TL;DR - images shape what we consider attractive and artists have, not the responsibility, but the chance to expand our and othersâ horizons.
Thereâs been some discussion lately around this new dating sim/visual novel where you play as a âdaddyâ. When I first heard about it and saw the first character designs I was excited, I had thought many times of how cool a more inclusive dating game would be, and how much stuff like this is needed. Dating sims are a fun concept, but theyâre always severely lacking in variety and more ârealâ types of people, it seems they always focus on just the one type that the target audience likes, with only minor variations within the game. Afterwards, without getting into any discussion as to why Iâve come to this conclusion, the game turned out to be just something else and I was pretty disappointed. Then I remembered this âgameâ that I used to play with other users in FA a couple of years back, this sort of lo-fi version of a dating sim where Iâd show a cast of characters and encourage peeps to look at them and think which one they found attractive and why, and I started remembering why I did that in the first place (besides, of course, for the heck of it).
Iâve seen some discussions about racism, xenophobia and body shaming on dating apps and gay spaces, and the usual response to that is âitâs not [X], itâs just my preferenceâ. Which, fair enough, thatâs how exactly how it feels for the person who has that preference, but I think an argument can be made that those preferences were constructed in an environment that discriminates, and taught us to recognize what is and isnât attractive by either by pointing out what is âflawedâ and less attractive, or by building up very narrow ideals of what is desirable.
One of the reasons why I started drawing erotic art and posting it online was because I wanted to see different types of bodies being represented in it, to show âunlikelyâ people being sexual. But then I noticed that just like thereâs an ideal of the young, athletic, hairless man, there were others in other subcultures which were just as constricting. Just because there are people who find heavier men attractive, it doesnât mean the issue ends there; the ideal for the perfect bear also exists, with the perfect proportion of fat and muscle, the perfect beard, the perfect chest hair, and that keeps leaving people out, so after a while I started questioning  whether I was contributing to this issue. Real people are not perfect, everyone is different, and when we build up one archetype as the desirable one, weâre pushing a whole lot of people off that cliff. ⌠Plus it makes for some unhealthy ideas about relationships, where we end up chasing after the person who will better fit the predefined shape in our heads instead of opening up to getting to know individuals.
I donât think you can condemn or shame people into âchangingâ their preferences, but I do think that, through art, games, and whatever, you can invite people to expand those preferences. You can challenge what we find attractive and you can invite people to consider others outside of what theyâd normally have eyes for. Iâm not trying to `shade` games and artists that focus on just one type of person, thereâs a market for everything, instead what Iâm trying to do is to celebrate diversity in the ways that I can, to try to keep an open mind and invite other people to consider what would normally remain outside their field of view.
BTW! I donât intend for the image above to be representative âevery type imaginableâ, itâs just the collection of what Iâve done so far with this game of mine. Which also BTW, maybe one day I will design those characters for a dating sim instead of wishing someone else did it⌠                            Â
andulkaphoto
discoholicmusic
turnnoffyourmind
baratheonpilled
janainaart
origamiaround
kianamaiart
