Most of the time in media, women are held to almost biologically impossible standards, where most are told that beauty is for the skinny and the busty. We come face to face with this reality in magazines, television, movies, and even video games as they become more and more realistic.
Even though everywhere we look we see these dramatized depictions of women, our recent culture has fought back, and most of these interpretations are facing heavy criticism.
We are beginning to see a slow change in society as companies are starting to bring on normal sized models to show off their products while influential figures are preaching a more natural-looking beauty to young girls across the world.
But what about something that hits close to us as gamers? In video games, we barely see any plus sized women, and generally in all games beautiful women are still portrayed as comically skinny and busty.
Games have been becoming increasingly more realistic in every area except body types; how come the women in games aren’t given realistic body types? Bullimia.com asks that question and has recently posted a set of photoshopped pictures of what these iconic female game characters would look like based on the average weight of an American women.
With these images, Bulimia.com argues that the unrealistic body portrayal of fan-favorite characters can lead to young female gamers setting unrealistic benchmarks for themselves. Skewed images of fictional bodies could lead to self-doubt among girls along with negative obsessions that can lead to bulimia or anorexia, disorders that are already very frequent for women.
In the end, these game developers and publishers have the power to change how they want to show off their female characters in-game and on their cover art. Just a tiny difference can lead to a huge revolution world-wide, as the effects would be experienced by millions of gamers, and the first company with enough courage to do so would surely be warmly received by the community.
And, just to point out, these characters are still as beautiful either way. The changes are pretty minimal.
