It used to be said that women in video games had unrealistic features -- usually ones that certain types of young men with, ahem, unrealistic expectations about the female body might be drawn to.
This was a legitimate concern. So, what did the video game industry do? They fixed the problem ... by giving women unrealistic features that all men generally wouldn't be attracted to unless their beau ideal of femininity is Janet Reno.
Quite frankly, we could go on all day about how women in video games have gone from one extreme to the other, but there's one feature in particular that highlights the absurdity of it all: the jawline issue.
In August, "Star Wars Outlaws" is set to drop for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft, the game is set in the time period between "The Emperor Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi." The heroine of the game is Kay Vess, one of these said outlaws.
The model for Kay Vess is Venezuelan actress Humberly González, who looks like this:
Happy Birthday, Humberly González (@HumberlyG)! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/WNgRJ60676
— The Star Wars Underworld (@TheSWU) April 15, 2024
Kay Vess, meanwhile, looks like this:
This is the MAIN CHARACTER for Star Wars Outlaws 🤣. Cant wait to not play it and watch it fail. pic.twitter.com/aw5ePa6hwi
— Grizzy (@BGrizzy1989) April 9, 2024
I'm guessing half of the modeling budget went to that chin alone.
As Mark "Grummz" Kern -- the team lead for "World of Warcraft" back in the day and chronicler of all things woke in gaming on social media -- pointed out how the jawline is a major trend in AAA games:
It's *always* the jaw line.
No reason to give every woman in AAA games a male jaw.
So why do they do it? https://t.co/BtlhnEWd6P
— Grummz (@Grummz) April 10, 2024
Another X user noted the difference between González and the "Star Wars" character they created from her:
Western developers be like...
It's accurate bruh!
Lol pic.twitter.com/bwat4vVguK
— Hypnotic (@RealHypnotic1) April 9, 2024
In addition to the well-deserved backlash "Star Wars Outlaws" got online over Kay Vess, it didn't stop there. Other users pointed out that another terminally woke title, "Spider-Man 2," decided that Mary Jane needed some jaw enhancement, as well (the following is Mary Jane from "Spider-Man 2" pictured next to her face model, Stephanie Tyler) :
They hate feminine beauty because, at its core, feminism wants to turn women into second-rate men, rather than first-rate women with all of the beauty and unique female strengths (nurturing, inspiration, motherly care, beauty, homemaking, love, etc.) that come with womanhood. pic.twitter.com/sOSYIAx7P2
— Michael Austin (@mikeswriting) April 17, 2024
And it's even happened with "Pokémon Go" -- the Western-developed mobile game based off the wildly successful Nintendo franchise:
Is Pokemon going woke?
Pokemon Go! changes female trainer to remove hips, man up jaw, remove lipstick.
Hiring for DEI, Niantic's push for Diversity, BLM. Ex-Pokemon Lawyer "purging" gamers for years... https://t.co/iTScN8wHyx pic.twitter.com/H4e9lXxeJb
— Grummz (@Grummz) March 22, 2024
As Kern pointed out, the developers here were also a terminally woke company based out of the Bay Area, which doesn't exactly jive with Nintendo's general cultural leanings -- but that didn't stop them, no siree.
This isn't a cry for a return to the days of "Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball" or "BMX XXX" from the bad old days; those unrealistic models of femininity were equally awful, albeit in a grotesquely leery way. However, the corrective for this isn't to go to the opposite pole and to erase femininity, period, by making women look deliberately masculine \-- which is to say, for the vast majority of men, significantly less attractive.
It isn't realistic; the model for Kay Vess bears this out. It isn't a selling point unless developers think people buy games to make sociopolitical points. (As we've discovered recently, they don't.)
This isn't the only problem with woke feminine ideals in the gaming sphere, mind you. But it's a good rule of thumb: If you want to know what a game developer values, take a close look at the female protagonists' jawlines. It's a quick way to decide whether you want to drop your money and time into some Western developer's attempt to correct perceived misogyny and other sociopolitical slights.
