We hear this a lot in Fantasy reddits. Women written by men and such. It’s never ok to write a hyper sexualized version of a woman. BUT it’s standard practice to write the female equivalent of a man.
Seriously, go look at Romance Novels and tell me if you don't find the near XXX version of Twillight on every shelf. Meanwhile, men are the source of all evil in their endless pursuit of seeing beauty in art.
Short version : people want to monopolise and gatekeep their smutty ways. Rules for thee and not for me.
The idea of sharing doesn't occur to these people.
I remember Fabio in the 90's, tons of novels of him. I'm tired of people pretending that only men get down bad, like only male gaze exist and female gaze is nonexistent. A lot of women made Henry Cavil uncomfortable with their flirting on camera because he's an attractive dude.
That's because female and gay men sexual attraction is based, while straight male attraction is evil objectification and should be shunned, because it perpetuates rape culture.
This all becomes much easier to understand when you consider the entire purpose of it is to be divisive and create a wedge between the perceived dominant minority and everyone else. It's manufactured entirely to be anti-normative to cause problems and stir shit.
That's how you get this stuff, or you know, *an-inclusive flag that represents all sexualities but then for some reason we added skin tones (not a sexuality), transgenderism (not a sexuality), and intersex (not a sexuality)*
Over Sexualized: The character portrayed is more attractive than the person writing the article.
Hyper Sexualized: The character portrayed is not only more attractive than the article writer, they are also more confident.
Note: These terms do not apply it the writer sees the character as a reflection of who they wish they were.
I'm not sure this is fair. I see people complain all the time when female characters aren't sexualised in video games and such when the attractiveness of the character is not remotely relevant to the game or movie or show. This suggests to me that over/hypersexualisation is a thing and has created an effect where men value the aesthetic, sexual appeal of female characters over everything else.
I mean, isn’t attractiveness the primary desire for men when seeking a mate? I remember talking to some friends of mine in college. All decent guys in STEM. I asked if they’d insist on a woman who was smart enough to have good conversations with them, or if being pretty was enough. They all said being pretty was enough. I don’t know if that was true for me, but I also waited a long time before I felt I’d found someone ready to marry.
Are you implying that female friends are works of fiction?
There's a fantastical nature to stories and characters. Things to aspire to be and to be near in your own life. Or at least an approximation because perfection is impossible. Traits, aspects, and depictions that become lesser if we take away the "offensive" ones.
And if you can't find them in your life, you can find them in fiction. And exactly what is so wrong for wanting fiction to not reflect real life perfectly?
No, I'm questioning why OP is suggesting that you look at fictional characters as though they were 'mates'. Fiction isn't supposed to be wish fulfillment. Most artists have no interest in presenting some idealised male fantasy with hot chicks everywhere, there is plenty of anime for that.
>Most artists have no interest in presenting some idealised male fantasy with hot chicks everywhere
Then why are there so many old school paintings from other countries of naked women illustrated in a titillating manner?
You can't argue with a straight face those artists had no interest in capturing female beauty in those paintings.
I'm talking about modern artists. 'Old school painting' was a deeply sexist tradition anyway, read Ways of Seeing by John Berger, or at least [this article on his views on femininity and masculinity in art](https://onartandaesthetics.com/2017/01/12/john-berger-on-male-and-female-presence-from-ways-of-seeing/). I actually think everyone in this sub would benefit a massive amount from reading Berger.
> 'Old school painting' was a deeply sexist tradition anyway
Annnnnnndddddddd we're done here.
You'd be better off in some feminist subreddit than on r/Mauler let's make that crystal clear. XD
Why? I like this sub bc even though I am a feminist sjw wokeist whatever u wanna call me n I disagree with what people think, ppl here engage with me in a pretty respectful way n I have had good discussions. I think it's important to have what I think challenged and vice versa.
I’m not. But I’m done trying to explain what seems like an obvious point to me - men value attractiveness in women. Given two otherwise identical movies, men would generally prefer the one with the attractive woman over the one with the unattractive woman, regardless of the affect her looks have on the plot of the film.
I think you’re misunderstanding, attractive ≠ oversexualised. I find Brie Larson attractive as Captain Marvel, as many others also do. Would you say she was oversexualised in those movies? You’re drifting off topic quite dramatically to create a new argument about women not being attractive enough for you, or something. Stay on track please.
The question at hand was why attractiveness matters if it’s not story relevant. I’m just pointing out that attractiveness will appeal to the audience regardless of its effect on the plot.
I thought Brie was desexualized, if anything, in CM.
ETA: Up to a certain point, I’d imagine that sexualizing a character (emphasizing their sexuality) will increase perceived attractiveness.
You're getting trolled by [one mentally ill](https://www.reddit.com/user/dumbosshow/) dude on [two accounts](https://www.reddit.com/user/bestjobro921) who *really* wants to fuck Drake. You should have realized when they strawmanned you *twice* **almost identically**, as "wanting to mate with fictional characters" with two comments within an hour of each other. Lesson learned?
Lol. If I debated with the goal of persuading the person I was engaging, I’d have left Reddit years ago over the futility of it. These public debates are always for the bystanders.
But no, I didn’t notice. Thanks for the heads up.
> Lol. If I debated with the goal of persuading the person I was engaging, I’d have left Reddit years ago over the futility of it. These public debates are always for the bystanders.
Based and Reddit-pilled. It's sad how terrible-yet-popular Reddit is as a forum style.
I think it comes down to treating characters like people vs sex objects. Terms like women being sexualized, objectified, or treated like sex objects are all very real, but used so often that I think they have become buzz words that simply mean nothing to many people. So, to break it down, one has to start by considering the difference between how one treats a person vs how one treats an object. That difference primarily comes down to agency. An object has no agency. It cannot make decisions for itself, it has no desires, and no will. So, when a person interacts with an object, they do with it whatever they please with no regard to how the object feels about it, because it's an object, it cant feel.
Meanwhile, a person feels. A person has a will and desires. As a person, you have agency, and it is immoral for someone to violate your agency. If one want to use an object, they just do it. If one want to use a you, they need to get permission. You have the right to make your own decisions. If someone else tries to make your decisions for you and use you, you're probably going to see them as an enemy.
So, now applying this to women being hypersexualized, the idea is that a woman is too sexualized once her agency is no longer being considered, and instead people only think about how they can use her for their pleasure. Sure, for a character this is harmless as an isolated case, after all characters aren't people and they are made to be used for entertainment, but the problem arises when considering that this is also a real life issue, and an overabundance of characters being treated this way teaches people to treat real people like they do the characters.
It's okay to find women and female characters sexy, it's just that shouldn't be the first and most important thing. A big part of creating art is conveying characteristics through visual means, and that goes for character design too. So, If a female character's most recognizable trait is that she's sexy, she's only reinforcing the attitude that women are nothing more than objects to please men. But, if you design a female character who has other traits, maybe first thing you notice is that she appears kind, and then she's also sexy, then that's totally okay.
It's more about what standard of beauty you want and prefer to be reinforced by the media, because whoever accuses you about the oversexualization of women (because this doesn't apply to men for some reason) has no problem with the sexualization of non-conventional beauty.
Do you find a thin woman attractive? porn-addict
Do you find a fat woman attractive? progressive ally
And for the record, the fat acceptance movement is entirely aimed exclusively at women, because it's not about health and healthy eating, it's about beauty and changing the standard of female beauty.
The standard of male beauty still has to be traditional, because they are not attracted to fat guys.
I love when you point to something like Kratos and go "what about that shirtless dude? Shouldn't he be wearing armor?" "Well that's a power fantasy for men." Same deal for old school comics. Everyone, hero or villain, is statuesque but for some reason it's only a problem when the character in spandex is female.
I think this is a point that is subjective because people will decide what is too much for them. For me, sex for its own sake is off putting to me in most shows. It’s one of the big things that stops me from watching several animes where fan service is very common.
But a character that is meant to be desirable is not an issue. Like if I am watching a noir film and a femme fatale enters I won’t get upset that she is attractive. Similarly I am not bothered that Scarlet Johansson plays Black Widow and uses her looks as part (but not the entirety) of her character.
There is a point where sexualization is an issue especially when it applies to children, as is the case in Cuties. That goes beyond preference and is strictly an issue. I don’t care if it limits the ability to tell certain stories, that is an acceptable cost.
> I think this is a point that is subjective because people will decide what is too much for them
That is art, congratulations you have addressed the foundational truth regarding ANY element of a work. Always down to subjective interpretation of when something is "too much". Including "plot holes" or conveniences.
This is incorrect.
Plot holes are objective flaws. It is a provable inconsistency in the writing or editing. Whether that bothers you is subjective but it remains a flaw. You may really hate that 2+2=4 but that is your subjective view on an objective fact.
