Until SE makes male and female glamours equal...

[Synrin]

Honestly, this thread has been pretty terrible for discussion, and it's mostly that troll's fault. Perhaps I'm just being naive, but I think the problem is that reasonable people who have these opinions and could actually contribute to a discussion* are afraid to actually say anything.

*I will confess that, based on the responses in this thread, I don't think a "discussion" is what would actually occur if those people were to voice their opinions. But the truth is, no one has unfairly demonized anyone that I've seen in this thread. The one guy being demonized absolutely deserves it. So I hold out hope.

First I would like to adress that this thread is speaking up for equality. Not only making now-female items available for male charters, but also the other way around. You want Aymeric's hairstyle or Snow's pants? You (hopefully) got it, girl!

What I also liked seeing is people explaining that this isn't about cross-dressing or trying to look 'gay', feminine or ridiculous in any way. It has to do with style, fashion of a sort. Some items we already have (Midan coat of casting/healing, the suit-like nature of the recent Scripture gear, the whole caster Hailstorm set) are in no way any better in emphasising the gender than some already locked items (like the new Y'shtola's healing coat or Aymeric's attire, for example). If the Hailstorm set passes as gender-neutral then the Aymeric's heavy armour has to pass as well. Same with certain hairstyles.

[Serilda]

I just wish people would quit sugar coating it by saying "Female glams for males" when they really just want "lewd glams for males".

That other guy has been straight up trolling this thread every few days by dragging gay people into it to insult them for no reason, because as you rightly observe demanding glamour has absolutely nothing to do with a player being gay. I see his post has been deleted again and he's refused to engage about it again; in my eyes people who like his post are doing nothing more than liking a troll campaign to try to get this thread locked. He doesn't care about his own opinions in the slightest. He's just repeated the same argument and disappeared without reading any responses. Three times in a row.

The people requesting glamour are doing it for varying reasons; some like dressing their male characters up to look hot just as those with female characters often do, some want basically equal treatment in a game they pay for in terms of the raw numbers of glamour items and some simply just want bunny ears because they like bunny ears (a surprisingly high number of people fall into this category from one of the previous threads). Casting aspersions on everyone's intentions is no good. I don't think anyone has tried to hide it when they admire the male form and many posters over the two years of this campaign have come right out and said they are straight females - not that the angry people who hate fun seem to notice.

Incidentally, none of the items I want unlocked are even close to being as lewd as some of the fetish items casters can already wear. The fact that female characters are showered in directly 'lewd' items like the bunny suit is a peculiar double standard but overall I'm not exactly hurting for sexy ways to dress my Elezen.

I'm just wondering how you expect them to "make glamour equal" when dresses and the like look better on traditional feminine bodies.

They look better on my Elezen than on a female Lalafell too but the latter is actually allowed to wear more clothing than me. Different clothes look good on different shapes, and in Eorzea people come of varying shapes and sizes irrespective of gender. The completely arbitrary gender lock is an unnecessary additional complication; players should be allowed to decide how to dress their characters. Please note that there are only two actual dress-like items we're complaining about and one is an identical model to a skirt guys can already wear, except with an extra bow stuck to it. The lock-outs are that silly.

Edit: To clarify as I think we're not entirely on the same page, nobody (on this side at least) really minds things like the Manderville Coatee because both sides got something equivalent tailored to their body shape. That's good. I'm sure that many players of female characters (whether Lalafell or Miqo'te) may have preferred the more conservative male version but we're not fighting to demand a cleavage option for the guys here - even though more options are always good, lol. It's the items with no in-game male equivalent at all which suck the most. There are too many of those.

Thought I'd bring my Roe into the conversation.

What a gorgeous Roe! She can join the conversation whenever she wants

[Serilda]

As a gay man, I did not find it very homophobic at all. He immaturely asked a question that not a single person here answered. As you can plainly see, he has gotten many upvotes. This suggests to me that enough people don't view him as a troll, and where others do solely because they disagree with him. I personally think he could have sparked up a potentially good discussion if he had phrased a lot of it much much more appropriately than they did.

For what it's worth, I tried on a previous troll intrusion by the same guy which someone less unreasonable latched onto. Before it became readily apparent that the original poster was just trying to bait and didn't care about the reasons, that is. They're just my own opinions, but I would be happy to continue discussing that angle if other people are still curious as there may well be a lot more to it.

