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[Animemaster345]

So... I was looking at the romances/companions for DA:I and am i the only one that thinks that these romances aren't all that attractive?  Well I guess the male companions / romances are actually not that bad. But the female romances? Come on BioWare. Cassandra looked perfectly fine in DA:2 and now... Am i the only one thinking this? Like why is it that hard to give us an attractive female to romance?

[Allan Schumacher]

I disagree with the OP

[Allan Schumacher]

It's an ongoing trend. This was the straw/camel's back type of situation. I've been catching snippets of things here and there over the last few months. The most consistent thing I've heard is "I want personality over beauty..." which has been said so many times that it feels as though folks wholeheartedly believe that conventionally attractive characters/people are incapable of having winning personalities. :/

 

They're more saying that the person doesn't have to be conventionally attractive to be interesting and appealing.  It's more of a statement that they aren't bothered if the person doesn't look super beautiful.

 

 

Given that men are more regularly allowed to have a wide variety of looks, I consider it a good direction to start striving towards (I think it's a valid critique that we're still awfully conservative, in this regard, with DAI)

[Allan Schumacher]

But it does seem like people that write letters and make online petitions are in fact bothered when women are portrayed as super beautiful. People make jokes about women looking like barbie's and that is unrealistic and sexist but I never hear anyone care at all that all the super hero men are all 6'5' professional body builders. Nor should they care for that matter. It's odd when people argue in either direction, we are talking about cartoons, not real people.

 

Also how are men allowed more often to look a variety of ways?  In real life or BioWare games? 

 

There are people that speak out against the super hero men, too.  The issue comes don't to prevalence.  Women are almost *always* having to fit into some measure of attractive, and if they aren't larger groups of people feel a need to speak out against the less attractive ones.

 

I do think that there is much more flexibility in terms of how male characters look in our games (or gaming in general).  DAI still fits this mold, even with "ugly" women.  I also feel that attractiveness is a less significant influence in a man's life compared to a woman's, in real life.  There's a lot more focus, at least in my experiences, for women to continue maintaining their attractiveness compared to men.  In terms of what I see in commercials and even just media in general.  I am starting to get grey hair, and it's so absolutely not an issue for me.  Though that doesn't mean society doesn't place any pressure on men.  Baldness, for example, is a common one (and seems to fuel a good amount of why Solas is ugly to some, from what I've seen).

 

But look at our cast of characters in DAI.  I think there's much wider range in appearance among the male characters than among the female characters.  So just another part of the slow moving boat that hopefully keeps turning.

 

 

I find Josephine and Leliana to be strikingly attractive in our game.  Vivienne is also beautiful.  I still find Cass very pretty, and Sera was maybe the one I was most "meh" to in terms of physical appearances, that all evaporated once I met her in my playthrough (I think she's awesome).

[Allan Schumacher]

You're right and wrong.

 

What you're seeing is the typical internet act of doubling down.

 

 

If it was reversed and we were saying this about people with weight issues,

 

"If it was reversed?"  I would consider someone coming in and saying "the women are too fat" would result in reasonably similar rebuttals to people complaining that the women are too ugly and don't match conventional beauty.

 

 

pretty faces lacking personality, being unlovable, and the age old stereotype of: attractive people are mean.

 

Link?

[Allan Schumacher]

"...the very attractive were seen as egocentric..." http://www.amsciepub...0.1984.55.2.351

Extremely attractive individuals may be refused by their own sex type who are jealous of them: E. Hatfield, S. Sprecher, (1986). Mirror, mirror…The importance of looks in everyday life. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Here's a PDF of that: http://www.elainehatfield.com/ch64.pdf  

"Subjects expected attractive women to be more vain and egotistical, more bourgeois (i.e., materialistic, snobbish, and unsympathetic to oppressed peoples), and less committed to their marriages (more likely to have extramarital affairs and/or to request a divorce) than homely women."

 

 

So you think that attractiveness in general, is a detriment in our society?

[Allan Schumacher]

And to make this point you toss away the female krogan, cause she wasn't a love interest or party member, Sigrun because dwarves aren't often companions (even though this one was) and she wasn't a love interest and Shale because she wasn't a love interest and you had to discover she was a woman.

 

Sorry, I'm interjecting here.

 

When I see you make a statement such as how it doesn't even look like Cassandra and Josephine are wearing make up, you do an excellent job of reinforcing just how "natural" we now look at make up since, to me, it's very apparent that not only are they wearing make up, they are arguably wearing too much (particularly around the eyes).  But when you go off on a tangent like that but get upset at others for apparently going off on tangents of their own, I start to get frustrated.

 

 

The existence of someone like Shale (or Beth) is not, when assessed in the greater context of all video games, compelling enough evidence to me that women aren't highly judged by their physical appearance, and significantly more likely to be required to be within a narrower band of beauty.  I don't consider it "tossing them out."  The presence of some does not mean "problem is now solved."  I do think it is reflective, however, of the problem is starting to get addressed.  There's still the issue that only Shale was a party member though.

[Allan Schumacher]

I like how people find a way to make it about them. Ohhh you don't think Cassandra is attractive well what about the people who think that she is more attractive the them?
Those people can stop being so insecure. The OP isn't calling everyone ugly and isn't expecting supermodels in the game. He is just saying that they don't seem as attractive as in the past games.

 

It's more that it's hardly a unique perspective and if this is your justification, it'd be uninteresting if every poster chimed in by creating a thread about what companions they did or did not find attractive.

[Allan Schumacher]

??

 

No... I'm pointing out the negative stereotypes regarding conventionally attractive people. And I don't agree with those stereotypes. 

Though I also don't agree with the stereotypes that deify attractive people either. 

 

How prevalent are said negative stereotypes?  And more importantly, how impactful are they?  I mean, it's not like there's the idea that people can gain significant advantages based on their attractiveness.  Which likely fuels a lot of the jadedness that people may have for them.

 

Though I was more specifically asking for links of that sort of abuse on this forum.  I mean, yet another thread was started while I was sleeping about how ugly the love interests are.

[Allan Schumacher]

From what I've read, people seem to nosedive into criticizing models. 

 

From what I've read, I've seen people nosedive straight into "these characters are all uggos" or some equivalent.  I see *way* more "why is character X so ugly."  I have seen a handful of "I think Character Y is too pretty" but usually in the context of "I am jealous that that character will look better than my PC" (which is an implicit statement of requiring a character, in this case the PC, to be very attractive in order to be valued).