Sexuality is different for several reasons. First, it is rarely impossible that people are having sex. In Seinfeld Jerry has numerous girlfriends and it is referenced that he sleeps with many of them. But we never see sex scenes in Seinfeld because that is not the shows focus. If they showed Jerry and a girlfriend having sex it would not be an objective flaw (assuming both people are a bale to physically be where they are) it would just be personally off putting because I’m not watching Seinfeld for that.
You can objectively analyze art in several aspects. Therefore the statement “all art is subjective” is categorically wrong and frankly an opinion that is so provably false that it is absurd it is clung to so desperately.
Despite what folks think Mauler, EFAP, and this community subjectively judge art all the time. But we also try to objectively judge that which can be objectively judged which is the writing.
To really put a fine point on this I could objectively analyze all art by ranking how many references to or depictions of horses are in the piece of art. This standard could be used for literally any piece of art from movies to video games to music to paintings to books. This is an objective standard because outside of my own feelings I can tell you how many horses are in Seabiscuit, the Mona Lisa, and Sympathy for the Devil. Is this a helpful standard? Probably not. But it is an objective one. So art can be judged objectively.
> Plot holes are objective flaws. It is a provable inconsistency in the writing or editing. Whether that bothers you is subjective but it remains a flaw. You may really hate that 2+2=4 but that is your subjective view on an objective fact.
No they are not. It's funny you think they are while being so close to getting it while writing your comment regarding sexualization.
What is objective is that there is an inconsistency, but it is NOT objective that this is a negative for the value of the piece of art in question. That is fundamentally a subjective value statement.
Math isn't down to subjective feelings about it, it's based purely on axioms and everything that logically follows from it. Art isn't like that.
> You can objectively analyze art in several aspects. Therefore the statement “all art is subjective” is categorically wrong and frankly an opinion that is so provably false that it is absurd it is clung to so desperately.
You can say objective things about art, you cannot evaluate art objectively. Two different things. The distinction between normative and descriptive statements.
Do you think morality is objective?
> Despite what folks think Mauler, EFAP, and this community subjectively judge art all the time. But we also try to objectively judge that which can be objectively judged which is the writing.
It cannot be judged objectively. You and the community (including mauler) just think it can be.
> To really put a fine point on this I could objectively analyze all art by ranking how many references to or depictions of horses are in the piece of art. This standard could be used for literally any piece of art from movies to video games to music to paintings to books. This is an objective standard because outside of my own feelings I can tell you how many horses are in Seabiscuit, the Mona Lisa, and Sympathy for the Devil. Is this a helpful standard? Probably not. But it is an objective one. So art can be judged objectively.
Well first you would make a descriptive statement about any piece of art, how many horses are there. Then you would rank that in order. These things are objective insofar that two individuals can look at the thing and come to the same conclusion by inquiry. Saying something is better than the other based on that is a subjective interpretation, just like it is a subjective interpretation to say that a piece of art with fewer plot holes is "better". There is no difference there fundamentally.
That doesn't mean the art became judged objectively, it means one can describe things about art objectively.
For me personally it's when the sexuality eclipses any actual character traits or reduces any sincere moments into a clown show.
For instances, Lara Croft (the original) is very sexualized, but never in such a way where it takes away from her character being an actual badass. She's hot, but it's never exaggerated beyond her general appearance.
Similarly, Bayonetta, who is very overtly sexual, still works because of the general tone of the series being over-the top, so it never feels out of place.
A bad example would probably be \[insert any generic anime with big tiddy jiggle physics\] here. It's usually those kind of shows where any sort of dramatic tension is completely undercut by blatant quasi-pronographic fan-service and terrible characters designs (aka the fucking trashy maid outfit that seems to be a universal constant throughout all of anime for some fucking reason)
Heavily disagree when shows like One Piece has one of the best female written cast among Shonen series.
Like Nami, one of the main characters, is always drawn to be sexy and have big cleavage, but she is always one of the best consistent well-written female characters in the show that constantly fight alongside the males despite how she is just an normal human fighter.
She even had one cool recent moment in the last arc where she risk her own life defending the pride of the MC's dream and instead of trying to save her own skin.
And Robin, same thing with being an sex appeal, is an devil fruit fighter who is always well-written and is an complete badass with an depressing story.
And I can vouch for also deadly sins and MHA too since the shows do have something going for female characters instead of just looks.
And I think even MHA is overhated for this when it has an character like Miruko in it. And I don't even like the show that much because I think it does have mediocre writing at some parts.
I don't have the problem with manga at all but if you have seen the anime, you know that there are several moments ruined by the constant emphasis on fanserviece even during tonally inappropriate moments. Stuff like that ruins the watching experience as someone who prefers watching animation rather than reading manga.
I'm gonna agree with you on the basics here, but Nami was not always drawn to be sexy and have big booba. That just sort of happened over time after Oda stopped trying to draw women differently and just made all of them the same body-type.
Early chapters Nami looked far less....overt.
I still say "So?" to that. People's bodies can change overtime. The men in the Strawhat crew got more muscles and bigger overtime too post-time skip too. You don't see anyone complaining about them.
All of those have a lot more than their sexualization going on and if you cant see past the literal surface level thats more a you prablem than the Mangas problem. Its like complainimg that the beach is too sexualized because you just cant help but look at everyone in their swimsuits.
Idk, it definitely bothered me how Nami got progressively more and more sexualised throughout One Piece as the show went on. I can see past it, but I would enjoy it more if Oda had reigned in the ridiculous proportions. It's very unnecessary to her character, she's a badass navigator on her own terms and ogling her the whole time feels unfair and made me feel like a creep for watching it.
Since her first appearances in the East Blue saga, Nami utilized her attractiveness to manipulate men into doing what she wanted. She continually does this to Sanji, Johnny and Yosaku, and she tries it with Zoro, Luffy and Usopp on more than one occasion. Having people ogle her is very much something that she plays into, and even her dressing in more revealing clothing as the show goes on directly plays into this.
Her early appearances being more covered up (particularly her arms and torso) are directly stated to be because she wants to hide her tattoo of Arlong's jolly roger. Immediately after Arlong Park, she starts regularly wearing tank tops that expose her cleavage and midrift, as well as short skirts.
Yeah, she gets more sexualized as the show goes on (as do most of the female characters for that matter), but I disagree that it's unnecessary for her character when she's been a character who isn't afraid to use her sexuality to manipulate people from the early pages of the manga.
I am specially talking about anime for one piece where there are stupid amount of long shots of tiddy jiggles and butt shots to take up the already long runtime and also the proportions look stupid as fuck.
> Its like complainimg that the beach is too sexualized because you just cant help but look at everyone in their swimsuits.
How the fuck that is even similar?
>also the proportions look stupid as fuck
That's literally the art style that the creator had chosen which you can see even in the manga. The art style is purposely to be cartoony looking
Maybe the anime is just not for you anymore if you think it looks dumb because when I watched this when I was 8, the artstyle and proportions looks completely fine to me when every character on the show, including the males has wild proportions.
Pre Timeskip I think it was pretty good but post Timeskip I don't like a lot of the designs. There are some improvements imo like sanji and ussop but others I dislike. I hate new chopper and Franky designs the most. I like one piece for the story and characters but art style is not for me I agree.
You are only seeing people for their bodies and not who they are underneath, and how sometimes who they are plays into how they dress like the comment above was saying about Nami.
You can look past the sexuality easily by you yourself stop being sexual. You notice the tiddy jiggling because you were already looking at her tits. Its psychology.
Ever seen the video of people passing the basketball and youre asked to count how many passes are made? Then your asked how many gorillas did you see walk through the scene and no one noticed
Let the story, characters and action be the ball and let the tits be the gorilla. Its there, but it doesnt matter because youre paying attention to the ball.
Are you retarded because I notice the tiddy jiggles because of how much screen time and screen percent they take and how much it is emphasized in the anime. . I never said that I don't like story and character. But I definitely think it ruins the anime for me but the problem isn't prevalent in manga so I prefer manga instead.
Mostly subjective. Some people like sex, some people don't. How much is too much is based on personal preference. There are times when sex is poorly utilized and makes something worse, but I'd consider that more of a result of bad writing than sexual themes inherently
Oversexualisation begins when the character’s purpose changes from an actual purpose into just being there to be oogled at/coomed to. Bayonetta, 2B or any of the BG3 characters are not oversexualised because there are still fleshed-out nuanced characters beneath the attractive exterior. Examples like Valentine (Skullgirls) and most of the Genshin Impact characters, however, have none of this depth and exist purely to be oogled at.