This isn't just female clothes on a male, this is 'lewd' clothes on a male.

It's also just one guy's taste, and those are all male-only items which already exist in the game. He's drawn it in a very sexualised style and I understand if that makes you uncomfortable (not in a condescending way; you're perfectly entitled to those feelings as they're personal things), but the clothes themselves in-game are no more or less lewd than any other item. Maid outfits (and indeed bunny outfits) are also very fertile ground for lewd imagery, but it's down to the artist or photographer to put that spin on it and outside of S-E's direct control.

[Limonia]

Alright, I have a serious question that has bothered me ever since I started playing this game. I mean no offense at all, it is just curiosity.
Why do so many (I'd like to say most of them) male characters in the game have lipstick? With that, I mean the lip color option that makes your character look like they are wearing lipstick or lip gloss. While browsing through this thread and looking at the screenshots I noticed how almost every one of the male characters has lipstick. Most (though not all) male NPCs don't.
I mean, ok, in a thread where you post your male character in feminine clothing I shouldn't be surprised to see lipstick on male characters. But maybe this is the best place to get answers to this! ^^

There are multiple options I could think of:
a) You find that pink or red shiny lips look good on a male character
b) You want to point out that men should be ok to wear make up too (because it is considered "normal" in this society that girls can and men can't)
c) You wanted to use every option in the character creator
d) You actually wanted to create a "very male" character but didn't know the lip color option makes your character look like wearing shiny lipstick. Have you seen your character in some cutscenes or some lighting like in Ifrit? xD You can change the lip color at the aesthetician btw.

So please don't be mean, I'm just wondering why. Option a) and b) I can understand. Somehow also c). But d)?
I mean, I saw some male characters yesterday - like every day - that looked like the player wanted to create a manly, straight character but they had lipstick. They didn't even look feminine at all with their glamours and so on.

[Synrin]

Alright, I have a serious question that has bothered me ever since I started playing this game. I mean no offense at all, it is just curiosity.
Why do so many (I'd like to say most of them) male characters in the game have lipstick?
....
a) You find that pink or red shiny lips look good on a male character
b) You want to point out that men should be ok to wear make up too (because it is considered "normal" in this society that girls can and men can't)
c) You wanted to use every option in the character creator
d) You actually wanted to create a "very male" character but didn't know the lip color option makes your character look like wearing shiny lipstick. Have you seen your character in some cutscenes or some lighting like in Ifrit? xD You can change the lip color at the aesthetician btw.

I'll do my best to adress these points from my point of view:

a) Yes, they do, especially when coupled with certain glamour. It adds colour to an otherwise plain face without complexion. That's why my character wears black eyeshadow. You can't directly notice it but it changes his expression.
b) That is a cause to fight for too, but I think it is still mostly for the aesthetics of it. Nothing wrong with men wearing make-up either.
c) Well that happens too, god knows there is many colourful Au Ra out there.
d) I wouldn't call it 'very male', more like 'badass', but badasses can also wear make-up that amplify a certain point they try to get across. Blood red lips, black lips.. I don't find it too unbelievable.

Point we are trying to get across here is that it doesn't matter whether something is feminine or masculine or not at all. We should all have characters that please our eye

[Limonia]

I wrote some things with quotation marks, could also have written "badass" instead of "very male", but I think most people get what I meant. I admit I'm not the best with words and I've never been. So, sorry for that!

I myself have also given my (albeit female) character dark eyeshadow for example, but that's not so that she looks like she's wearing eye makeup but because it complemented the shape of her eyes to make them look a little less droopy with the female Au Ra face 1.
But with lipstick on male characters it's not something that somehow changes the face or eye shape slighty without really noticing it. It's really noticeable because it's extremely shiny. That's why I asked specifically about male characters with lipstick. And not even because of those who want to make a point by deliberately dressing a male character in a feminine way, no. It's just that I personally, as a girl irl, find it "unbelievable" when a "badass" male character wears lipstick. I just want to know how others see that. ^^

Point we are trying to get across here is that it doesn't matter whether something is feminine or masculine or not at all. We should all have characters that please our eye

That's true! I just sometimes think some people don't know they don't HAVE to use the lip color option or can change it ingame without using a Fantasia. ^^'

[Serilda]

While browsing through this thread and looking at the screenshots I noticed how almost every one of the male characters has lipstick.

