Sad but True

[robinturner]

The course is coming together already. From an article about Lara Croft: "Many commentators have pointed to a recent tendency to allow female characters to be physically and powerful and independent—so long as they’re young, pretty and have large breasts."

Comments

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

I dunno, remember Dame Judi Dench playing Q... I thought she brought more power and independence to that role than any of the male Qs over the years. ;)

But in general, yeah. Unfortunately. There are darned few physically powerful and independent women characters out there at all.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Judi Dench is one of my favourite thespians. I first saw her around 1975, playing Lady Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company - scary!

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I was out of order on your entries and hadn't seen that you were looking specifically for computer game characters. How do the "build your own adventure" games like WoW fit into this? Where the narrative comes from the player rather than the game designer?

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

That's because men like to think a woman's physical power and independence stem from the ineffable/magical powers of her youth, beauty and large breasts.

It can't possibly be a result of, you know, actually being strong or actually being capable of independent thought and action. That's too scary. If women could think and act for themselves, then, by god, what would that make men!?

[solri.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. To the pubescent male mind, breasts are not just compellingly attractive, they're also kind of scary. I mean there are all these girls who just recently looked more-or-less like normal people, then suddenly they sprout these things. Obviously they must have mutant powers.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Obviously. Its all about a confused sexuality that nobody bothers addressing, so the matter just compounds until we have this typology.

I suppose it would be the same for women if men's testicles enlarged like a <a href ="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanuki>tanuki</a></i>'s; but then they could just hide that with skirts...