Ideally, there should always be a fine balance for both genders. Pleasing to the eye, yet realistic and subtle-- steroidal or plastic surgery style bodies are just cheesy and tasteless.
You want the player to feel like they can wander around in the world and either feel like they do not stand out, or that they stand out in a way that pleases them. If you can't give choice, then you should present the sort of image you would see around you every day that would make a person think, "Oh, that's a nice figure for a man/woman" and not think, "Ugh, they're rather emaciated/obese" or "Ugh, they look like they've been touched up with bronzer/ botox/by a plastic surgeon/by a personal trainer with access to drugs."
Barring the more extreme threats like child abuse, third world hunger, serial murders and rapes, etc., there is little that disgusts me more about modern society than the obsession with eradicating everything human by bleaching and tanning and liposucking ourselves to death. Sure, obesity is unhealthy, but it's been proven in numerous scientific studies that a
bit
of extra weight is actually
much healthier for a person than underweight. It disturbs me that people are so willing to starve themselves and stick needles in themselves just because tv people do it a lot. Sure, everybody should know better, but teenagers sure don't, and not everyone who's older than that is as wise as they should be either. So I vigorously support every example I see of a healthy, normal human being who takes care of themself in a positive way--a way which doesn't include trying to erase every hint of natural color from their hair and skin while doing their level best to have 0% body fat even if it means using dangerous drugs or starving themselves half-dead.
I personally feel prouder to play a
character with an average body--breasts quite a bit smaller than mine, better muscle tone, taller than my 5'1" frame--than one who reminds me of the barbie dolls I used to play with as a kid. I feel so much better about playing the role of a normal woman than a creepy caricature of one. That's not to say that all forms of imitation are negative, but far too many people are modeling themselves after this hideous false ideal instead of trying to enhance who they feel they are--in other words, I'm not gonna knock somebody for dyeing their hair blue or getting their hair highlighted, just for trying to erase all trace of their natural coloring and evidence of age just to look like Paris Hilton.
If somebody's an actress, then I won't ever blame them for changing their look because it's part of the job, but just as an example:
http://media.photobu...arter.jpg?o=420http://images.starpu...-ALO-078693.jpgMaybe it's just me, but I think the blonde hair and tan make her look older, even though she was years older in the photographs as a brunette than in the blonde. She's wearing less makeup, but looks younger and prettier in the brunette photograph because that's a natural look for her. That's what I prefer for everyone--blonde, brunette, or redhead, an at least semi-natural look, because dark brown eyebrows with blonde hair will never fail to look cheap and ugly to me. Like you're wearing a bad wig, and the spray tan only makes it more obvious.
I don't care if both genders (both, not just one--and no, I wouldn't want just males idealized either) are idealized to a moderate degree, but the severity of idealization (and idealization in the wrong direction, to boot) in most forms of media truly repels me. Any game that presents to me a realistic-yet-pleasing-to-both-genders average body for both its male and female characters has an edge with me that may make me buy it over a similar game. I prefer, for far more than just one reason, to see reality with all its quirks and foibles over the unsettling tricks intended to hide every hint of something realistic, brainwashing society to want something that isn't human. To want to be it, to want to sleep with it, to need it in order to feel normal or whole.
Screw that. I'll take real people any day.
Mike Laidlaw wrote...
Just to drop in here, I find it
interesting that no one ever stops to wonder if, perhaps, Varric were
prone to exaggerating more than just facts about Hawke...
I suppose time will tell, but there might be a few surprises in store for the keen of eye.
*lmao* Okay, that is just awesome.
Modifié par Wynne, 06 novembre 2010 - 11:16 .
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