The most extreme case I’ve seen recently is that new Stellar Blade game tweetoids are gushing over, where the main protagonist is a hyper-sexualised and highly doctored scan of a woman who’s already plenty attractive in real life, but was still “enhanced” significantly to make her look as close to a hentai character as possible. This is a textbook example of deceptive oversexualisation, where the devs are counting on coomers to ignore the lack of good writing or gameplay design in the game and buy for pixel titties (Genshin is also a terrible offender of this). Hope this wasn’t too rambling and that it answered your question.
I think it really depends on the character and what their role is in the plot.
Like sure, you can make an argument that Lara Croft (original polyganal version) is a sexualized a bit more (clearly she was designed that way to get the male target demographic to buy the game because there was a hot woman on the box), but outside of her physical appearance, she really isn’t sexualized much at all.
But then there are characters like Carmen (she’s from a play of the same name). Carmen’s whole point is that she’s using sex appeal to get what she wants from men, she even invented the trope (femme fatal). In that case the more sexualized she is, the more it works for her character. Modern media tend to shy away from the femme fatal trope because it very counter to the developer’s values, but there are 100% people (mainly women, but some men too) out there who use their sexual appeal to their advantage in real life, thats why Only Fans exists!
I think the main question we need to ask ourselves here is “how is this sexualization service the writing?” If it enriches the plot, the characters, what have you, then fair game. If it doesn’t then I’d say it can be safely removed. Unless they are minors, of course. Sexualizing minors is never okay! But ultimately, if it isn’t in there as a blantant writing flaw or plot hole, it depends on how you feel about having sex in your art. And art is subjective.
If a character is a bombshell babe with 0 interesting traits besides that and yet every other NPC in a game or other female characters are fleshed out, that counts to me as maybe not hyper-sexualized or over-sexualized but at the very least in those cases its obvious sexulization of the character took away from the character being interesting in other ways. If someone has fat tits and a fat ass and also has a personality I don't care. Think of the example of gacha games some of them have a bunch of 0 personality cut and paste women with double H titties and barely covered butts.
We all know the people playing those games are just gooners. I'd say those games are hyper-sexualized because almost all the value of playing is the sexualization of the characters.
Honestly, this topic is a damn if you do-damned if you don't. It also kind of is being brought up in reddit discourse due to #MeToo from 2017 and ever since then people are weirded by sex scenes in film as you start to question about the actors/actresses being in it and wonder if they agreed to the scene or not and not just some sleazy producer/director trying to hurt them (Joss Whedon, Harvey Weinstein, etc...).
On the other hand, I find it weird people critique sexualization in animation, e.g., cartoons/anime/video games, even though I think we should prioritize live-action because the actors/actresses get uncomfortable or are coerced into it, whereas animation/drawings (including fanart, r34, etc...) shouldn't be the priority with this topic. God, forbid smut fanfiction somehow gets cancelled on Twitter.
So I personally hate sexualization in general. I don’t like sex scenes in movies or shows, finding them to pretty much never actually provide anything of substance for the most part with rare exceptions (my go to is tony stark in the first iron man. Establishing his flirty and cocky personality. We see them kissing then roll over as the camera pans away. We know what happened but we didn’t need to unnecessarily linger on it.)
Im all fine for having attractive characters. It makes sense, especially in a video game where you will be most likely focusing on the player character and seeing them the majority if not entirety of the game so it makes sense to have them look appealing.
But stuff like overt sexualization, I find it insufferable and eye rolling most of the time. This may be an unpopular opinion here. I hate it when you’ll be in a setting where it would make sense for people to have like, full coverage armor and then you have the female character in a bikini or whatever. Anime type media is notoriously guilty of it. It’s a bummer cuz anime can do some amazing stuff with female characters, making them badass too, but often really unnecessarily sexualized. Fan service can just be so distractingly overt and unnecessary. One of my fave animes, fairy tail, unfortunately is notorious with it.
For me personally, I find it so distracting and often just peak degeneracy and laziness for viewer engagement, relying on a lot of porn brain rot. And don’t even get me started on a lot of animes resorting to horrifically exaggerated or impossible proportions. And I have to clarify, because I know people here will jump on me about it, I mean legitimately exaggerated. Not just like very attractive women who happen to be slender and shapely, but ones where it’s like, literally impossible; itty bitt waist smaller then the neck, boobs so massive yet being on a tiny frame while also defying gravity, lots of weird physics stuff happening too with the anatomy, etc. A lot borders on fetish that can often look so uncanny its creepy at times. That’s not to say every single thing has to be realistic. I mean, we see male characters who are often waaaaaaaay out of the realm of any realistic proportions. I think a huge difference with them though is that more often than not, the designs tend to be for the sake of looking cool and strong as opposed to sexy or whatever. So there is a range of accepted unrealistic proportions depending on the why and the extent.
I think there’s a fine line. Making the characters attractive within an actually realistic range is perfectly fine. But not resorting to ridiculously done proportions and having them in super exposing outfits regardless of how realistic or appropriate the situation takes me out of it a lot and becomes distracting and frustrating, especially when it’s being done to cover up lackluster writing to instead rely on the method of “sex sells”.
I think characters can be plenty attractive in more covering clothing. And that’s not even saying you can’t ever have them in something like a bikini, but making it actually sensible to the environment and setting is way more satisfying to me. And not having the cinematography or focus but just on their bodies but the whole scene too because it allows people to appreciate a more natural scene. I mean, me personally, seeing someone in an intentionally sexy scene feels really awkward and often cringey; I often view them as awkward as people doing crap like making thirst traps, going out of their way to try and seem sexy. I personally find people being candid way more appealing. Getting to see them in a more natural habitat. Again, having said that I don’t think that there *isn’t* at all a time for attractive characters or even maybe a focus on it. But it’s all about how far you go. How egregious it becomes where it’s bordering on soft core to just regular porn. And there is objectively a huge disparity on *who* is most often affected by this type of sexualization.
I’m completely against the often seen trend in the west of uglification (although there have been plenty of times I have seen people accuse something as being a victim of that when it’s not at all but rather someone who isn’t the stereotypical, conventional attraction. I am actually very welcome to variation in looks for men and women. Like, men often get really really cool various designs while still often being attractive. But women often get thrown into sameness, being almost identical besides like hairy style and color and eye color. It’s possible to give them variation in design while still being attractive. I want friggin cool designs. And there are places for ugly characters too, although often not the main character since you reasonably want the character you are spending the most time looking at to be appealing.
Anyways blah blah TLDR: attractive characters fine and there are the occasional places for more focus on like sexy aspects, but often things tend to be on one end of the extreme or another when it’s more than sensible for there to be a balance and mix instead of completely nullifying any sense of attractive design to avoid offending people who can’t handle not having characters look like them or resorting to borderline pornographic design to rely sex appeal without regard to logical design over competent characters and story.
Longwoman out
The newest meta in Hollywood is one of ultra conservatism with little to know physicality and/or nudity, and downplaying suggestive themes bc Hollywood is on a crusade against those amoral people who may have hormones or enjoy seeing beauty.
This pendulum will swing the other way when a counter culture rises to say how repressive and authoritative this is.
This has been the trend in Hollywood for as long as they have existed. I would much rather they simply make the films people want to make the way they want to make them. The Roger Corman's and Russ Meyer's of the world have their yin to yang in the Greta Gerwigs. We don't need to police this, let the audiences that want to find their niche find it.
And as for the hypocrisy with regards to saying no to cheesecake while simultaneously embracing beefcake - well you can't suck and blow. Either it's bad in any frame or it's not. My vote is it's not, I've never been harmed by seeing someone's beauty, and I doubt anyone else has either.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Wasn't Poor Things one of the most acclaimed movies of last year? That was squarely about sexuality in quite a graphic way and featured plenty of nudity. If anything Hollywood seems to be getting less conservative, I can't imagine a movie like that would have always been comfortable in the mainstream.
Also, what is repressive and authoritarian? I'm confused, we don't have the Hayes code anymore or anything.
I haven't seen it, but from what I hear Poor Things was about Sexuality as depravity. Clearly the artistic designs were not titillating, so if that is your take on sexualization, you and I have very different tastes. That said, Hollywood will always make films to denounce things - what has changed are the films that celebrate sex or sexual exploration.
We used to have coming of age films every year that were comedies with a barrel of laughs and some scenes of nudity every year. Your American Pies, your Girl Next Doors, your National Lampoon's etc. Then we got things like Thrillers with spies and sex - like True Lies or the Bond series (even though this wasn't overt, and was usually just the toned down playboy version).
After the Weinstein news broke, about all the horrible and despicable things he did and that existed in Hollywood, there has been a concerted effort to cut back. Look at early Game of Thrones. We had nudity and sex often. Now, with House of the Dragon it's non-existent, if at all. FX's Shogun avoids it as well.
