I think GuildMag has the take I agree most with regarding the very much talked about PvP armor post, which was supposed to be about PvP armor and somehow became a thousand-word dissertation on the place of women and their clothing in video games.
I’ve found the response to this very interesting, especially since most of the outcry seems to be coming from either people who feel everyone’s making too big a deal out of the matter (but are throwing in their two cents anyway) or those who are in defense of the right of women everywhere to have virtual avatars wear as little as the the game will let them. This, despite the fact that these two groups are the ones whose positions are being represented by default.
As someone who has written blog posts only semi-mocking the initial deluge of innocent questions newcomers have regarding Guild Wars 2, I’m familiar with the notion that someone can come across an article or picture and not know the history behind it; the famous (among GW2 fans) “six or none!” quote by Kristen Perry, the article in which ANet’s armor design philosophy is laid out, the examples of variety among even Elementalist armor art in Guild Wars 1. With TERA looming on the MMO landscape and the controversies regarding its portrayals of Castanic armor and caster gyrations, I’m not surprised when someone happens by late in the game and wonders if Guild Wars 2 is any different. It’s really no different from when someone asks if they can still be a healer, what the raiding endgame is like, or if, indeed, you can jump.
But this matter, this matter was somehow so different. Unlike the many fans of GW2 who remain confident that raids as we know them won’t be added to console the gear treadmill junkies (no offense, some of my best friends are gear treadmill junkies and they told me it was okay to call them that), or who confidently create Youtube videos explaining how GW2 can exist without dedicated healers, the responses to concerns expressed about the featured PvP armor seemed to take the position that any concern was an attempt to lobby for the removal of that and any other armor that exposed the delectable female form.
Oh, there were informative links posted about how transmutation stones can be used to customize armor looks as well, but while inquiries about raids are occasionally peppered with a suggestion to “go back to WoW (or insert MMO here),” an alarming number of these responses just wanted the concerned parties to go away entirely (because there really aren’t MMOs where female avatars don’t have skimpy armor at all. Not that anyone was really asking for that, of course – it was a strawman to be knocked down – but it’s worth noting that there isn’t an MMO for such proponents to go to, if those people existed).
And therein lay the amusement for me. So many people were so worried that their option to clothe their female avatars (person behind the screen’s gender not relevant) as skimpily as they like would be taken away, that the fact that there is no alternative vision made their arguments all the more absurd. In what universe has anyone ever successfully lobbied to have skimpy armors removed from a game? None? Then why so serious? Really, look at the percentage of arguments out there in favor and defense of the featured PvP armor (especially the ones accusing others of being sex-negative or white knights) and tell me the vehemence of that response is warranted.
So, yes, check out the article. I really can’t recommend it enough.
Casual Is As Casual Does 
I really want to know who it is that complains…I mean the TYPE of person.
As to the “Women feel denigrated” attitude…my wife (A Woman…believe me…I know) ALWAYS takes the road of being as skimpily clad as she can. These armors just perked her interests even more (but, note, if the women have full armor in a game, does not believe that is a sin, and can dress herself the way she feels comfortable…even if it means more cloth on her pixelled skin).
Cheers
I really want to know who it is that complains…I mean the TYPE of person.
Well, first I’d want to define “complains,” since some people were of the view that even voicing a concern about the portrayal of women or the possible inequity therein was “complaining” about skimpy armors altogether, and I didn’t come to the same conclusion about those comments. (Certainly some were complaining, but that wasn’t the bulk of the comments about the armors.) But if I had to guess, I’d say the type of person is the type who doesn’t feel the way your wife does about dressing as skimpily as possible :). Not all of us women (or, if I may be so presumptuous, men) agree on these things!
I do want to raise the point (touched on in the GM article), though, that people can sometimes be complicit in behavior that does not benefit them. That is not necessarily the case here, but it is a phenomenon that exists, and I don’t think it’s a waste of time to consider the possibility.
If you could imagine for a moment being someone who doesn’t feel the way your wife does, and coming across those PvP armor images, and not knowing that there is in fact an assortment of armors to wear in GW2, could you then also imagine that you might feel concerned, given a gaming history that often does NOT provide an assortment of armors to wear?
I thought the article by Littleboat was extremely well written and expressed his view on the topic with eloquence.
My own views (expressed in a comment on GWInsider) are not nearly as eloquent I’m afraid…
http://www.guildwarsinsider.com/debate-female-armor/#comment-932
Hopefully, folks forgive my feeble attempts at tongueNcheek humor… however, I stand by the two points I made there;
– men need more armor than women because they are not nearly as tough and resilient as women,
– and this subject constitutes one of the three primary “argument starters” that are almost guaranteed to initiate debate at the very least since very few human beings will be in 100% concordance with one another on those subjects.
The puritanical roots of sexual identity and attitudes towards sexual display in the American culture never fail to make these waters even murkier than they might otherwise be…
Personally, I find it endlessly depressing that the same TV show that warns viewers about a 2 second “flash of skin” also seems to have no problem with prolonged, truly graphic, displays of decapitation, or gunplay, or any of a number of other examples of gratuitous violence.
The supression of sexuality in the American culture lies directly at the heart of what causes inappropriate and/or unhealthy displays to be prevalent in our cultural media. Nothing which is supressed within the human psyche lies hidden forever, and rarely does it emerge unscathed, natural and wholesome.
I like skimpy armor, and I like unskimpy armor… and most of all, I like having the option to choose between both *at any time*.
Which is what Guild Wars delivers on bigtime.
Oh, and I like the armor to be aesthetically pleasing, or failing that, ludicrously charming. Skimpiness or lack thereof is a separate variable.
If you can ONLY be bikini warrior girl or demure covered up nun, the appeal of either flops onto the floor and dies.