Lara Croft's Boobs

Here we go again!  First it's boob gate (thanks to the very awesome Blair Butler for coming up with the term), now we have Lara Croft's mammeries to argue about.  The most famous pair of video game breasts this side of Soul Calibur's Ivy are getting a reduction and it's caused quite a few arguments to start on the interwebs.  I hit the floor of E3 this week and got a behind-closed-doors look at the upcoming reboot of Tomb Raider.  You can read my preview here on Coming Soon for info on game play and why it seems weirdly masochistic, but today I'm talking about boobs.

Maybe she uses super glue?

Lara Croft looks very different this time around.  Certainly more realistic.  Her chest has gone from one that made her look like she would face plant if she stood on her toes to a large B/small C.  Some have argued that this is a non-issue, but the truth is, the game has been famous for more than just it's action.  There have been nude hacks, posters, fan clubs...even Angelina Jolie had them enhanced (not surgically...don't sue me) for the films.  Her breasts are a signature part of the character and there is no way this wasn't going to be noticed.

Let me be clear here.  I don't care how big or small her chest is.  I mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook last night and the discussion was intense.   Friendly and intense...I'm not trying to start a war here or imply in any way that there ever was one.  I was just really surprised at how many people felt that I should be thrilled by the change.  So many, in fact, that I thought I'd share my feelings about it all here.

 The new, less busty Lara Croft.

I have many issues with the way women have been portrayed in film and television.  It's changing, of course, but there is a long way to go.  I've also had issues with stupid/weak women in video games.  There is no way in hell that you could ever call Lara stupid or weak.  This goes back to the discussion about sexuality and geek women, and whether or not we need to neuter ourselves to be taken seriously.  As the very awesome Jane Espenson told me in our interview for Huffington Post, "I like to think of sci fi fans as people who genuinely embrace the idea of infinite diversity in infinite combination. Diversity includes the sexy. It just does. There's no way around that. We are simply going to have to embrace the sexy."  Nothing wrong with being sexy AND kick ass.  And nothing about being sexy takes away from what you can do with your brain or your sword.

The incredibly talented Jane Espenson.

All I care about is game play.  I don't care if Ivy's boobs are the size of pumpkins and there is no way they could stay in that strip of tooth floss.  That's the unrealistic style of Soul Calibur.  I don't think Siegfried could hold a sword that size either.

 That's some sword you've got there, Siegfried!  Ahem.

I do not ask for realism in video games.  I ask for art design.  I ask for fun.  I ask for object permanence so my feet don't go through the stairs instead of standing on them and my arms don't poke through walls.  I ask for fewer fire bats.  I ask for kick ass characters.  I laughed my ass off when someone told me on Twitter that it was unacceptable that her breasts were so unrealistic.  Realistic?  Oh, because it's totally realistic to have magic, or carry 50 items (including armor) in an invisible backpack, or to find treasure chests in every household, or to die and respawn or find giant spinning coins lying all over the world.  Hedgehogs do not skateboard.  Girls in bikinis do not play sexy games on a private island that only you have been invited to.  Zombies are not running around, waiting to be taken down.  (Well, not yet.  I'm prepared for the zombie apocalypse, just in case.)  Why the hell should I care if a character has large, unrealistic boobs?  I'm not looking to video games to tell me how I should look.  And if some guy won't date you because you don't look like Lara Croft...run from him.  Hell, he's probably not out of his basement anyway.

I hope there's a pony inside!

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.  Pontificate below and happy gaming.

Geek and Gamer Girls, We're Unbelievable!

Geek girls have been all over the news lately, from Boobgate to little Katie Goldman who was teased for liking Star Wars (and the unbelievable outpouring of support from geek girls all over the world) to why some people think Game of Thrones is for guys, to whether or not celebrity women are pandering to geeks. I've talked about it. I've discussed it on Twitter and ComiCenter. I just chatted about it with my very good friend and honorary geek chick George Roush and new buddy Jennifer Landa on My Geek Lady. (Check out the show below.) But I thought it was time to put my feelings down, if not on paper, than on the web.