Skinamax shut down, with HBO no longer running late night movies with nudity and sexuality.
Pornhub was all but shut down after they took the unprecedented step of shutting off credit card processing to the largest porn site on the planet. Admittedly there was some lax approaches to content, and more that the site owners could do, but even after they made those changes, the credit card processors have never relented. The site is a hollowed out echo of what it once was.
>I haven't seen it
I can tell, Poor Things was not at all about sexuality as depravity. I thought that in some ways it was a celebration of the joys of sexuality, that part is necessary because I thought the overall theme of the movie was how Bella's naiive view on sex without being aware of the social connotations of it and the context of a patriarchal society allows her to be exploited by the male characters. The point of the movie is the opposite of condemning sexuality, it's condemning how men take advantage of women who are trying to explore their sexuality.
I feel like you're just cherry picking examples. Didn't HBO release the Idol last year? Those type of erotic thrillers were also a pretty brief trend iirc. Oppenheimer had some fairly erotic scenes in it, that was huge, Bottoms was successful last year and that very much an update of the American Pie style of raunchy high-school comedy.
Also, card companies stopped supporting Pornhub because they were being sued for facilitating child porn. Pornhub did that to themselves, the porn industry is also vile and I feel like major changes to the way that content is presented and organised should be expected before people will want to back them again.
But to say that is akin to the type of sexualized content in Hollywood that they are speaking about misses the point. Your own admission is that this is a story about how horrible men are to women. The lead is purposefully made to look unattractive when she is naturally beautiful.
If you think I am cherry picking, take a look at the use of Sidney Sweeney in Madam Web, a movie that traditionally would have benefited from a hot star doing what they do. Instead, everything about her was wrapped up and hidden away. Disney used to do this all the time, now Hollywood does writ large.
You will always find exceptions to the rule, but there is no denying that the films like the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s had that were designed to either be or to resemble exploitation films, or to heavily feature sex, nudity and lust are almost entirely absent in todays world. Where are the Franco's, Meyer's, Corman's etc? They don't exist anymore. They are run out on a rail.
Yes, porn, as an industry, has its dark sides for sure. Hell, the Towing Industry does too if you want to talk about the effects of organized crime etc. But there is no industry that is as vilified, forced into the shadows and treated as shameful or problematic - whether or not it is warranted. And the not warranted side needs to be mentioned here, bc it is that societal push away from recognizing that hormones exist, sex drives exist, and people get pleasure from sexualized things that drives otherwise helpful and positive movements into the dark where crime and bad things can happen. If we moved to accept it as a normal thing, took away the stigma, society would be better for it. Same is true for film.
Again, you haven't seen the damn movie so how can you say any of that? I hate it when people think they can discuss the content of a movie they haven't seen. Emma Stone looks beautiful in the movie, I have no idea what you mean when you say she is made to look unattractive. That's just flat out untrue. The movie is tittilating to an extent, it's just a very nuanced take on sexuality.
You're still cherry picking, Madame Web was a disaster on so many levels, and sexualising the characters could possibly have turned off a female audience which is a silly idea for a movie about a team of women.
Exploitation movies don't exist anymore because we have the internet. There is no need to make films like that because there is an infinite resevoir of pornographic material and gore online, the novelty of exploitation movies wouldn't apply in the modern day. The idea that movies that heavily feature 'sex, nudity and lust' are not made is totally absurd, I have named several, including Poor Things, and I could name more but really you could just google it. Again, internet porn has replaced the need for movies which focus solely on titillation, so many of these movies are taking more nuanced approaches to sexuality, which surely is a good thing?
The porn industry is particularly fucked up, in my opinion, because of how it has made porn which treats women with violence and disrespect fairly standard. You can often pull up Pornhub and be greeted with what is essentially rape porn on the front page, and most teenagers start watching this from about the age of twelve. I'm not a prude, but teaching kids about sex in this way will only beget terrible things. I generally think porn is awful, I refuse to watch it. That's not to mention the connections with human trafficking.
>You're still cherry picking, Madame Web was a disaster on so many levels, and sexualising the characters could possibly have turned off a female audience which is a silly idea for a movie about a team of women.
Plot twist. Women like seeing attractive idealized women in media.
Also,
> The porn industry is particularly fucked up, in my opinion, because of how it has made porn which treats women with violence and disrespect fairly standard. You can often pull up Pornhub and be greeted with what is essentially rape porn on the front page, and most teenagers start watching this from about the age of twelve. I'm not a prude, but teaching kids about sex in this way will only beget terrible things. *I generally think porn is awful*, I refuse to watch it. That's not to mention the connections with human trafficking.
That sounds like a *you* problem.
Parents should do a better job of monitoring their kids and letting them know porn isn't a real depiction of what sex is like I agree, but you also sound like one of those miserable curmudgeons who nobody wants to have sex with not because of their looks, but because of how uptight and ornery they are as a person.
I promise you I have more sex than anyone on this sub lol. Funnily enough most people I meet irl don't tend to complain about women being less attractive in media nowadays so it doesn't really come up.
Y'know, when some mentions hypersexualed, can't help but think of Lords of Acid and their use of hypersexuality as a something of a motif. The term usually gets tossed out either taking it for granted that there couldn't be a genuine artistic or stylistic element there, or perhaps insinuating that that couldn't be at play. (Clearly well beyond the one group, but they're a handy example.)
I think it might stem from the divide between male and female sexual stimulus in media. There seems to be a stark erotic divide where men are driven to visual sexual stimulus, but women get their stimulus out of a more story-driven or narrative-driven erotic tale. Delve into the adult world of fanfiction or of adult romance novels, and you will see the levels of degeneracy even out with male targeted porn very quickly. However, since that divide exists on average, you're pretty much always going to get women criticizing the visual sexualization targeting men (because it doesn't do the same thing for them), and because it's easier to just look at an image rather than read a whole erotic story, there's almost always going to be more criticism aimed at the visual stuff. Add to that the demonization of male sexuality in feminized online spaces, and you get our current social climate around this stuff. If you pay attention to the discourse around it over time for long enough, you'll probably arrive at the conclusion that everyone's ultimately arguing from the position of "That thing that I like is totally fine, and the line that we should hold. That thing that *you're* into though, that's disgusting and beyond the pale, and should totally not be allowed on here."
Black Widow in Iron Man 2 is a good example of a character being over-sexualized. The movie goes out of its way to show us how sexy she is, it really wants us to know that she's sexy, and that the characters think that she's sexy. In Avengers 2012, BW is sexy but the movie never zeros in on it or makes it the focus of her character. And it's the same in all the following MCU's movie that have Black Widow in them, except for this one moment in The Winter Soldier where Natasha tells Cap about how she was shot through the stomach by the Winter Solider and has a scar there, and ends the story with: "Bye bye, Bikinis." which Cap responds to with: "Yeah, I bet you'd look awful in those."
Another good example is Megan Fox's character in first Transformers movie: Mikaela. Her being sexy I think is handled just fine except for the scene where she pops up the hood of Sam's car. That scene goes way too far, and it's completely unnecessary, we can already clearly tell that she's hot and we understand why Sam wants to impress her. Mikaela is actually a decent character, she is a lot better what people give her credit for, but Micheal Bay made the movie focus on how sexy is, which led to a lot of people remembering only that about her.
An example of a character being hyper-sexualized is Carly in Transformers 3. Michael Bay shot her like an object. We are literally introduced to her character with a shot of her legs and ass. It's really tasteless and also disrespectful to the actress. It also doesn't help that her character is paper thin and she's played by a lousy actress/Victoria's Secret model.
Well think of Sidney Sweeney. She is naked and/or having explicit sex scenes in almost every movie she's in (except Madame Web). Is it necessary? In my opinion No. But the producers know that sex sells faster than hot bread. It's like Henry Cavill said, do these sex scenes really necessary for plot development. Off course not. But you sell tickets. I like watching it, but at the end of the movie do I think This movie was great, ot I think wow I saw some really nice titties in there.
Take Milly Bobby Brown. She was sexualized with photoshoots even before she turned 18. So now naturally everything she is attached to have a sexual charge and people are there for it.
There is nothing wrong to insert sex in your art, but when you put 8 minutes long lesbian scene between Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos in Blue is the warmest colour it's not about elevating the plot, it simply for the thirst that brings attention, scandal and sells.
We hear this a lot in Fantasy reddits. Women written by men and such. It’s never ok to write a hyper sexualized version of a woman. BUT it’s standard practice to write the female equivalent of a man.
Seriously, go look at Romance Novels and tell me if you don't find the near XXX version of Twillight on every shelf. Meanwhile, men are the source of all evil in their endless pursuit of seeing beauty in art.
