Sexual dimorphism in Cataclysm
by Matthew Rossi 
Dec 13th 2010 at 6:00PM
Also interesting to note was that this trend goes both ways: when blood elves debuted, the males were much closer to the females and were beefed up in The Burning Crusade beta. As Annalee Newitz pointed out, the other race that debuted in BC, the draenei, are extremely dimorphic; males are bigger and more massively muscular than orcs, while their females are far less mesomorphic. What interested me, at least so far as the tauren and troll model changes went, is that players complained that the tauren and troll women weren't to their liking, which most likely had an influence on the design of draenei and blood elves.
Now, with Cataclysm, we have two new races to consider. How do the worgen and goblins stack up on the dimorphism scale?
Well, goblins may well be the least dimorphic race in WoW, or at least a contender. (Gnomes aren't terribly dimorphic either, so it may be as simple as a consequence of geometry.) Male and female goblins certainly are distinct from one another in their playable incarnation, with males having slightly more pronounced features and females being slightly taller.
While there has clearly been an effort to make the goblin female appealing visually, it hasn't occurred as a result of highly altering her body type to be very distinct from that of the male. They are both short, slight beings. There's no major discontinuity between the men and the women when it comes to goblins. Goblins are, therefore, a race lacking in a strong component of sexual dimorphism, which suits a people who are such experts at negotiation and commerce.
How, therefore, did our Gilnean friends come out of their curse? Well, since worgen were once human, we're already talking about a fairly dimorphic race in WoW. All human males, from the mightiest warrior to the warlock and wizard, are built like brick outhouses, as my father used to say. (He didn't say "outhouse," but you can understand why I made the substitution.) But do worgen maintain the dimorphism of their parent race?
I wouldn't say so. It's not that they maintain it -- it's that they take it as a foundation and go wild with it. One of the interesting aspects of World of Warcraft is that many of the males crouch; worgen are no exception to this trend, although they're the first Alliance race to do so. Orcs, tauren, trolls and now goblins all have between a slight and severe crouch or hunch to their posture in the males. Tauren females are taller than tauren males unless you count the pronounced hump on the male's backs; the troll females stand generally taller than the males, save for the rare moments when the males straighten all the way from their extremely severe crouching posture. Worgen are similar in this regard.
How, therefore, did our Gilnean friends come out of their curse? Well, since worgen were once human, we're already talking about a fairly dimorphic race in WoW. All human males, from the mightiest warrior to the warlock and wizard, are built like brick outhouses, as my father used to say. (He didn't say "outhouse," but you can understand why I made the substitution.) But do worgen maintain the dimorphism of their parent race?
I wouldn't say so. It's not that they maintain it -- it's that they take it as a foundation and go wild with it. One of the interesting aspects of World of Warcraft is that many of the males crouch; worgen are no exception to this trend, although they're the first Alliance race to do so. Orcs, tauren, trolls and now goblins all have between a slight and severe crouch or hunch to their posture in the males. Tauren females are taller than tauren males unless you count the pronounced hump on the male's backs; the troll females stand generally taller than the males, save for the rare moments when the males straighten all the way from their extremely severe crouching posture. Worgen are similar in this regard.
As can be easily seen in the picture above (including the feet this time), a worgen male is slightly shorter than a worgen female due to this extreme hunch, but almost twice as wide. The body type of a worgen female is nearly as slender compared to the make as the draenei but, like a tauren, is taller than the male due to posture issues. So worgen fall somewhere to the far extreme for sexual dimorphism for playable races, somewhere between draenei and tauren/trolls.
Why the worgen curse makes women grow taller than men, I have no idea, but there it is. It's also interesting that while the female is taller, every aspect of the male from the head and jaws to the hands and feet grows massively, while females see very little in the way of growth of those portions of their anatomy. The worgen male sports a massive maw of savage fangs, while the female's mouth (although still a large muzzle full of sharp teeth) is far less developed, almost fox-like. Much like the tauren or draenei, the worgen male is nearly double the width of the female.
Interesting that of our two new races, the goblins come off as nearly physically equivalent between genders, while worgen exaggerate the already striking dimorphism of their parent race -- especially considering that most Gilnean women you meet in the game are such astonishingly aggressive and forthright women.
Why the worgen curse makes women grow taller than men, I have no idea, but there it is. It's also interesting that while the female is taller, every aspect of the male from the head and jaws to the hands and feet grows massively, while females see very little in the way of growth of those portions of their anatomy. The worgen male sports a massive maw of savage fangs, while the female's mouth (although still a large muzzle full of sharp teeth) is far less developed, almost fox-like. Much like the tauren or draenei, the worgen male is nearly double the width of the female.
Interesting that of our two new races, the goblins come off as nearly physically equivalent between genders, while worgen exaggerate the already striking dimorphism of their parent race -- especially considering that most Gilnean women you meet in the game are such astonishingly aggressive and forthright women.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
Jason Dec 13th 2010 6:12PM
It just means that when transforming, it hurts more for men...
