8 years ago
11
Lara Croft Gets a Realistic Makeover from Eating Disorder Support Group
Bulimia.com is calling attention to unrealistic and potentially damaging body image depictions by reverse Photoshopping iconic female characters.
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Everyone has an agenda, but this is just a publicity thing and no help to that cause. It would make zero sense to portray the majority of these athletic characters in such a way. Although, I am a fan of many of them entering more reasonable proportions in other areas.
Why would it make zero sense?
Let me just play Devil's advocate real quick. What I imagine they are trying to say is that the video game revolves around Lara running around and vaulting all over the place. Thus making the original body type much more realistic in the video game situation at least. I imagine the modified image is much more realistic in a real-world scenario which is what the artist was trying to portray.
Yes, exactly, someone capable of the activities portrayed in game would be an amazing specimen for the same reason those crazy parkour people in the movies are. It is an outcome of lifestyle.
Are you saying Xena is fat? http://www.ges-energietechnik.de/patmin/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Xena.jpeg ;)
What? No. I'm trying to say that Lara leads a physically demanding lifestyle. She is the peak of physical prowess which would mean that the likelihood of having any body fat is pretty slim (pun intended). Not to mention that Lara is just a video game character so it is easier to make her super skinny.
Of course i understood what you were saying but i was trying to make a point that Xena plays a similar role and is not as skinny. Obviously many video game characters embody the perfect female AND male body no matter how realistic it really is. A video game character with a "perfect" (stereotypical) body type simply sells better. Anyway, I think it got a lot better, we just have to compare early Lara Croft character images with the current ones. Obviously there is still a lot of room to improve on that.
Noble goal, wrong target. They assume viewers can't distinguish reality from fiction. I don't argue that the way supermodels are are portrayed in the media can have a detrimental effect, but the girls and women who try to emulate them knows that behind those images exists a real person, in videogames, they know it's a fiction made possible only by technology.
A more valid target would be Photoshop itselsf and the models manipulated with it. Un-photoshop fashion images and show viewers that those women in magazines are also a work of fiction enabled by technology. That would be a lot more effective than using video gama characters.
Yeah, I don't know why female viewers would be looking at video game news, and the girl gamer population is rather slim, so I see no point in this article.
I prefer the more realistic look. mmmm :)
I'd like to point out that the point they made about men not enjoying objectified females is very different from what they were implying. If you read the article, it talks about people liking non objectified females in games. As in, females who aren't damsels in distress and serve no purpose in game. However, this character archetype isn't very common. Which leads me to believe they tweaked Time magazine's article to fit a different agenda. Stating that women in games shouldn't have physically fit bodies is agreed with by many male gamers. While I agree that women shouldn't have harshly unrealistic proportions. I am also going to assume that most male gamers enjoy it when both male and female characters are physically fit. Especially if they were an explorer forced to run around, jump, be active, or say, a hologram which was designed to look cool, and nothing else.