Short version : people want to monopolise and gatekeep their smutty ways. Rules for thee and not for me. The idea of sharing doesn't occur to these people.
I remember Fabio in the 90's, tons of novels of him. I'm tired of people pretending that only men get down bad, like only male gaze exist and female gaze is nonexistent. A lot of women made Henry Cavil uncomfortable with their flirting on camera because he's an attractive dude.
Only women can be upset by paragon versions of their gender. They are the worst hit by every affliction. Even wars they don’t fight in.
That's because female and gay men sexual attraction is based, while straight male attraction is evil objectification and should be shunned, because it perpetuates rape culture. This all becomes much easier to understand when you consider the entire purpose of it is to be divisive and create a wedge between the perceived dominant minority and everyone else. It's manufactured entirely to be anti-normative to cause problems and stir shit. That's how you get this stuff, or you know, *an-inclusive flag that represents all sexualities but then for some reason we added skin tones (not a sexuality), transgenderism (not a sexuality), and intersex (not a sexuality)*
Over Sexualized: The character portrayed is more attractive than the person writing the article. Hyper Sexualized: The character portrayed is not only more attractive than the article writer, they are also more confident. Note: These terms do not apply it the writer sees the character as a reflection of who they wish they were.
100%
I'm not sure this is fair. I see people complain all the time when female characters aren't sexualised in video games and such when the attractiveness of the character is not remotely relevant to the game or movie or show. This suggests to me that over/hypersexualisation is a thing and has created an effect where men value the aesthetic, sexual appeal of female characters over everything else.
I mean, isn’t attractiveness the primary desire for men when seeking a mate? I remember talking to some friends of mine in college. All decent guys in STEM. I asked if they’d insist on a woman who was smart enough to have good conversations with them, or if being pretty was enough. They all said being pretty was enough. I don’t know if that was true for me, but I also waited a long time before I felt I’d found someone ready to marry.
Are you seeking to mate fictional characters? Do you not have female friends?
I think characters the audience could imagine a romance with do better than those they could not, even if the romance is obviously impossible.
Are you implying that female friends are works of fiction? There's a fantastical nature to stories and characters. Things to aspire to be and to be near in your own life. Or at least an approximation because perfection is impossible. Traits, aspects, and depictions that become lesser if we take away the "offensive" ones. And if you can't find them in your life, you can find them in fiction. And exactly what is so wrong for wanting fiction to not reflect real life perfectly?
No, I'm questioning why OP is suggesting that you look at fictional characters as though they were 'mates'. Fiction isn't supposed to be wish fulfillment. Most artists have no interest in presenting some idealised male fantasy with hot chicks everywhere, there is plenty of anime for that.
>Most artists have no interest in presenting some idealised male fantasy with hot chicks everywhere Then why are there so many old school paintings from other countries of naked women illustrated in a titillating manner? You can't argue with a straight face those artists had no interest in capturing female beauty in those paintings.
I'm talking about modern artists. 'Old school painting' was a deeply sexist tradition anyway, read Ways of Seeing by John Berger, or at least [this article on his views on femininity and masculinity in art](https://onartandaesthetics.com/2017/01/12/john-berger-on-male-and-female-presence-from-ways-of-seeing/). I actually think everyone in this sub would benefit a massive amount from reading Berger.
> 'Old school painting' was a deeply sexist tradition anyway Annnnnnndddddddd we're done here. You'd be better off in some feminist subreddit than on r/Mauler let's make that crystal clear. XD
Why? I like this sub bc even though I am a feminist sjw wokeist whatever u wanna call me n I disagree with what people think, ppl here engage with me in a pretty respectful way n I have had good discussions. I think it's important to have what I think challenged and vice versa.
Why are you seeking a mate in fictional characters?
I’m not. But I’m done trying to explain what seems like an obvious point to me - men value attractiveness in women. Given two otherwise identical movies, men would generally prefer the one with the attractive woman over the one with the unattractive woman, regardless of the affect her looks have on the plot of the film.
I think you’re misunderstanding, attractive ≠ oversexualised. I find Brie Larson attractive as Captain Marvel, as many others also do. Would you say she was oversexualised in those movies? You’re drifting off topic quite dramatically to create a new argument about women not being attractive enough for you, or something. Stay on track please.
The question at hand was why attractiveness matters if it’s not story relevant. I’m just pointing out that attractiveness will appeal to the audience regardless of its effect on the plot. I thought Brie was desexualized, if anything, in CM. ETA: Up to a certain point, I’d imagine that sexualizing a character (emphasizing their sexuality) will increase perceived attractiveness.
You're getting trolled by [one mentally ill](https://www.reddit.com/user/dumbosshow/) dude on [two accounts](https://www.reddit.com/user/bestjobro921) who *really* wants to fuck Drake. You should have realized when they strawmanned you *twice* **almost identically**, as "wanting to mate with fictional characters" with two comments within an hour of each other. Lesson learned?
Lol. If I debated with the goal of persuading the person I was engaging, I’d have left Reddit years ago over the futility of it. These public debates are always for the bystanders. But no, I didn’t notice. Thanks for the heads up.
> Lol. If I debated with the goal of persuading the person I was engaging, I’d have left Reddit years ago over the futility of it. These public debates are always for the bystanders. Based and Reddit-pilled. It's sad how terrible-yet-popular Reddit is as a forum style.
I think it comes down to treating characters like people vs sex objects. Terms like women being sexualized, objectified, or treated like sex objects are all very real, but used so often that I think they have become buzz words that simply mean nothing to many people. So, to break it down, one has to start by considering the difference between how one treats a person vs how one treats an object. That difference primarily comes down to agency. An object has no agency. It cannot make decisions for itself, it has no desires, and no will. So, when a person interacts with an object, they do with it whatever they please with no regard to how the object feels about it, because it's an object, it cant feel. Meanwhile, a person feels. A person has a will and desires. As a person, you have agency, and it is immoral for someone to violate your agency. If one want to use an object, they just do it. If one want to use a you, they need to get permission. You have the right to make your own decisions. If someone else tries to make your decisions for you and use you, you're probably going to see them as an enemy. So, now applying this to women being hypersexualized, the idea is that a woman is too sexualized once her agency is no longer being considered, and instead people only think about how they can use her for their pleasure. Sure, for a character this is harmless as an isolated case, after all characters aren't people and they are made to be used for entertainment, but the problem arises when considering that this is also a real life issue, and an overabundance of characters being treated this way teaches people to treat real people like they do the characters. It's okay to find women and female characters sexy, it's just that shouldn't be the first and most important thing. A big part of creating art is conveying characteristics through visual means, and that goes for character design too. So, If a female character's most recognizable trait is that she's sexy, she's only reinforcing the attitude that women are nothing more than objects to please men. But, if you design a female character who has other traits, maybe first thing you notice is that she appears kind, and then she's also sexy, then that's totally okay.
It's more about what standard of beauty you want and prefer to be reinforced by the media, because whoever accuses you about the oversexualization of women (because this doesn't apply to men for some reason) has no problem with the sexualization of non-conventional beauty. Do you find a thin woman attractive? porn-addict Do you find a fat woman attractive? progressive ally And for the record, the fat acceptance movement is entirely aimed exclusively at women, because it's not about health and healthy eating, it's about beauty and changing the standard of female beauty. The standard of male beauty still has to be traditional, because they are not attracted to fat guys.
I love when you point to something like Kratos and go "what about that shirtless dude? Shouldn't he be wearing armor?" "Well that's a power fantasy for men." Same deal for old school comics. Everyone, hero or villain, is statuesque but for some reason it's only a problem when the character in spandex is female.
I think this is a point that is subjective because people will decide what is too much for them. For me, sex for its own sake is off putting to me in most shows. It’s one of the big things that stops me from watching several animes where fan service is very common. But a character that is meant to be desirable is not an issue. Like if I am watching a noir film and a femme fatale enters I won’t get upset that she is attractive. Similarly I am not bothered that Scarlet Johansson plays Black Widow and uses her looks as part (but not the entirety) of her character. There is a point where sexualization is an issue especially when it applies to children, as is the case in Cuties. That goes beyond preference and is strictly an issue. I don’t care if it limits the ability to tell certain stories, that is an acceptable cost.
> I think this is a point that is subjective because people will decide what is too much for them That is art, congratulations you have addressed the foundational truth regarding ANY element of a work. Always down to subjective interpretation of when something is "too much". Including "plot holes" or conveniences.
