Wouldn't you like to know, Weatherboy?

1. Resident Evil 2 (1998)

In this game, I feel like the role they want Leon to fill is masculine, which makes sense considering RE2's most prominent characters aside from Leon (co-protagonist Claire, Ada, and Sherry) are all women.

Leon's looks are more masculine for the time period with Leon's hair cut (fig. 1) matching this hair cut (fig. 2) which seems to be very popular amongst young men from America in the in the 90's, from what I can find.

Leon's story, backstory, and role all seem to be more masculine as well. With Leon standing as a protector and an action hero. Almost everyone in the R.P.D perished but this one guy who shows up late is able to navigate his way through the problem better than anyone else.

Leon is also late to his first day of being a police officer because he drank excessively the night before due to breaking up with his girlfriend. This led to Leon being hungover the entire game. That screams the way masculinity is portrayed in hollywood to me.

He also "fell in love" with Ada in that cliche, shallow, action movie way, when they didn't know each other at all before the plot started, they aren't actually in circumstances where they CAN get to know each other, yet the are still kissing by the end of the story.

Everything about Leon in RE2 (1998) points towards him being a young 21 year old, All American™️ action hero.

2. Resident Evil 4 (2005)

This is where Leon starts leaning into feminine aesthetics for me.

First things first I guess. In RE4, the cast of important characters are skewed with there being more male characters of importance (Luis, Krauser, Méndez, Salazar, Saddler, Merchant), as opposed to female characters (Ashley, Ada). So this to me is an instance of treating Leon in a feminine way to balance the scales a bit.

Reason 1: The haircut. While yes, longer hair was still fairly popular, the longer hair cut was more reserved for "pretty boys" instead of "rugged men", best example of this is season 1 of 'Supernatural' which aired 2005, where we can see Jenson Ackles (fig. 3) who plays the older brother, who's more rugged and gritty of the brothers has short, spiky hair, vs. Jared Padalecki (fig. 4) who has just come from playing a role in 'Gilmore Girls' and is the younger, softer brother. So we can see right off the bat, Leon is meant to be a pretty boy, but it goes deeper than that.

Reason 2: The dyed hair. In the game it is very obvious that he's dyed his hair blond and his roots are growing out a bit. The act of dying your hair is seen as inherently feminine and I think this is best backed-up by the fact that regular hair dye has women on the boxes, and there has been an uptick in "hair dye for men" with men on the boxes and with the use being advertised for short hair and beards. So, this shows that dying your hair is seen by wider western society as a feminine act.

Reason 3: Hair Colour. Lighter hair colour is seen as more feminine. I'm not entirely sure why, but I when I look at men that are posted as being the pinnacle of masculinity, they tend to have dark hair (e.g. Henry Cavil, actor) but men with lighter hair, tend to be seen in a more feminine way (e.g. Nico Rosberg, former formula 1 driver).

So from this, paired with Leon more slight build. We can infer that the character designers want us to see Leon in a more feminine way at first glance, but what about deeper in the game?

My next argument is about his fighting style. The fighting style that Leon has in the games takes a more feminine approach in the way that it puts heavy focus on agility, flexibility, and his legs. These attributes remind me of female action heroes such as Black Widow, Lara Croft, and Chun-Li as they are some of the figures to popularise this. The focus on Leon's legs can be seen through how most of his finishers are kicking the enemy's heads of their shoulders. Also, Leon's backflips and quick fluid movements.

This can be directly compared to Chris in Resident Evil 5, as Chris relies on his upper body strength when it comes to fighting, all punches that turn the enemy to mist and big grabbing hands.

My final point that I will be covering is Leon's knife fight with Krauser. Right from the start, Leon was training directly with Krauser but isn't even half his size.... but that's not my point. Leon falls victim to the over done trope of women being in a really hostile violent situation with lots of fights and the only physical indication of this is a thin cut along their high cheek bone (fig. 5). Leon's appearance remains pristine (perfect hair, relatively clean looking) apart from one cut on his cheek from the knife fight.

I think the most important thing to take away from this section is the fact that every one of these points are included. If it was just one or two, it could be a coincidence. But the fact that every one of these points were present show a deliberate push towards femininity for Leon.

3. Resident Evil 6 (2012)

I'm calling this the Avengers Effect,,,, even though the Avengers movie came out like 6 months before RE6,,,, the game still felt a bit like a marvel movie.

