Bikini Armor Battle Damage

Jill Bearup (this is why we can’t have nice things)

Recently we posted a ringing endorsement of the work of British Youtuber Jill Bearup for her videos exploring theatrical combat and various tropes. In doing so, we accidentally signal boosted someone with an unresolved history of promoting transphobia. We apologise for that. 

At the time we were not aware that in 2017 (a month or so after the last time we posted any of her content), Jill made a Tumblr post portraying trans activists as the bullies against TERFs, and essentially calling for them to instead rely upon respectability politics. 

(Archive here, content warnings for violence, TERF rhetoric, and surgery photos)

As anyone who follows the issue even casually knows this is, to put it politely, bullshit propaganda that transphobes of all sorts use to encourage harassment and violence against trans people. It is deplorable for an influencer to use one of their platforms to spread this kind of hateful nonsense. 

It appears that Jill took the offending post down some time in 2019, but we have been unable to find any evidence why she did that, or that she ever apologized, or what her current views may be. She doesn’t seem to have approached the topic in any way, shape or form on her YouTube channel (her primary platform) or elaborated further beyond the one post that got a little over 200 notes. 

She also doesn’t seem to have done anything to help trans people or promote trans acceptance either. 

Our stance at Bikini Armor Battle Damage is simple: 

• Trans women are women
• Trans men are men
• Non-binary identities are completely valid
• Trans rights are human rights
• TERFs and other variety of transphobes can fuck the fuck off 

Had we been aware at the time, we wouldn’t have made the post. The original post is still up, but has been edited with a warning and our stance.

Sadly, as Jill is one of the less reactionary of the few people who talk about combat and armor in fiction (ahem), we’re at a loss to propose a similar resource. But we definitely will not be further promoting any of her stuff and wanted anyone who might have subscribed to or promoted her channel to be aware of this. 

~Ozzie, - wincenworks

So, as you or may not have seen the hilarity of brodudes shitting themselves in anger that the new iteration of Lola Bunny which is going to appear in Ready PlayerSpace Jam was designed to be family friendly and appeal to young girls, rather than be a recreation of porny fan art of the character. (They literally claimed a fan art by a smut artist was the “original”) (VICE article here)

This magnificent tweet by InspectorNerd highlights why what we talk about on Bikini Armor Battle Damage is an important and often overlooked aspect of design for female characters (never male characters) and also another brief point I want to cover first.

Every now and again we do get people spamming us with out of context links to quotes from large busted women who, generally speaking, enjoy been seen as attractive but are sick of being reduced down to their bust size. They supply these as though it is absolute proof that the male gaze is perfect, and if you critique the design of fictional characters - you’re attacking these real women.

Even if that fictional character is a rabbit.

Lola’s sexiness in the original Space Jam (a phrase I never wanted to type) was primarily because the first thing we learn about her when she’s introduced, is that Bugs (who is naked) wants to bang her.

However, she is distinctly wearing a “hot girl” outfit rather than a “sports girl” outfit that is a strange mix of sports bra and crop top.

It turns out in real life, female basketball players wear… almost exactly the same thing as male players do.

This is because they are focused on playing the sport, not trying to look sexy for the crowd. And as covered before, when they do seem to be posing its generally so they can obtain sponsorship from creepy marketing guys who don’t really care about the sport, just fapping off and collecting pay for repeating their catch phrase.

Thus creating the perception that women’s sports are not as “serious” as men’s sports, even when female teams outperform their male colleagues.

And how do we feel about?

- wincenworks

Tidy Up Tuesday #99

It’s been a while since we did one of these.

For who saw the recent Madalorian post and were curious about what better plate armor for busy women might look like - we’ve covered in a previous post.

Generally speaking, accommodations in armor are made for everyone - its just when you standardize your army, you standardize the accommodations and create the illusion that its “normal”.

The reason most armor like this is painfully uncomfortable to busty women is because in our extremely misogynistic society, the “default” armor designed for fairly flat chested men. (Military generally issues female soldiers “small” sized male armor, for example).

(Yes that one fairly flat chested vest was the entire catalog for women on that site with four separate categories for men)

“form fitting” is pretty much never a suitable accommodation for overt armor (ie not concealable) armor because it creates problems with energy transference and denting. The reason the female Mandalorians gear looks more comfy is it’s the sort of thing you’d expect under the plate armor.

The reason they settled on that the outer layer instead of more innovative solutions is the same reason why the female Mandalorians are smaller and have narrow waists. because once a show takes off, Creepy Marketing Guy inevitably wants to get involved.

-wincenworks

So, Rogue Company is the game with the most forgettable name… and the most forgettable aesthetic. At the time of this post their main video juxtaposes Ronin (above) with a male hero, Dima.

You may already have noticed some issues aside from the cringe inducing leaning into “Japanese girl with a katana” (who is also a street racing champion) archetype… in a game mostly about shooting people.

In fact, for a game about shooting people… a lot of these female characters seem determined to be shot in their sweet… sweet abs:

And/or remind you they have legs and tiddy:

So it does tend to give the impression that there is a particular design philosophy common to boys club studios…

But what can you expect from the studio that brought us Smite, Paladins and thought this was a good idea?

- wincenworks

Okay, I think it’s been long enough we can assume people have stopped tag searching for this and thus can contribute to the discussion without getting extra hate brigades. Also the show has rightfully jettisoned Gina Carano for being a reactionary menace.

Obviously the issue of why boobplate is (with very few exceptions) always bad has been covered extensively on this blog already, so I’m not going to go into that other than this scene was massively disappointing because for the first season - Mandalorian really committed to the whole warrior cult thing and had an amazing female character in amazing armor.

(This is why we never just “relax” after a positive example, way too many properties do this kind of back sliding as soon as they are proved successful and execs invite a certain type of devil into the decision making process)

What I wanted to talk about specifically is a rhetoric tactic I noticed with shitbagsbrodudes actively looking to undermine the message by selectively signal boosting women who frequently get left out of these conversations.

I am talking specifically about women who have large breasts and:

• Are sick of being treated as hypersexual because of their bodies
• Are sick of having to pay extra or buy alternatives to clothes they want because companies don’t cater for their “desirable” shape
• Are sick of, at events like LARPs, paintballs, kayaking etc, being given gear made for smaller chested women and having their complaints about it being uncomfortable or impractical for them go unheard, ignored or ridiculed

Because the reality is that as much as capitalism commodifies and exploits women with hefty busts, capitalist society never misses an opportunity to make women feel shitty for their bodies.

Now I said “selectively” above because I noticed that among the group I looked over there was a distinct trend of “liking” posts yelling at Anita, and not liking posts calling for people not to automatically sexualize big boobs - and a lot of liking more misogynistic posts that were very insulting to women in general.

All of this is to say that when we have these conversations, it is important to remember that the goal is to have representation and inclusion in all kinds of fantasies for all kinds of people - and assholes will never hesitate to try to play people against each other in order to try to keep a bigger their overly privileged position.

- wincenworks

(Source: href.li)

Art by Phill Berry

We’re also big fans of half-orc boys, but we have to agree they’re prettier when the smile more, and when they make sensible costume decisions like protecting their knees but relying upon their natural agility and the distraction factor for the purposes of defense.

Look at all that… personality on display.

- wincenworks

(Source: reddit.com)