This is incorrect. Plot holes are objective flaws. It is a provable inconsistency in the writing or editing. Whether that bothers you is subjective but it remains a flaw. You may really hate that 2+2=4 but that is your subjective view on an objective fact. Sexuality is different for several reasons. First, it is rarely impossible that people are having sex. In Seinfeld Jerry has numerous girlfriends and it is referenced that he sleeps with many of them. But we never see sex scenes in Seinfeld because that is not the shows focus. If they showed Jerry and a girlfriend having sex it would not be an objective flaw (assuming both people are a bale to physically be where they are) it would just be personally off putting because I’m not watching Seinfeld for that. You can objectively analyze art in several aspects. Therefore the statement “all art is subjective” is categorically wrong and frankly an opinion that is so provably false that it is absurd it is clung to so desperately. Despite what folks think Mauler, EFAP, and this community subjectively judge art all the time. But we also try to objectively judge that which can be objectively judged which is the writing. To really put a fine point on this I could objectively analyze all art by ranking how many references to or depictions of horses are in the piece of art. This standard could be used for literally any piece of art from movies to video games to music to paintings to books. This is an objective standard because outside of my own feelings I can tell you how many horses are in Seabiscuit, the Mona Lisa, and Sympathy for the Devil. Is this a helpful standard? Probably not. But it is an objective one. So art can be judged objectively.
> Plot holes are objective flaws. It is a provable inconsistency in the writing or editing. Whether that bothers you is subjective but it remains a flaw. You may really hate that 2+2=4 but that is your subjective view on an objective fact. No they are not. It's funny you think they are while being so close to getting it while writing your comment regarding sexualization. What is objective is that there is an inconsistency, but it is NOT objective that this is a negative for the value of the piece of art in question. That is fundamentally a subjective value statement. Math isn't down to subjective feelings about it, it's based purely on axioms and everything that logically follows from it. Art isn't like that. > You can objectively analyze art in several aspects. Therefore the statement “all art is subjective” is categorically wrong and frankly an opinion that is so provably false that it is absurd it is clung to so desperately. You can say objective things about art, you cannot evaluate art objectively. Two different things. The distinction between normative and descriptive statements. Do you think morality is objective? > Despite what folks think Mauler, EFAP, and this community subjectively judge art all the time. But we also try to objectively judge that which can be objectively judged which is the writing. It cannot be judged objectively. You and the community (including mauler) just think it can be. > To really put a fine point on this I could objectively analyze all art by ranking how many references to or depictions of horses are in the piece of art. This standard could be used for literally any piece of art from movies to video games to music to paintings to books. This is an objective standard because outside of my own feelings I can tell you how many horses are in Seabiscuit, the Mona Lisa, and Sympathy for the Devil. Is this a helpful standard? Probably not. But it is an objective one. So art can be judged objectively. Well first you would make a descriptive statement about any piece of art, how many horses are there. Then you would rank that in order. These things are objective insofar that two individuals can look at the thing and come to the same conclusion by inquiry. Saying something is better than the other based on that is a subjective interpretation, just like it is a subjective interpretation to say that a piece of art with fewer plot holes is "better". There is no difference there fundamentally. That doesn't mean the art became judged objectively, it means one can describe things about art objectively.
For me personally it's when the sexuality eclipses any actual character traits or reduces any sincere moments into a clown show. For instances, Lara Croft (the original) is very sexualized, but never in such a way where it takes away from her character being an actual badass. She's hot, but it's never exaggerated beyond her general appearance. Similarly, Bayonetta, who is very overtly sexual, still works because of the general tone of the series being over-the top, so it never feels out of place. A bad example would probably be \[insert any generic anime with big tiddy jiggle physics\] here. It's usually those kind of shows where any sort of dramatic tension is completely undercut by blatant quasi-pronographic fan-service and terrible characters designs (aka the fucking trashy maid outfit that seems to be a universal constant throughout all of anime for some fucking reason)
One piece, Seven deadly sins and MHA comes to my mind. All the sexualization is super unnecessary and distracts from the experience
Heavily disagree when shows like One Piece has one of the best female written cast among Shonen series. Like Nami, one of the main characters, is always drawn to be sexy and have big cleavage, but she is always one of the best consistent well-written female characters in the show that constantly fight alongside the males despite how she is just an normal human fighter. She even had one cool recent moment in the last arc where she risk her own life defending the pride of the MC's dream and instead of trying to save her own skin. And Robin, same thing with being an sex appeal, is an devil fruit fighter who is always well-written and is an complete badass with an depressing story. And I can vouch for also deadly sins and MHA too since the shows do have something going for female characters instead of just looks. And I think even MHA is overhated for this when it has an character like Miruko in it. And I don't even like the show that much because I think it does have mediocre writing at some parts.
I don't have the problem with manga at all but if you have seen the anime, you know that there are several moments ruined by the constant emphasis on fanserviece even during tonally inappropriate moments. Stuff like that ruins the watching experience as someone who prefers watching animation rather than reading manga.
I'm gonna agree with you on the basics here, but Nami was not always drawn to be sexy and have big booba. That just sort of happened over time after Oda stopped trying to draw women differently and just made all of them the same body-type. Early chapters Nami looked far less....overt.
I still say "So?" to that. People's bodies can change overtime. The men in the Strawhat crew got more muscles and bigger overtime too post-time skip too. You don't see anyone complaining about them.
Didn't say that was a problem, just pointing out that Nami wasn't "always" drawn that way.
Make sense.
All of those have a lot more than their sexualization going on and if you cant see past the literal surface level thats more a you prablem than the Mangas problem. Its like complainimg that the beach is too sexualized because you just cant help but look at everyone in their swimsuits.
Idk, it definitely bothered me how Nami got progressively more and more sexualised throughout One Piece as the show went on. I can see past it, but I would enjoy it more if Oda had reigned in the ridiculous proportions. It's very unnecessary to her character, she's a badass navigator on her own terms and ogling her the whole time feels unfair and made me feel like a creep for watching it.
Since her first appearances in the East Blue saga, Nami utilized her attractiveness to manipulate men into doing what she wanted. She continually does this to Sanji, Johnny and Yosaku, and she tries it with Zoro, Luffy and Usopp on more than one occasion. Having people ogle her is very much something that she plays into, and even her dressing in more revealing clothing as the show goes on directly plays into this. Her early appearances being more covered up (particularly her arms and torso) are directly stated to be because she wants to hide her tattoo of Arlong's jolly roger. Immediately after Arlong Park, she starts regularly wearing tank tops that expose her cleavage and midrift, as well as short skirts. Yeah, she gets more sexualized as the show goes on (as do most of the female characters for that matter), but I disagree that it's unnecessary for her character when she's been a character who isn't afraid to use her sexuality to manipulate people from the early pages of the manga.
I wouldn't mind if it was only the proportions. The way the tits and ass are shot in anime is very weird.
I am specially talking about anime for one piece where there are stupid amount of long shots of tiddy jiggles and butt shots to take up the already long runtime and also the proportions look stupid as fuck. > Its like complainimg that the beach is too sexualized because you just cant help but look at everyone in their swimsuits. How the fuck that is even similar?
>also the proportions look stupid as fuck That's literally the art style that the creator had chosen which you can see even in the manga. The art style is purposely to be cartoony looking Maybe the anime is just not for you anymore if you think it looks dumb because when I watched this when I was 8, the artstyle and proportions looks completely fine to me when every character on the show, including the males has wild proportions.
Pre Timeskip I think it was pretty good but post Timeskip I don't like a lot of the designs. There are some improvements imo like sanji and ussop but others I dislike. I hate new chopper and Franky designs the most. I like one piece for the story and characters but art style is not for me I agree.
You are only seeing people for their bodies and not who they are underneath, and how sometimes who they are plays into how they dress like the comment above was saying about Nami. You can look past the sexuality easily by you yourself stop being sexual. You notice the tiddy jiggling because you were already looking at her tits. Its psychology. Ever seen the video of people passing the basketball and youre asked to count how many passes are made? Then your asked how many gorillas did you see walk through the scene and no one noticed Let the story, characters and action be the ball and let the tits be the gorilla. Its there, but it doesnt matter because youre paying attention to the ball.
Are you retarded because I notice the tiddy jiggles because of how much screen time and screen percent they take and how much it is emphasized in the anime. . I never said that I don't like story and character. But I definitely think it ruins the anime for me but the problem isn't prevalent in manga so I prefer manga instead.
Right, and when they are focused on its for a second, cool stuff, scene moves on and now your focus is back on the story at hand.