I also want to say that from my observations, the early 2010s seem to be when movies are a lot more scared to play with the idea of gender. The early 00's were filled with movies that explored women filling masculine roles/pretending to be boys like "Motocrossed" (2001) and "She's the Man" (2006), with the opposite being true as well, example "White Chicks" (2004). Since then, there's not really been a big, mainstream, Hollywood movie I can find that plays with gender like the 00s did, so I think Leon's push towards masculinity is reflective of that.

Anyway, the scales tip back and while it's not even, the ratio of Female playable characters (Ada, Sherry, Helena) to Male playable characters (Chris, Piers, Jake, Hunk) is better than the last game Leon was featured in. So, while his looks have only marginally changed, Leon seems to have been thrown back into the tortured soul survivor action hero persona he was given in RE2. You know the drill by know, big protector (the first shot of Leon is literally him cradling Helena pointing his gun at the camera), guns blazing, impossible feats, shallow love interest.

But, like I said before, RE6 was an action movie rather than a horror game. Horror typically is the medium that is for the outcast and the marginalised, Action is typically the medium for whatever uplifts the patriarchy and. the government in power...

4. Remakes (I lied, I'm speaking about them briefly)

I think part of the reason why the remakes came out was to make Leon more masculine. As some subtle changes they make negate factors that made Leon more feminine previously.

1. They made Leon blond in RE2R, this negates the factors of Leon dying his hair and choosing a lighter hair colour which are viewed more femininely, as Leon's hair is now natural.

2. The make Leon's features ever so slightly broader, wider face/chin, less prominent cheek bones

3. The way Leon holds himself in promo art. In the original RE4, Leon tended to stand more side one, making him look more slim, slight, leith and over all feminine (fig. 6), but in the remake he stands head on making him look more broad, firm, and masculine (fig. 7).

4. The also took out Leon getting that cut on his cheek if I remember correctly? So the knee it was a more feminine action in the original and chose not to include it in the remake.

Taking away these things makes the public view Leon in a more masculine way (as I said previously, you really needed every factor for it to be a definite portrayal of femininity over a couple of coincidences), paired with the fact that the remakes are more serious and less campy like the originals were, all shows how mainstream media post 00s is more scared to play with gender and have feminine male characters.

5. Resident Evil 9 Requiem (2026)

The culmination of all this is how Leon is portrayed in RE9. The last mainline gams Leon was in that was not a remake was in 2012, where we start to see how the media is shifting away from playing with gender as RE6 is where they started the process of making Leon more masculine, but at that time, they couldn't make any too large leaps away from what they had done prior. The remakes also had their hands tied, they had to make Leon more masculine without deviating too drastically from the source material.

Requiem, however, was a blank slate for the most part. Not including the CGI movie and netflix show (different team from the games and a different target audience, so they are, as previously mentioned, a different kettle of fish), fans haven't seen Leon since 2012, the creators can change whatever they want and say it's what's happened in this 14 year gap, and that's why we get the most masculine Leon we've ever seen. Dark hair (he's going grey, of course his hair is darker), big muscles (he's the most physically fit he's ever been at 49?), deep voice, and a no nonsense gruff personality (he's been in the game too long to be anything else), even facial hair when previously he's remained clean shaven in his games.

It's also really telling from when you look at the cast as when it comes to prominent characters, the number of Female characters (Grace, Emily, Sherry, Alyssa) actually outweigh the number of Male characters (Gideon, Zeno, Leon, maybe Hunk), so by doing this, there is no longer a reason to push Leon into a feminine role.

What this has to do with politics I can't exactly explain, I am not American and was also born in the mid 00's, so I wasn't conscious to experience this shift, however, I know recently there has been a massive uptick in more strict gender roles and conservative values and the evolution of Leon appears to play into that.

______________________________

(fig. 1) Leon S. Kennedy Resident Evil 2 (1998) (fig. 2) 90's popular hair cut I found on pinterest

(fig. 3) Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, 2005)

(fig. 4) Jared Padalecki (Supernatural, 2005)

(fig. 5) Leon S. Kennedy during the knife fight with Krauser (Resident Evil 4, 2005)

(fig. 6) Leon S. Kennedy full body shot (Resident Evil 4, 2005)

(fig. 7) Leon S. Kennedy full body shot (Resident Evil 4 Remake, 2023)