Quote:
Originally Posted by Irenicus
I don't know man, the whole fantasy women armour thing always came across to me as crass pandering.
It's semiotics at work: boobplates and bikini armour are just signifiers communicating something else. And to me the "signified" meaning it communicates is more along the lines of "gamer male audience wants fantasy boobies" than it does "fantasy boobies" themselves. Disturbingly anti-sexy in all sorts of uncomfortable ways, or in short, eww.
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Call me a dinosaur or even a misogynist, but I find the whole idea of women
fighting in mediaeval fantasy to be completely anachronistic in the first place. It's a modern-day invention to suit the contemporary need to appear non-sexist.
That's not to suggest the women never donned armour or fought lustily side by side with men-at-arms (though I am indeed hard-pressed to think of actual historical examples that are not generously leavened with myth). But the simple thing is that women, historically, seldom fought their wars on the battlefields. And that is where modern fantasy writing often fails — it seldom provides a compelling reason to explain the presence of "gender equality" in imaginary worlds.