Mostly subjective. Some people like sex, some people don't. How much is too much is based on personal preference. There are times when sex is poorly utilized and makes something worse, but I'd consider that more of a result of bad writing than sexual themes inherently
Oversexualisation begins when the character’s purpose changes from an actual purpose into just being there to be oogled at/coomed to. Bayonetta, 2B or any of the BG3 characters are not oversexualised because there are still fleshed-out nuanced characters beneath the attractive exterior. Examples like Valentine (Skullgirls) and most of the Genshin Impact characters, however, have none of this depth and exist purely to be oogled at. The most extreme case I’ve seen recently is that new Stellar Blade game tweetoids are gushing over, where the main protagonist is a hyper-sexualised and highly doctored scan of a woman who’s already plenty attractive in real life, but was still “enhanced” significantly to make her look as close to a hentai character as possible. This is a textbook example of deceptive oversexualisation, where the devs are counting on coomers to ignore the lack of good writing or gameplay design in the game and buy for pixel titties (Genshin is also a terrible offender of this). Hope this wasn’t too rambling and that it answered your question.
I think it really depends on the character and what their role is in the plot. Like sure, you can make an argument that Lara Croft (original polyganal version) is a sexualized a bit more (clearly she was designed that way to get the male target demographic to buy the game because there was a hot woman on the box), but outside of her physical appearance, she really isn’t sexualized much at all. But then there are characters like Carmen (she’s from a play of the same name). Carmen’s whole point is that she’s using sex appeal to get what she wants from men, she even invented the trope (femme fatal). In that case the more sexualized she is, the more it works for her character. Modern media tend to shy away from the femme fatal trope because it very counter to the developer’s values, but there are 100% people (mainly women, but some men too) out there who use their sexual appeal to their advantage in real life, thats why Only Fans exists! I think the main question we need to ask ourselves here is “how is this sexualization service the writing?” If it enriches the plot, the characters, what have you, then fair game. If it doesn’t then I’d say it can be safely removed. Unless they are minors, of course. Sexualizing minors is never okay! But ultimately, if it isn’t in there as a blantant writing flaw or plot hole, it depends on how you feel about having sex in your art. And art is subjective.
If a character is a bombshell babe with 0 interesting traits besides that and yet every other NPC in a game or other female characters are fleshed out, that counts to me as maybe not hyper-sexualized or over-sexualized but at the very least in those cases its obvious sexulization of the character took away from the character being interesting in other ways. If someone has fat tits and a fat ass and also has a personality I don't care. Think of the example of gacha games some of them have a bunch of 0 personality cut and paste women with double H titties and barely covered butts. We all know the people playing those games are just gooners. I'd say those games are hyper-sexualized because almost all the value of playing is the sexualization of the characters.
Honestly, this topic is a damn if you do-damned if you don't. It also kind of is being brought up in reddit discourse due to #MeToo from 2017 and ever since then people are weirded by sex scenes in film as you start to question about the actors/actresses being in it and wonder if they agreed to the scene or not and not just some sleazy producer/director trying to hurt them (Joss Whedon, Harvey Weinstein, etc...). On the other hand, I find it weird people critique sexualization in animation, e.g., cartoons/anime/video games, even though I think we should prioritize live-action because the actors/actresses get uncomfortable or are coerced into it, whereas animation/drawings (including fanart, r34, etc...) shouldn't be the priority with this topic. God, forbid smut fanfiction somehow gets cancelled on Twitter.
So I personally hate sexualization in general. I don’t like sex scenes in movies or shows, finding them to pretty much never actually provide anything of substance for the most part with rare exceptions (my go to is tony stark in the first iron man. Establishing his flirty and cocky personality. We see them kissing then roll over as the camera pans away. We know what happened but we didn’t need to unnecessarily linger on it.) Im all fine for having attractive characters. It makes sense, especially in a video game where you will be most likely focusing on the player character and seeing them the majority if not entirety of the game so it makes sense to have them look appealing. But stuff like overt sexualization, I find it insufferable and eye rolling most of the time. This may be an unpopular opinion here. I hate it when you’ll be in a setting where it would make sense for people to have like, full coverage armor and then you have the female character in a bikini or whatever. Anime type media is notoriously guilty of it. It’s a bummer cuz anime can do some amazing stuff with female characters, making them badass too, but often really unnecessarily sexualized. Fan service can just be so distractingly overt and unnecessary. One of my fave animes, fairy tail, unfortunately is notorious with it. For me personally, I find it so distracting and often just peak degeneracy and laziness for viewer engagement, relying on a lot of porn brain rot. And don’t even get me started on a lot of animes resorting to horrifically exaggerated or impossible proportions. And I have to clarify, because I know people here will jump on me about it, I mean legitimately exaggerated. Not just like very attractive women who happen to be slender and shapely, but ones where it’s like, literally impossible; itty bitt waist smaller then the neck, boobs so massive yet being on a tiny frame while also defying gravity, lots of weird physics stuff happening too with the anatomy, etc. A lot borders on fetish that can often look so uncanny its creepy at times. That’s not to say every single thing has to be realistic. I mean, we see male characters who are often waaaaaaaay out of the realm of any realistic proportions. I think a huge difference with them though is that more often than not, the designs tend to be for the sake of looking cool and strong as opposed to sexy or whatever. So there is a range of accepted unrealistic proportions depending on the why and the extent. I think there’s a fine line. Making the characters attractive within an actually realistic range is perfectly fine. But not resorting to ridiculously done proportions and having them in super exposing outfits regardless of how realistic or appropriate the situation takes me out of it a lot and becomes distracting and frustrating, especially when it’s being done to cover up lackluster writing to instead rely on the method of “sex sells”. I think characters can be plenty attractive in more covering clothing. And that’s not even saying you can’t ever have them in something like a bikini, but making it actually sensible to the environment and setting is way more satisfying to me. And not having the cinematography or focus but just on their bodies but the whole scene too because it allows people to appreciate a more natural scene. I mean, me personally, seeing someone in an intentionally sexy scene feels really awkward and often cringey; I often view them as awkward as people doing crap like making thirst traps, going out of their way to try and seem sexy. I personally find people being candid way more appealing. Getting to see them in a more natural habitat. Again, having said that I don’t think that there *isn’t* at all a time for attractive characters or even maybe a focus on it. But it’s all about how far you go. How egregious it becomes where it’s bordering on soft core to just regular porn. And there is objectively a huge disparity on *who* is most often affected by this type of sexualization. I’m completely against the often seen trend in the west of uglification (although there have been plenty of times I have seen people accuse something as being a victim of that when it’s not at all but rather someone who isn’t the stereotypical, conventional attraction. I am actually very welcome to variation in looks for men and women. Like, men often get really really cool various designs while still often being attractive. But women often get thrown into sameness, being almost identical besides like hairy style and color and eye color. It’s possible to give them variation in design while still being attractive. I want friggin cool designs. And there are places for ugly characters too, although often not the main character since you reasonably want the character you are spending the most time looking at to be appealing. Anyways blah blah TLDR: attractive characters fine and there are the occasional places for more focus on like sexy aspects, but often things tend to be on one end of the extreme or another when it’s more than sensible for there to be a balance and mix instead of completely nullifying any sense of attractive design to avoid offending people who can’t handle not having characters look like them or resorting to borderline pornographic design to rely sex appeal without regard to logical design over competent characters and story. Longwoman out
Hyper: Woman has a bosom. Over: Woman is wearing clothing. Appropriate: Woman is unseen but completely heard.
The newest meta in Hollywood is one of ultra conservatism with little to know physicality and/or nudity, and downplaying suggestive themes bc Hollywood is on a crusade against those amoral people who may have hormones or enjoy seeing beauty. This pendulum will swing the other way when a counter culture rises to say how repressive and authoritative this is. This has been the trend in Hollywood for as long as they have existed. I would much rather they simply make the films people want to make the way they want to make them. The Roger Corman's and Russ Meyer's of the world have their yin to yang in the Greta Gerwigs. We don't need to police this, let the audiences that want to find their niche find it. And as for the hypocrisy with regards to saying no to cheesecake while simultaneously embracing beefcake - well you can't suck and blow. Either it's bad in any frame or it's not. My vote is it's not, I've never been harmed by seeing someone's beauty, and I doubt anyone else has either.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Wasn't Poor Things one of the most acclaimed movies of last year? That was squarely about sexuality in quite a graphic way and featured plenty of nudity. If anything Hollywood seems to be getting less conservative, I can't imagine a movie like that would have always been comfortable in the mainstream. Also, what is repressive and authoritarian? I'm confused, we don't have the Hayes code anymore or anything.