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I think it's easy to dismiss us because the prevailing feeling out there is that being a female geek is still an unusual thing. I still have men look at me in shock when I tell them I play World of Warcraft (to be fair, I might be mistaking that for what is really shock that I leave the house and play World of Warcraft). Not so very long ago, I told the producers of a show on a major gaming network that I love video games and comic books and they called me a unicorn. Rare, they explained, because I don't look like a troll and I know what a drow is. This from a network that regularly hires geek women.

If you're reading this, you probably know what a drow is too.

Now, I don't say this to slam them. Not at all. Our culture tells us that women who aren't ugly shouldn't have deep interests of any sort. Yes, my friends, I am prepared for the shit storm that sentence is going to cause. But look at which geek girls are being targeted as panderers and betrayers of their sex. There are posts about how women who cosplay as Slave Leia or characters with any sort of sex appeal shouldn't be taken seriously. (Read Bonnie Burton's fantastic post on SFX about this.) There are posts about how hot, famous chicks couldn't possibly be into geek stuff. They're just talking about it to get guys to think they're cool. (Oh my, how the worm has turned.)

As Bonnie Burton said, Slave Leia strangled Jabba all by herself...in a metal bikini. Hardly a weak woman.

Now, this reminds me of a few of my feminist friends...and yes, I proudly identify myself as a feminist...back in college who told me I couldn't be a feminist and wear makeup/be a makeup artist/do my hair/care about my appearance, etc. As though being attractive disqualifies you from being smart or caring about anything. Of cooourse. Attractive women don't have to have interests. People give them things as soon as they bat their painted lashes. Interests and hobbies are for people who don't have social lives or mascara, and have to occupy their hours with comic books because no one will talk to them. Apparently you don't count as a feminist/geek if you fall into that category.



It's not a stereotype that will disappear any time soon. And it does exist for a reason. I'm not saying no one out there has ever pandered or used liking something to look cool/get guys/land jobs. But I'm sorry, I can decorate my face and still want equal pay for equal work. I can talk about having boobs (I'm sure you read the post where amazing blogger Jill Pantozzi was called out for naming her blog Has Boobs, Reads Comics) and dress in sexy costumes and still be able to talk about comics and video games with conviction.



So where does that leave us? Well, there is very little we can do about the guys and what they say or think, other than to continue to have the conversation. But there is something we can do about our own community from the inside. We can support each other. We don't need to be tearing each other apart from within. Calling each other out for names of blogs and threatening to punch a fellow geek in ''her stupid boobs'' is not helping. Telling someone that the way I'm a geek is far more legitimate than the way you're a geek isn't either.

Something that I mentioned on the ComiCenter podcast is the difference between geeks. There are the exclusionary geeks who say, ''I know this really cool thing about Batman and you're an idiot because you don't,'' and the more welcoming sort who say, ''I know this really cool thing about Batman. Do you want to know too? That way we can geek out together.'' I'm hoping we're moving towards the second sort. Maybe we stop judging those who might have just entered the world of comics because of Iron Man or Thor, or just read Watchmen for the first time. They can be just as excited as those who read it years ago. Or those who didn't start playing video games with Pong. Are they less legit because they're new? Do you remember the first time you read The Lord of the Rings? The wonder you felt? It is possible to feel the same thing, even if you only read it after the trilogy came out.

Me in the Owl Ship. I like it more than my Honda.

So this is what we do. We support all types of geeks. We welcome new ones to our ranks. We stay vocal about what we love and support films/TV shows/blogs that reflect our interests. And we geek out in any way we want, whether that means auditioning for geek shows, playing with plastic lightsabers, tattooing our arms with geek symbols, posting in the Facebook group the League of Extraordinary Ladies, dressing up as either Slave Leia or Senator Leia and not judging either way, using our extensive knowledge of Middle Earth to impress a guy (no, that does NOT make you less legitimate), carrying our dogeared copies of Dragonsong proudly on the subway, tweeting the Daffy Duck version of the Green Lantern oath...be proud and loud about your geekiness, ladies. We are everywhere.

''In Blackest Day or Brightest Night...um, watermelon, cantalope, yada yada...a superstitious and cowardly lot...with liberty and justice for all!''