#profette

Profette takes the helm! 

So Lozchic was giving me the loud frowns lately because Profette is, as you may have noticed, kind of top-heavy. This really should come as no surprise considering anime has a kind of fascination with big boobs, and medium of two dimensional art almost demands it for the sake of differentiation. Exaggeration being the order of the day in art of this kind, it makes sense that she'd be... uh... noticeably big. 

However, when I joked about replacing her with a snorlax, I got a really negative response. What the hell, guys? We have male reviewers of all shapes and sizes but the implication seems to be that the women we see on TV, in movies or in video games and the web have to fit to a very specific body molding. I would posit that there's a very slim margin of error (and I use that knowing precisely what I'm saying) between what's accepted and what's not. There's a bit more lee-way between online, mind you, but it seems to be women between 5'3 and 5'8, with roughly a C to an E(!) bustline, no waist to speak of and maybe a little bit of hip but not too much. And let's not even get started on race here. I can think of maybe two non-Caucasian female reviewers, or even characters. Now Profette is white because I'm white and she's supposed to be some sort of extra-dimensional me or whatever, but point being that its pretty pasty pale out there. 

What if Profette wasn't a stick with basketballs on her chest like everyone else? Does her weight really have an effect the words she's communicating? The answer SHOULD be no, but when I tossed out the idea of swapping her for a big sleepy Pokemon, the response I got from mostly females was really quite negative. Can't people hear words about a cartoon from an animated character that doesn't weigh 112 lbs sopping wet?

Similarly, I remember hearing about when they were designing Zoey from Left 4 Dead how they determined that one of her main traits was to be attractive. She's a pretty good character, all told, with a really strong voice and being tough and all that. She's an example of a good character that is also female, because her femininity isn't the driving force behind her. Not every lady is traditionally attractive, some of them have a little body morphism to them. I know, wild.  Granted Profette is "Girl Prof" so she doesn't have that luxury but I'm certainly no Adonis. 

Here's a musing: I have bigger arms than She-hulk does, and I don't ever hit the gym. Why does a lady that regularly launches buses into the stratosphere look so dang skinny? Anya Stroud is a T-Rex, who lugs around a gun the size of a large DOG and yet her arms look like little sticks. What the hell are we trying to say here?