Body images in World of Warcraft
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 15th 2006 at 9:05PM
I know, I know, I mentioned the WoW Ladies just yesterday, but they talk about such interesting stuff over there. Today it's body images in WoW-- one of them, Tsuraibara, saw someone on the EU forums calling human female characters fat "couch potatoes," and couldn't believe what she heard.Personally, I'm with Tsuraibara-- I find the human females pretty darn attractive. I'm even one of those guys that plays a human female priest just so I can watch that holy body do its shadowy casting thing all day. Of course, I have a male gnome warrior, too, just because I love the look of a tiny bundle of doom charging Horde in PVP. Although I have to disagree with Tsuraibara about the Tauren females-- she plays two, and I don't think there's any way I could ever stand to look at one of those enough to get her past level 10. Elsewhere in the thread, someone sings the praises of Dwarf females, and I have to admit, while they're not classically attractive, the emotes especially make it seem like Dwarf females might be fun to hang out with. UD females are another matter entirely, though...
Now, we're no Guild Wars-- I once attended a conference where a professor of game studies couldn't believe how those women ever made it out of a battle with so little armor on. But at the same time, this ain't no text adventure, either-- WoW's graphics are cohesive and defined enough to make judgements on what the "models" look like. Have you judged your characters or other characters' looks? Is it wrong to do so? And the other question brought up in the thread is interesting, too-- is it only the female characters that are judged? Or are male Night Elves and Orcs getting checked out, too?
Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
michel Sep 15th 2006 10:31PM
sure it's disturbing to read so many women believing men only want "perfect body" (and what a shock! the perfect body would be an unhealthy woman with no shape ? urg! )
I don't know what is a "perfect body" but it's not what "tv" and "ads" describe.
Abe Sep 16th 2006 12:12AM
I have a theory about this person who thought the human females were pudgy.
Assuming that it is a guy who asked it, then I suspect that he's never actually seen a real woman and is basing his opinion on whatever pictures he can find of women on the internet. Just putting it out there.
aqouli Sep 16th 2006 1:52AM
Tauren females to me have the most 'normal' body proportions, in comparison to Night Elf and Human females especially. Playing a bipedal bovine is of course, not everyone's thing.
manji Sep 16th 2006 1:01PM
Being a female player, I think that the human females are perfect. They've got a little pudge, and thats what makes me happy. I do have a female priest, though, I've latley been playing my male tauren cause I was sick of being hit on and being told that girls can't play/don't belong in WoW.
Trudie Sep 16th 2006 10:35AM
I play a dwarf female, and I get annoyed when people call her fat and ugly, because she's not. I chose one of the most attractive face models for my dwarf, and I think the accent, and like you said, the emotes, make her cute as can be. My dwarf is a warrior, but a lot of dwarf females are priests and paladins. If you ever have a healing class dwarf woman with pigtails or a poinytail, her hair does the nice little spinning thing as she heals, and a lot of people have said that's cute.
Anyway, the body types don't bother me. The only thing that floors me about Alliance players is when they choose the old, scrunched up gnome and dwarf faces for their females. I may be wrong, but I don't really think there are completely hideous elf and human faces, but they've thrown in some pretty ugly gnome and dwarf faces. I was in an MC raid with another dwarf female last week who was subbing for us. I got excited until I got to the Core and saw her face. She had chosen the ugliest face possible for her character. How do you get to level 60 looking at that face?
Ugly horde faces make sense to me, but not Alliance ones. Actually, it's relatively hard to choose attractive horde faces, because there's like only one pretty troll face and only two decent undead faces for women... not too sure about orcs or tauren. Here's a good topic of discussion... why do some people purposefully choose unattractive faces for their characters?
Theadrick Sep 16th 2006 11:35AM
I don't like twiggy women with no hips or bust. To each his own I guess, but I prefer the voluptuous look of say a Playboy centerfold over a runway model. I think the proportions on the human females are just about perfect, but the dranei females (minus the horns and hooves) are even better.
"I like large posteriors, and I can not prevaricate"
-Anonymous Gnome
Abe Sep 16th 2006 6:53PM
on an unrelated note but still about body image
I would've liked it if blizzard had given the alliance the draenei in their corrupted form rather than the tauren/nelf hybrid they get now. As it stands, horde has all the badass races (zombies, orcs, minotaurs, how can you beat that). I would've like to play as one of the corrupted draenei and finally bring something intimidating to BGs as an alliance player.
Lori Sep 17th 2006 6:08AM
@Trudie (#4) I don't get to look at my characters faces very much. Unless I turn the screen around, it's hours and hours of butt. Which could use some improvement in the movement department. All my Xbox girls had a really sweet walk, which is mainly why I chose female WoW toons. But the WoW girls just don't stack up. And aren't a lot of the WoW girls a bit droopy?
Jayel Aheram Sep 18th 2006 9:31AM
I like my male Tauren. The way he wiggles his bum as he moves around is fun to watch.