Stephen Dec 13th 2010 7:44PM
Blizzard is clearly sexist... otherwise the female Dwarves would have beards, and the male Blood Elves would have breasts.
Ametrine Dec 13th 2010 7:51PM
@Stephen:
Female dwarves DO have beards, but WoW would lose its "T" rating if we showed them. Suffice it to say that in the wintry lands of Dun Morogh, there's no such thing as "bikini season".
Elmouth Dec 14th 2010 12:47AM
Yes, how dare they put fantasy into a fantasy game.
Also, huge muscular men can be twice as large as an average women.
You should instead be wondering about why there's no fat women or fat men. The answer will be the same.
A wizard did it.
Ozmodius Dec 14th 2010 8:38AM
OH GOD! That image is in my head now!
why!
Why!!
WHY!!!
Jim Dec 14th 2010 12:42PM
Ametrine:
you almost just made me spit my pop all over my desk @ work!
hahahahaha! fantastic post!
V Magius Dec 14th 2010 1:01PM
@Elmouth
I think the only fat man model is the human male. I know Mayor Quimby in the DK starter area is rotund. Ogres might count.
Player-wise, I figured as active people, they wouldn't really tend towards being fat.
Zaros Dec 13th 2010 6:13PM
The worgen males would be taller if they fixed their posture.
Rubitard Dec 13th 2010 6:59PM
Would you stop nagging me about that already?!
Bruce Dec 13th 2010 9:32PM
I think the "crouching" is supposed to be an aggressive "ready for combat" posture. If I walked around all day like I was ready to tear someone's face off I bet my back would hurt at night...
Oh yeah, about the dimorphism in general; it's not exactly new. Frank Frazetta, anyone?
Take a look at his art and you'll see the inspiration behind much of the paradigms in fantasy art today:
http://frankfrazetta.org/
Derick Dec 14th 2010 2:59AM
Awesome art, terrible website design. I hate how often I run into such a blast from the past webpage.
StankyLegEvans Dec 14th 2010 9:37AM
I think the worgen females look like garbage, they just look like furry humans.
Nick Dec 13th 2010 6:17PM
It's not really an issue, WoW is fictional, these races don't exist in the real world and so the creators are free to design the genders as they see fit.
The arguement that the body shapes aren't realistic isn't valid, some have tentacles coming out their chins.
Eldoron Dec 13th 2010 6:22PM
Tendrils
Matthew Rossi Dec 13th 2010 6:25PM
I don't know if I'd ever say it was an issue, merely that it is an interesting trend worth discussing. Why do players seem to insist on this? Note that Blizzard redesigned tauren and troll females because players complained, not because they themselves didn't like the original models.
Sleutel Dec 13th 2010 6:47PM
Fictional realities are useful insofar as they reveal how we see our own on its most basic level.
For instance, anybody looking at character and armor models in WoW could probably guess in approximately 3 seconds that every single person on the main dev team is male. Take another ten minutes to talk to NPCs of various races, and you'll probably guess all but one or two of them are white, too.
Fierna Dec 13th 2010 7:35PM
It is an issue for some players. Nothing brought up about WoW is going to bother everyone and those not bothered always seem to say: "It's a game you should get over it."
A lot of women have noted that a piece of armor will fully cover a male avatar but leave deep cleavage and a midriff on a female. It makes many women feel like their character is being sexualized. Imagine for a moment a new store opened and their employees had to wear uniforms. The women had to wear sports bras and the men wore polo shirts. It would bug some people.
It's not the great crisis of our time but it's of interest to some people. Many women (and men) prefer that their characters look sexy in their armor. Many women (and men) just wish there were as many pieces of armor that would look sexy and tawdry on their male characters.
Mitawa Dec 13th 2010 7:37PM
I figure it's Barbie syndrome. And people have issues with that, although admittedly there are probably few gradeschool-aged young girls who play that will get all sorts of wrong idea about life and end up anorexic about this.
Still though, like Barbie, I have to wonder if the worgen female's abdomen is large enough to contain both her spine -and- her internal organs, or if they had to migrate out and rent a flat in someone else's body...
Destron Dec 13th 2010 8:02PM
Mittawa, I laughed out loud at the mental image you inspired in that post. Someone could make a tidy profit by renting real estate to organs shoved out of their host bodies for aesthetic reasons.
I'd have preferred a more savage look for the female worgen, and for female trolls as well (I actually thought they hit the mark pretty well for the orcs). Though the existence of only one pretty face for trolls does bring up the interesting idea that the seemingly attractive face would actually be hideous by trollish standards.
Res Dec 13th 2010 8:07PM
There's no complaint about it being realistic or not. Men and women have different body types in real life as well (in general.) I don't have any problem with dimorphism in a game like wow (or in comic books, or movies etc etc) because it's all about exaggeration. Men all look ridiculously masculine and females all look ridiculously feminine in comparison.
I was a little disappointed that the female worgen model seems to lack the ferociousness of the male version more than the size/ratio issues that were brought up. That plus they have nearly the same profile and posture of the draenei females.