The tawdry female bosses are tiresome, and we could do with more male fanservice.

[SturmChurro]

The more reason to disprove him, particularly in a public forum like this one. A perfect opportunity to ensure others are exposed to the truth I say.

That kind of thing would never happen, for one it's a FFXIV general discussion forum, but even if that wasn't the case some people would push to get posts deleted, users banned, or the entire thread deleted before ever having a healthy debate. I'm sure many here have already been reported for some reason or other.

[Joven]

I don't have to prove anything to you, your making up dangerous drivel to just justify outdated ideas on women and it's messed up. If you are going to push dangerous stuff like this you had better back it up.;

A classic response from someone without an argument. Not surprised, just disappointed.

Tabula Rasa - The idea that humans are blank slates at birth and that everything humans do is learned from experience.

The issue with some schools of modern feminism is that gender roles are all social constructs, and that the reason why men gravitate towards certain fields of study (or life goals) and women gravitate towards other is cause society teaches women to be a certain way and men to be another in an attempt to keep society patriarchal and beneficial to men explicitly at the the cost to women. Most fields of Psychology (with credible studies) generally find this outlook to be incorrect. Men and women on average have slightly different drives and interests. It is why when you look at the fields women do gravitate towards in STEM tend to be different than men. Men averagely tend to be more object orientated, women more social orientated. This doesnt mean that all men or women, just when looking at broad groupings and trends.



It's not. When you look at countries that are higher on the index of personal freedoms and choices between the sexes, you see more divergence in life choices.

In layman's terms, in a country like Sweden which does it's damnedest to remove any obstacles of opportunity for sexes, you find a greater divergence in interests and subsequently job choices compared to countries that have less options to choose from (either due to societal or resource pressures.) So as an example, you see closer parity in job choices in China than you would in Swedan. It is something that has been infuriating some of the more left wing sections of the government, because the more they try to get a 50/50 representation in fields by trying to drive or incentivize more personal choice, the gap widens.

Evolutionary Psychology tends to attribute this towards survival setup of our species.

It's also easy to see just on the basis of biology. Men are built differently then women. Men are more suited for physical activities and are more likely to take up more dangerous jobs that typically pay more.

[Melichoir]

It's also easy to see just on the basis of biology. Men are built differently then women. Men are more suited for physical activities and are more likely to take up more dangerous jobs that typically pay more.

Well yes. that would be the logical assumption to make - We are a sexually dimorphic species. It would make sense that if there are physical traits that differ between the sexes, such as men being averagely taller and stronger, or women have more acute sense of smell, taste, and color range, that we would also have neurological differences as well on average.

Evolutionary Psychology and the differences in men and women aside, I wanted to comment regarding the whole objectification and oggling women and what not that.

Snip

Gonna use this as the basis for the comment I reply to. I think people conflate Beauty and Eye Candy, with Objectification.

Ill say it simply. Beauty is appreciating an aesthetic. I think a flower can be beautiful, or a sunset. It doesnt mean I want to sleep with it. Much the same, I can find a woman beautiful or a man handsome and have no sexual desire towards them. Understanding the pleasant nature and aesthetics of something isnt the same has being attracted to it.

Eye candy is appreciating something that is visually 'desirable'. Sharp Dressed person, A person in an elegant dress, a person in casual clothes, person in a bikini or speedo. It doesnt have to be about how much skin is showing, it will vary from person to person, and is contextually dependent. There is nothing wrong with eye candy.

Objectification is reducing someone down to the state of an object and nothing more. This isnt inherently a bad thing, believe it or not. Context matters. For a simple fable, turning a person into a prop as a simple motive works fine. The gallant knight fights the dragon for the beautiful princess. The tale is about the knight and the dragon fighting, the princess is the motivation. It's simple and straight forward because the highlight isnt the princess, its the knight and his actions. You can post modernize it and be like "Well we can see that the knight is a shallow terrible human being and so on so forth", but there is such thing as reading to much into things.