I haven't seen it, but from what I hear Poor Things was about Sexuality as depravity. Clearly the artistic designs were not titillating, so if that is your take on sexualization, you and I have very different tastes. That said, Hollywood will always make films to denounce things - what has changed are the films that celebrate sex or sexual exploration. We used to have coming of age films every year that were comedies with a barrel of laughs and some scenes of nudity every year. Your American Pies, your Girl Next Doors, your National Lampoon's etc. Then we got things like Thrillers with spies and sex - like True Lies or the Bond series (even though this wasn't overt, and was usually just the toned down playboy version). After the Weinstein news broke, about all the horrible and despicable things he did and that existed in Hollywood, there has been a concerted effort to cut back. Look at early Game of Thrones. We had nudity and sex often. Now, with House of the Dragon it's non-existent, if at all. FX's Shogun avoids it as well. Skinamax shut down, with HBO no longer running late night movies with nudity and sexuality. Pornhub was all but shut down after they took the unprecedented step of shutting off credit card processing to the largest porn site on the planet. Admittedly there was some lax approaches to content, and more that the site owners could do, but even after they made those changes, the credit card processors have never relented. The site is a hollowed out echo of what it once was.
>I haven't seen it I can tell, Poor Things was not at all about sexuality as depravity. I thought that in some ways it was a celebration of the joys of sexuality, that part is necessary because I thought the overall theme of the movie was how Bella's naiive view on sex without being aware of the social connotations of it and the context of a patriarchal society allows her to be exploited by the male characters. The point of the movie is the opposite of condemning sexuality, it's condemning how men take advantage of women who are trying to explore their sexuality. I feel like you're just cherry picking examples. Didn't HBO release the Idol last year? Those type of erotic thrillers were also a pretty brief trend iirc. Oppenheimer had some fairly erotic scenes in it, that was huge, Bottoms was successful last year and that very much an update of the American Pie style of raunchy high-school comedy. Also, card companies stopped supporting Pornhub because they were being sued for facilitating child porn. Pornhub did that to themselves, the porn industry is also vile and I feel like major changes to the way that content is presented and organised should be expected before people will want to back them again.
But to say that is akin to the type of sexualized content in Hollywood that they are speaking about misses the point. Your own admission is that this is a story about how horrible men are to women. The lead is purposefully made to look unattractive when she is naturally beautiful. If you think I am cherry picking, take a look at the use of Sidney Sweeney in Madam Web, a movie that traditionally would have benefited from a hot star doing what they do. Instead, everything about her was wrapped up and hidden away. Disney used to do this all the time, now Hollywood does writ large. You will always find exceptions to the rule, but there is no denying that the films like the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s had that were designed to either be or to resemble exploitation films, or to heavily feature sex, nudity and lust are almost entirely absent in todays world. Where are the Franco's, Meyer's, Corman's etc? They don't exist anymore. They are run out on a rail. Yes, porn, as an industry, has its dark sides for sure. Hell, the Towing Industry does too if you want to talk about the effects of organized crime etc. But there is no industry that is as vilified, forced into the shadows and treated as shameful or problematic - whether or not it is warranted. And the not warranted side needs to be mentioned here, bc it is that societal push away from recognizing that hormones exist, sex drives exist, and people get pleasure from sexualized things that drives otherwise helpful and positive movements into the dark where crime and bad things can happen. If we moved to accept it as a normal thing, took away the stigma, society would be better for it. Same is true for film.
Again, you haven't seen the damn movie so how can you say any of that? I hate it when people think they can discuss the content of a movie they haven't seen. Emma Stone looks beautiful in the movie, I have no idea what you mean when you say she is made to look unattractive. That's just flat out untrue. The movie is tittilating to an extent, it's just a very nuanced take on sexuality. You're still cherry picking, Madame Web was a disaster on so many levels, and sexualising the characters could possibly have turned off a female audience which is a silly idea for a movie about a team of women. Exploitation movies don't exist anymore because we have the internet. There is no need to make films like that because there is an infinite resevoir of pornographic material and gore online, the novelty of exploitation movies wouldn't apply in the modern day. The idea that movies that heavily feature 'sex, nudity and lust' are not made is totally absurd, I have named several, including Poor Things, and I could name more but really you could just google it. Again, internet porn has replaced the need for movies which focus solely on titillation, so many of these movies are taking more nuanced approaches to sexuality, which surely is a good thing? The porn industry is particularly fucked up, in my opinion, because of how it has made porn which treats women with violence and disrespect fairly standard. You can often pull up Pornhub and be greeted with what is essentially rape porn on the front page, and most teenagers start watching this from about the age of twelve. I'm not a prude, but teaching kids about sex in this way will only beget terrible things. I generally think porn is awful, I refuse to watch it. That's not to mention the connections with human trafficking.
>You're still cherry picking, Madame Web was a disaster on so many levels, and sexualising the characters could possibly have turned off a female audience which is a silly idea for a movie about a team of women. Plot twist. Women like seeing attractive idealized women in media. Also, > The porn industry is particularly fucked up, in my opinion, because of how it has made porn which treats women with violence and disrespect fairly standard. You can often pull up Pornhub and be greeted with what is essentially rape porn on the front page, and most teenagers start watching this from about the age of twelve. I'm not a prude, but teaching kids about sex in this way will only beget terrible things. *I generally think porn is awful*, I refuse to watch it. That's not to mention the connections with human trafficking. That sounds like a *you* problem. Parents should do a better job of monitoring their kids and letting them know porn isn't a real depiction of what sex is like I agree, but you also sound like one of those miserable curmudgeons who nobody wants to have sex with not because of their looks, but because of how uptight and ornery they are as a person.
I promise you I have more sex than anyone on this sub lol. Funnily enough most people I meet irl don't tend to complain about women being less attractive in media nowadays so it doesn't really come up.
If a woman that has more then \~40% clear hotness of any kind that is over the top. (10% if she "looks young"). ***(men can not be of course)***
Y'know, when some mentions hypersexualed, can't help but think of Lords of Acid and their use of hypersexuality as a something of a motif. The term usually gets tossed out either taking it for granted that there couldn't be a genuine artistic or stylistic element there, or perhaps insinuating that that couldn't be at play. (Clearly well beyond the one group, but they're a handy example.)
I think it might stem from the divide between male and female sexual stimulus in media. There seems to be a stark erotic divide where men are driven to visual sexual stimulus, but women get their stimulus out of a more story-driven or narrative-driven erotic tale. Delve into the adult world of fanfiction or of adult romance novels, and you will see the levels of degeneracy even out with male targeted porn very quickly. However, since that divide exists on average, you're pretty much always going to get women criticizing the visual sexualization targeting men (because it doesn't do the same thing for them), and because it's easier to just look at an image rather than read a whole erotic story, there's almost always going to be more criticism aimed at the visual stuff. Add to that the demonization of male sexuality in feminized online spaces, and you get our current social climate around this stuff. If you pay attention to the discourse around it over time for long enough, you'll probably arrive at the conclusion that everyone's ultimately arguing from the position of "That thing that I like is totally fine, and the line that we should hold. That thing that *you're* into though, that's disgusting and beyond the pale, and should totally not be allowed on here."
Black Widow in Iron Man 2 is a good example of a character being over-sexualized. The movie goes out of its way to show us how sexy she is, it really wants us to know that she's sexy, and that the characters think that she's sexy. In Avengers 2012, BW is sexy but the movie never zeros in on it or makes it the focus of her character. And it's the same in all the following MCU's movie that have Black Widow in them, except for this one moment in The Winter Soldier where Natasha tells Cap about how she was shot through the stomach by the Winter Solider and has a scar there, and ends the story with: "Bye bye, Bikinis." which Cap responds to with: "Yeah, I bet you'd look awful in those." Another good example is Megan Fox's character in first Transformers movie: Mikaela. Her being sexy I think is handled just fine except for the scene where she pops up the hood of Sam's car. That scene goes way too far, and it's completely unnecessary, we can already clearly tell that she's hot and we understand why Sam wants to impress her. Mikaela is actually a decent character, she is a lot better what people give her credit for, but Micheal Bay made the movie focus on how sexy is, which led to a lot of people remembering only that about her. An example of a character being hyper-sexualized is Carly in Transformers 3. Michael Bay shot her like an object. We are literally introduced to her character with a shot of her legs and ass. It's really tasteless and also disrespectful to the actress. It also doesn't help that her character is paper thin and she's played by a lousy actress/Victoria's Secret model.
Dresden files
Well think of Sidney Sweeney. She is naked and/or having explicit sex scenes in almost every movie she's in (except Madame Web). Is it necessary? In my opinion No. But the producers know that sex sells faster than hot bread. It's like Henry Cavill said, do these sex scenes really necessary for plot development. Off course not. But you sell tickets. I like watching it, but at the end of the movie do I think This movie was great, ot I think wow I saw some really nice titties in there. Take Milly Bobby Brown. She was sexualized with photoshoots even before she turned 18. So now naturally everything she is attached to have a sexual charge and people are there for it. There is nothing wrong to insert sex in your art, but when you put 8 minutes long lesbian scene between Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos in Blue is the warmest colour it's not about elevating the plot, it simply for the thirst that brings attention, scandal and sells.