As I was browsing one of my favorite subreddits today (r/JRPG) I stumbled upon a thread discussing sexualization in JRPG's and how off-putting the content can be to some gamers, particularly female gamers as well as gamers who aren't attracted to women. Let's be completely honest; very many JRPG's are designed with a teenage male audience in mind, which means we're gonna be seeing a LOT of female characters in rather skimpy and impractical outfits that show off highly idealized figures. Is this a good or a bad thing?
Is it totally wrong to have a character who looks like THIS in a game aimed at thirteen year olds?
To keep this entry short, let's only focus on one of the most infamously sexualized JRPG's of the last decade: Xenoblade 2. Xenoblade 2 is the story of a young man named Rex, who one day is bound to a mystical weapon/person named Pyra, who also happens to be the strongest and most important of the mystical weapon/people called Blades. But there is an organization called Torna that wants to find Pyra for their own nefarious purposes and... yeah, it's a JRPG, the story isn't exactly treading new ground.
The point of contention regarding Xenoblade 2 isn't the gameplay (which is pretty good) or the story (which services), it's the designs of many of the female Blades. What do I mean? Well...
While I'm of the opinion that drawings are just that, a friend of mine reminded me of the negative influence media can have on people's perceptions of the human body. I was reminded on how media can (and has) led to the spread of negative body images among the youth, especially among the female population. I'm talking, of course, on how very often girls are given entirely wrong views on what their bodies should be like.
You see it in women's magazines, where these models that have been photoshoped to hell and back grace the covers, all smiles, and the magazine itself sells this image as "empowering" because the model is looking confident. You see it in the entertainment industry, which somehow continues to create films and television shows that try to pretend that a woman who looks like Jennifer Aniston or Hillary Duff could ever be perpetually dateless until a guy who looks like Pierce Brosnan happens to walk into their lives, or that total knockouts like Zendaya and Olivia Holt could be anything less than the type of girl who most everyone in high school would be drooling over.
Media's influence on people often goes ignored because we see issues like self-image to be an individual's problem at best. Sometimes we dismiss these issues with simple retorts like "hit the gym if you hate your body so much," or "try to learn to love yourself more." And honestly, if it were as easy as that, there'd be no problem. But it's not, so there is.
And what does this have to do with Xenoblade 2? Well, the game is a JRPG published by Nintendo, so it is geared towards an audience that skews a little younger than, say, Grand Theft Auto. Xenoblade 2's target audience is young teenagers, ages 12-15, male. And they're the ones who are gonna get exposed to these unrealistic body images.
Which of course may sound ridiculous to complain about, because most of us KNOW there's a difference between real women and drawings of women. In the real world, most women don't have breasts bigger than their heads, or waists so small they'd fit in one hand, or have curvaceous hourglass figures in dynamite proportions. Women's bodies are varied; some are chubby, some are tall and lanky, some have really big breasts, some have small breasts, and so on so forth.
And yet we don't see this reality really reflected in media. We don't see actresses who are on the chubby side star in romantic sex comedies; we only see the perfectly sculped, rail thin actresses on those. James Bond is never gonna be seen on the big screen having a sex scene with a Jade Cargill or a Melissa McCarthy, but an Alexandra Daddario totally would be expected.
And again we return to Xenoblade 2. It must be noted that not all the girls are sexualized, but the ones treated as love interests are. They have 'clothing' (really parts of their bodies, but that's beside the point) that does little beyond accentuate their physical features like their big, bouncy breasts, their perfectly shaped rears, and their long, well shaven legs. There's plenty to see, and very little is left to the imagination.
Which of course leads to the question we've been dancing around all blog long: what's the big deal? Simply put: its giving teenage boys the wrong idea about what female bodies are like. The truth of the matter is that most boys WILL lust after characters like Pyra and Mythra, but the hard lesson they have to learn is that this isn't what women actually look like. It's the same hard lesson that we 90's boys learned as well: we're never, ever gonna get with a Pamela Anderson of our own.
Up until now, I've been implying that media is to blame for the widespread body image problem. This isn't true at all; it could well be argued that media is not only feeding the impossible beauty standards, but it's also responding to the demands of the audience regarding what beauty is. Because how likely is James Bond to have sex with a Melissa McCarthy, if audiences don't want a Bond Girl played by a chubby actress?
People don't want fat actresses, so Media doesn't hire fat actresses, so people learn not to see fat people as attractive, which then leads to people not wanting to see fat actresses, and so on so forth. A vicious cycle is created, a sort of ouroboros that is seemingly inescapable. How can we end it?
By accepting that it's OK to have preferences, but it's also OK to acknowledge that idealized bodies are just that: idealized. Yes we'd all like to get with the girl with the HUGE bazongas, or the guy with the perfectly chiseled six pack. But those people are the rarest of the rare, and in focusing only on them, you're missing out on all the wide varieties of people who could excite you just as well, if not BETTER. Like yeah he's a short guy, but he's also gonna be leaving you laughing out loud all night with his amazing jokes. Yeah she's a bit chubby, but she's the one who's gonna be playing that PS5 right with you. He's lanky and geeky? He's also a classical music aficionado who can talk for hours on end about Salieri. She's tall and kind of flat chested? Yeah, and she'll be the one to bring the nachos with dip next Super Sunday, but the beer's on you!
But back to our original question: is the hypersexualization of female characters in Xenoblade 2 a good or a bad thing? Well, the answer to that is that there's more to it than just something being good or bad. See, the hypersexualization can be harmful to both women and men, for entirely different reasons. But the reasons for this have NOTHING to do with the game itself or even the designs, and EVERYTHING to do with our perceptions of beauty standards. No matter what, the game still contributes to the unrealistic expectations of both men and women. And THAT is bad.
The simple truth of the matter is that, if we as a society had more realistic expectations regarding beauty and body types, if we were more accepting of one another, then these female character designs would be harmless, even a bit silly. We're the ones who promote unhealthy body images to our kids. WE are the ones who tell our daughters that if they don't look like skin and bones, it means they're fat. WE are the ones who tell our sons that they may as well give up on love if they're not tall, dark, and handsome. That's on us, all of us.
And it ultimately comes back to that vicious cycle, where our demand for idealized bodies is what causes media to promote idealized bodies, which hurts our perception of what bodies should look like. If we want this to stop, we need to accept a more realistic, more diverse body image. Accept that a little chub, a little thinness, or a few birthmarks can be attractive too. That you don't need big tits to be happy, or a six pack, or thick lips, or muscles on muscles. Idealized bodies are just that: idealized. Fantasies. Not real. Look around you; you're surrounded by REAL people, with different body shapes and sizes. Give them your attention and put down the drawings; I promise you'll be happier this way.
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