A one time event doesn't make a trend, I agree. And I agree that not all gender-bases decisions are automatically sexist... I've said as much when I said I wasn't looking for exact parity.

Except that other things were said in private. Which colors my perception because now I'm privy to a trend.

And so when I see the tops of the Steampunk Pack for females is all corsets and lace and skin... I'm not surprised.

Dresses are, of course, tricky because of the "no full length skirts" issue for the models. But I've had good luck using combination with the pencil skirt and robes or various tops to make dresses. Samuel_Tow recently showed his new character which I thought was very nicely done. Don't take this to mean that I'm against more dress options (or even bona fide dress options as opposed to constructing them). On the other hand, I remember the game before Pencil Skirt was an option and it was pretty dire trying to make an even semi-modest dress.

As a side note, I won a costume contest tonight with this incredibly sexy, lingerie clad female.

One thing I know to be true is that the devs get quite a bit of feedback from players asking for "female/feminine" costumes that aren't "stripper/slutty" and this is crosswise to the feedback asking for gender parity (i.e. having the same items available for both genders). So I know for a fact that the designers have a specific customer driven motive for adding things like corsets without specifically having a sexist motive.

Whether the art team is *also* a bunch of sexist pigs is a completely separate question. They could be and I wouldn't be in a position to know. That's a joke, by the way. What isn't a joke is that were I in a position to make art decisions, I would probably be looking for opportunities to make costumes that appealed to players looking for female-specific items, simply because there just aren't very many of them that aren't overtly sexual. Dresses, for example, and other kinds of separate pieces. Recognizing that some of these kinds of things create animation issues and aren't very utilitarian, I wouldn't flood the system with them, but I think the system could stand to have a few more of them. I suspect that far from being just more of the same, the Steampunk items probably appeal to certain players that feel those items fill a gap that is currently very sparse.

I don't think I would be doing that for sexist reasons, which means at the moment a sexist and a non-sexist motivation for doing what the devs are currently doing seems to be an indistinguishable distinction.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Oh, I know you can play around and the pencil skirt is the closest thing we have to a dress bottom for the most part. I liked Sam's outfit when I first saw it; I actually mocked up one myself when I first got the chance to play around with Steampunk: I have one actually sitting in my costume folder waiting for a character concept to need it:



Its still pretty tricky to get just what you're thinking of, though. For example, that outfit above I was thinking of making with a somewhat shallower v neck, and the steampunk jacket doesn't *quite* line up the way I want with the top: you can see a tiny bit of square-off before it slips under the jacket. Just to break up the very deep and wide neck line I added a bolo as the closest thing to a pendant just to draw the eyes slightly upward.

I think that comes close to a sexy dress that isn't slutty. You could almost fight crime in it if you didn't need to run, jog, kick, jump, climb, block, reach up, bend over, or twist. I suppose I could make her a mind controller. Then again, given what I make my martial arts scrapper jump kick dressed in, I could just as easily make her an axe tanker.

I distinctly saw some naked thumbs there.

And toes! The scandal!

I think shortsightedness seems to be a very large portion of the problem regardless of whether or not their views are sexist. It's bad they didn't give female characters coats (despite it being requested repeatedly) yet they also didn't give male characters the gloves or belt. I think they have a bad habit of being stuck with massive tunnel vision for viewing sets as a set as opposed to viewing them as individual pieces. There also seems to be a major problem of missing the "obvious". Let's take the Mutant pack. Many people made a point that claws would make more sense for someone who has mutated but a sword was chosen. That's fine since it was their design choice. However, it didn't make any sense that a sword was designed without taking into consideration Katana users.

Another major problem seems to be incredibly short testing periods that don't give enough time for the changes/fixes to be made while the pack is still on Test. Pretty sure these issues could be better addressed. I can point out how the Animal pack didn't get fixes until after release. As a counterpart, during the I15 open beta people commented on the color setup for Scientist Double. Jay took an impromptu poll and due to feedback it got adjusted before it went live which led to more options and even the devs using it themselves for the Praetorian university instructors.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

We obvioulsy have very different idea about what does and doesn't look like "strippers and fancy underwear", because a fair few of the things you listed as not being in that catagory very much ARE to my eye... Many of the +skin top and bottom options, for instance. Maybe I'm just a prude or something, but there are some pretty skimpy choices in that lot. >_>

Personal yea or nays on many of the basics aside, are you honestly going to look at releases like the Magic pack and the latest Steampunk sets and try to tell me that you don't see any particular trend towards the... lets say "more revealing" side of things... with the female costume choices, as opposed to what they made for the guys? Seriously? To me, there's a pretty obvious difference between what they made for the male models and what the females got. As someone else noted upthread, with Magic the guys got Mister Impressive Arcane Dude. The gals got... what? A lacy, transparent coat with bare sholders and Windy the Fetish Witch?

I'm glad gals at least got the high-collared cape... I really am... But, still. My sonic defender looks like she's freezing her butt off in that bolero.

Anyway, yes, we do have things in the costume editor that don't look like spandex strip-wear. I do know that and I'm glad they exist. I can honestly say that if those pieces weren't there, my entire list of characters would be male, because I generally don't care for the sexy/skimpy look when I'm putting together a costume for one of my crew.

Heck, not even *all* of the extra packs have been so bad in that respect. (The female bits from the Martial Arts pack were great. I love those things to pieces-) But I do think the trend is still there... I was honestly surprised we didn't see cave-girl style fur bikinis with the beast pack.