If my character looks as though he does it's just a side effect of the lighting and the dark skin tone - in other words, please ask S-E ;p

(I did use dark eyeshadow though, can't get a good sunken expression without it!)

Since Eorzea has a different culture to ours, it seems like a good place to explore creative looks on characters who are probably more attractive than our real world selves, and I think it looks cute. My wife slaps on shiny electric pink lipstick in Eorzea which would never happen in real life, because it's fun to explore different looks here.

Of course in real life any guy can just walk into a chemist store and buy as much lipstick as they want, and just about every actor/musician on television is wearing the stuff.

[Serilda]

Speaking for myself I am more than happy to debate in a measured tone when the starting argument isn't presented as 'you're a bunch of sick freaks who deserve less stuff than me' or its horrible and irrelevant cousin 'people who had nothing to do with this thread in the first place are a bunch of sick freaks'. I think quite a few of the anti-unlock crew have presented very good arguments over the course of the multi-thread history of this campaign. I don't think they're right to think that their right to certain aesthetics trumps my right to get the same amount of content for the same subscription, but they have articulated them perfectly well and actually responded to feedback. Nobody is ever going to agree with the way everyone else around them dresses.

In this thread, if we set aside the opinions which amount to 'I want to control how everyone else plays the game' for now and the desperate attempts to bring RL gender/sexuality/preference shaming into a discussion about harmless pixels, probably the best argument has been that S-E as a Japanese company is quite conservative, which is a rational conclusion to draw under the circumstances. I personally disagree with it because I feel the circumstances are inconsistent, but I'd be quite happy to debate it at length because it is relevant and the inconsistency with which the matter is treated within the game is a reasonable source of confusion for both sides. It is a very relevant angle for this thread in particular, because contributors are actively trying to provide examples of how S-E spends thousands and thousands of dollars going out of their way to model skirts, crop tops, jewel-encrusted tiaras and frills for their male characters (and has been doing so since long before the ongoing debate ever reared its head) yet digs its heels in over the most bizarre things. But there's no response to the counter to this criticism that I've seen yet other than to keep patronisingly explaining that Japan dislikes crossdressing. It never progresses further. Which is a shame, because I think highlighting the inherent contradictions helps everyone, but I guess it may just be that nobody has an explanation for the way this issue has been handled. I don't think that even S-E has an explanation.

I have over 1000 posts on this forum now and the vast majority are about this one glamour problem. I'm very, very tired of making the same arguments and seeing the same strawman posts going around and around when a lot of the problems people have with the core issue are emininently down to misunderstandings: people simply don't notice that female characters consistently received bonus glamours, people don't realise how many buff Highlander men are stuffed into skirts on a regular basis whether they like them or not, people mistakenly assume this is all about ERP, people don't appreciate the amount of 'fan service' already present in the game because they're so desensitised by the prevalence of the male gaze. Once those misunderstandings are cleared up I think most people are fine with the core request and realise that nobody is forcing them to stick bunny ears on their head. But repeating the same points we've made hundreds of times before was never the purpose of this particular thread at all; it's a gallery of how great our characters look dressed up whether they're feminine, masculine, cute or handsome. If people come in and ignore what we're trying to do to shout us down, that's on them.

I do feel that the people against glamour equality are a minority. That's not the same group as people against guys in skirts for any number of RL reasons - aesthetics, religion and upbringing are all understandable positions, but irrelevant here because the number of skirts which aren't already open to both genders is vanishingly small. That ship already sailed. I think the vast majority of people either want more glamours in principle, don't care (the biggest group by far) or don't have strong opinions on missing out on glamours because they already have the South Seas Talisman and a Coeurl thong; everything else is unimportant as they're already happy. It goes both ways because once this arbitrary application of gender restrictions is dropped, it paves the way for their weak 'fix' of locking all of the NPC cosplay outfits on Mog Station to finish. Everyone benefits in the long run from S-E thinking harder before they slap the gender lock on a new item.

[Serilda]

New page, new opportunities. Let's try to steer this thread in a less negative direction with more pictures of characters dressing up and having fun again.