The impact is the normalization of a certain kind of depiction of female characters.
It really depends on the developers themselves to think about what motivated them to design them the way they did, what these ideas are based on and what they reflect.
There can be entirely valid reasons for sexualized depictions, but there can also be reason that basically boil down to "I'd tap that".
Women already are faced with tons of constructed standards and ideals they have to meet, most of them conveyed through media depictions. Developers need to ask themselves if they want to contribute to this trend.
And the guys at NetherRealms did that and decided they do not want to.
Men aren't really facing any issues in society due to sexualization, at least not in any way similar to the way women are affected by it.
So the solution is to do the exact opposite and treat sexualized depictions as '' wrong '' and '' trashy ''?
Because that's what's happening, not to mention that people are EXTREMELY touchy when it comes to womens bodies whilst they aren't with mens bodies. Women are constantly put under a microscope and people are actively looking for ways in which they perceive their bodies as sexualized ( on both sides ), and then act all outraged and '' surprised '' when they find it which they always will.
I mean for fuck sake, even the mere curvature of the female body is perceived as '' sexualized '' on sites like Resetera.
How is that not bs and blatantly sexist too?
And again, men are depicted in a certain way too that is normalized in games that is even more extreme and exaggerated.
For women it's honestly quite mild in comparison. Especially nowadays where women are just borderline being depicted as average which makes them quite boring in comparison imo ( especially as someone who finds '' muh realism '' boring and prefers the over the top ).
The problem here is that he basically came out and said that yes the reason why did boil down to '' i'd tap that '' as well as implied that women who look and dress a certain way are '' trashy '' etc. He basically came out and said that they had purposefully disrespected women for over two decades now, which is pretty fucked up and disrespectful towards the female fans who have supported them ever since the first game and have loved these characters and perhaps even cosplayed them.
A mindset btw that I don't believe is actually shared at NRS for real, which is just another reason why they should apologize for his statement and distance themselves from it.
I am not saying that all of the female characters need to be sexualized, I am saying that some of them should be allowed to be.
Especially when the male characters in great numbers run around looking and dressed like this:
I just really hate this whole idea that we have to erase sexualized female characters or that a woman who is well-endowed is per default inherently sexual and can't be taken seriously and can only be depicted as very particular types of characters etc.
I am all about more varied depictions, but diversity and a progressive mindset to me at least should be okay with all kinds of different depictions and not sit around and do what is basically modesty policing and claim that you can't be taken seriously and that you're '' trashy '' ( which is just another way of calling someone a whore ) because of your cup size or because you're wearing a skimpy outfit when all of the men are too.
Also, can you prove that the normalization is bad?
I don't believe that it is, I do believe that only depicting one thing gets stale which is why I find male characters in video games to be EXTREMELY boring and stale, but I don't buy this notion that sexualization being normalized is bad and harmful.
Quite the opposite, people love to look at Japan when it comes to this but Japan isn't the only country where sexualization is very normalized.
In Sweden we quite literally have sex on television at times...
Sex and nudity in our culture is far more normalized than in the US, and yet we've always been way ahead and are far more progressive. Same with the French and Germans ( not saying that none of us have any problems ).
It's the US that is backwards in a cultural sense ( even tho funnily enough the music industry is way more sexualized than in the rest of the world, but I see that as sort of a rebellion against societal norms. And a lot of it is based in club culture too ).
And yet the US is hardly the great progressive country, if anything it's quite regressive and late to the party in comparison to many European countries.
I mean gay marriage being legalized nation-wide isn't even that long ago... And slavery was still in full force when most of the world had abandoned it.
And the attitudes towards Queer people are still awful.
And if you look at the third world and the most sexist countries they're also the most puritanical.
And so was the West during the most patriarchal periods.
The entire reason why countries like Saudi Arabia treats women in the way that they do is because they don't believe that men are capable of controlling their sexual urges and hence women need to be erased from view in society.
The entire thing is based in this idea that women and womens bodies are inherently sexual and that sexuality is bad and therefore women need to be covered up and hidden away.
There's a reason why Feminists once rose up and demanded to be treated as human as well as sexual beings, because that mindset was a thing in the Western world too...
And it's rather naive to think that we can't go back to that again, and it's honestly worrying me that the US in particular will because of how ( if we are to speak of normalization ) '' normalized '' the idea that sex and womens bodies is shameful and taboo is becoming again.
historically it has been all about controlling women by controlling their bodies and using the '' we're protecting you from other men and yourselves '' as a way of erasing them from public spaces.
Not to mention that often people just assume what mens intent is when they design certain characters which is extremely irritating.
People don't seem to even want to acknowledge that to many men it's a power fantasy too and what they find aesthetically pleasing and fun to play as.
A lot of people love to play as the opposite of themselves because that's a part of their escapism and power fantasy, and I think that most people really are quite sexually insecure.