The context that Objectification gets used most, however, is if you create a sexy woman character, it must be because they are there as nothing more than sex appeal to be oggled. A prize. This is reducing Beauty and Eye Candy to objectification. That to have a sexy female or male character is inherently objectifying. It's not. Context matters. If you have a setting with barbarians and the women are wearing loosely nothing, but so are the men (Think Frank Frazetta's Conan), then its not inherently objectification just cause you have 'sexy' female characters. It only becomes objectification if the character only exists for the specific gratification of the desires of the target audience. So if you had a game where you fight dragons and everyone wears a refrigerator as armor, but the female lead shows up in nothing but a bikini and there is no real consistency in why this is, either in game or from a character writing standpoint that is consistent with the overall tones and dialogue, then you can go ahead and claim objectification. But that requires nuance and context to identify.

And this is the issue when discussing or suggesting that "Women are only designed for the male gaze" or other such nonsense. It over simplifies the discussion in favor of forcing a point instead of discussing the nuance of the situation. It refuses to acknowledge that you can have characters who are eye candy while still being fleshed out and dimensional. Which means you need to take context into account and do the work on a case by case basis.

It's fine to find characters sexually appealing, and it's find to design characters to be such, but shaming people for having basic human desires is stupid and narrow minded. Having sexy characters is only an issue if they exist solely for the purpose of gratifying those desires - something which I firmly believe is not trend in main stream gaming anymore for the simple reason that it leads to flat and boring characters and plot. Instead, the argument of objectifying female characters is a throwback argument - something that mightve been relevant 20-30 years ago with things like Duke Nukem, but has for the longest while been steadily phased out. I feel it gets brought up time and time again not because it is currently a relevant point, but that its an easy stick to beat someone else with. On paper it sounds like a cogent argument, but when broken down into pieces and thought out, it doesnt actually hold up that well.

[xxvaynxx]

Good.. the non-sequiturs are getting jarring. Byeeee!

Agreed.
Apologizes if I got hostile.

[Eloah]

So I haven't read every reply, mostly because I think most of the replies are fodder. But did anyone point out the female bosses that don't look like this?

The Ant Princess in Cutter's Cry
The Miser's Mistress in Aurum Veil, though it might not be "female"
Sabotender Empiratriz in Qarn HM
Tioman in Sohm Al
The Queen Hawk in St Mocianne's Arboretum
Progenitrix in Pharos Sirius HM
Dotoli Ciloc, the second boss in Xelphatol
Lorelai in Sirensong Sea, does she qualify?
The Mist Dragon in The Burn, though it is only speculation since the idea behind the boss is based on a female, nothing states the boss is female.
Second boss of Holminster Switch, name withheld for spoilers.
The Armadillo from Malikah's Well... I mean you steal her baby for crying out now.
And the final boss of Anamnesis Anyder... she was pregnant too, YOU BASTARDS, lol

Take these with a grain of salt. While some of these are confirmed female, others are just here to pad the joke, but there are at least hints they could be female. Not like I took a random mob and just assumed it's gender... who would do that, XD

[craybest]

this topic is quickly going anywhere but where the OP post was about.
He said "there's way too many saminaked girls as bosses and too few guys in sexy clothes in this game"
it doesn't matter if we have biological differences, or whatever some people are talking about by now.
Not all people who play this game are straight males, and many of us would like to see more variety in the archetypes, and it's becoming a more and more overused cliche to have random sexy and seminaked women as bosses.
that's all.

[SturmChurro]

this topic is quickly going anywhere but where the OP post was about.
He said "there's way too many saminaked girls as bosses and too few guys in sexy clothes in this game"
it doesn't matter if we have biological differences, or whatever some people are talking about by now.
Not all people who play this game are straight males, and many of us would like to see more variety in the archetypes, and it's becoming a more and more overused cliche to have random sexy and seminaked women as bosses.
that's all.

