What is with this game and half-naked women as bosses?

[Mug]

While modern storytelling has gotten a whole lot better about presenting skilled and powerful females, it's had a VERY rough time divorcing itself from the "beautiful" requirement. Essentially, women can and should have prowess and strength - but they ALSO need to be beautiful. Men, on the other hand are still perfectly free to look as though they fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down, and still be presented as appealing, so long as they are also badass..

When I read this, I immediately thought about Brienne of Tarth from the Game of Thrones series, who shows that you can indeed be a popular strong female character without having to be considered stereotypically beautiful.