Are you making the assumption that only straight males want female bosses in skimpy clothes, and would dislike more males dressed similarly? That that is the reason for the boss design of this game? That's a very close-minded thought process, in my opinion. Not saying to you that that is your thought process, just asking the question. To quote a great argument from earlier in this thread, for that matter:

What's really tawdry and tiresome at this point, PondHollow, is the unmistakable smell of 1950s "cover it up, ladies!" misogyny cloaking itself in a flag of moral decency. It's always disappointing to see that lives on in people like you.

If a woman's body is not obscene, why does it matter if an outfit a woman is wearing is obscene? The answer is it doesn't, unless the speaker actually means something else. They invariably do, and the word itself betrays why. "Obscene" is a word that relies on moral decency, or else it wouldn't work. You would just call it skimpy. But you don't. Instead, you use a word that appeals to some nebulous set of (historically, male-imposed) values that women should adhere to, a word that has been used to police and shame women for their bodies, behavior, and attire for far longer than you or I have been alive. I'm not surprised people still accept it, believe it, and use it - but again, it's very sad to see it lasts even in a space I like to escape to.

Well, "SE intentionally sexes up many of the bosses we encounter in the game" strikes me as a heavily opinionated statement, and I am not sure why you tie my objection to a real person's actual language to it, but I'll play along:

No. In some cases, it's because the design is an homage. Cloud of Darkness, Sophia, and Shiva's appearances are all based on their appearances in other Final Fantasies. Cloud of Darkness looks like she does in XIV because she's based on her appearances in III and Dissidia. Sophia is based on Goddess in FFVI. Shiva is the only one that's been reimagined because she looks different every time, but she's still clearly designed to draw on her past appearances (some of which have skimpier or even no clothing). You could argue that XIV could make them look more "modest" - whatever that means - but they were clearly designed with homage in mind, just as Exdeath and Kefka were. I don't think it's fair to fault XIV for this.

Taking your example of Primal Ryne, she, again, is based on Shiva. Shiva's appearance informs hers. That's not surface level cheesecake, it's a sign they actually sat down and thought about what the WoL's memories would make a Shiva'd!Ryne look like.

So we're back to enemies like Voidsent succubi, Forgiven Venery and her clones, maybe the Ruby Princess and the second boss in the Arboretum Hard mode, and the new one in 5.3. I'm not 100% clear on how often models are reused, but I notice that the Voidsent and the Sin Eater ladies look very similar. I believe there's some thematic intent to that, but I also think it's just easier from a development standpoint to repurpose and embroider on a model you already have. So again, I don't think it's just surface-level cheesecake. The Ruby Princess shows some belly* because she's wearing an outfit that I notice looks a lot like the gear her dungeon drops and which the beefy Male Highlander tank in my group appears to have been grinding all day, because I can see every inch of him from Ul'dah to Kugane. In other words, she's wearing attire that is equal opportunity fashion in-game. I don't see why I should be offended by that.

[Joven]

this topic is quickly going anywhere but where the OP post was about.
He said "there's way too many saminaked girls as bosses and too few guys in sexy clothes in this game"
it doesn't matter if we have biological differences, or whatever some people are talking about by now.
Not all people who play this game are straight males, and many of us would like to see more variety in the archetypes, and it's becoming a more and more overused cliche to have random sexy and seminaked women as bosses.
that's all.

It comes with the territory when talking about what genders finds appealing or not. Especially when words like "sexism" or "objectifying" comes into play.

[Nestama]

I just want to see more (actual) monster girls. Especially as Trials/Raids and NPC's
And sexy male Trials/Raids and NPC's. My Hrothgar and Roegadyn can only do so much.

[SomeRandomHuman]

Why must all the scantily clad bosses be female? Need I remind people there was an actual army of men that went to battle entirely naked? I've no issues with bosses designed with sex appeal. I just think it, like everything else, should be equal-opportunity. Wet get a female boss in a chainmail bikini? Give us a male boss in a codpiece to please.

We get a very pretty and well endowed looking female boss with emphasis on the chest and face? Give us a male boss that's well-endowed and emphasize the crotch, chest, and biceps then.

Bumping this since it pretty much says what would suit the majority.