Yeah, but big ol' titties might distract on the battlefield. If you're busy staring at a bodacious bossam then how are you going to protect yourself. Your love of boobies has killed you.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled nerd news for a hugely important discussion on one of the pressing (literally!) issues of the day. Why female armor in fantasy should not, for all practical intents and purposes, mirror the female form.
Lunchbox Photography Not technically plate armor. Does it matter?
Briefly stated:
A female warrior is charging into battle. In the midst of this, she trips! Or is pushed over, or takes a blow to the chest! So long as the force is on the front of her torso it really doesn't matter for the conclusion:
She feels a sharp pain in her chest and hears the cracking of bone! Oh no, what's gone wrong? Well she doesn't have time to think about that, because she is now dead.Her sternum just fractured
I think you owe it to yourself to read the full argument. It has pictures.
Tags: Sexism
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52 comments
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The Society for Creative Anachronism has been hashing this out for about fifty years now.
Yes, most armor will fit most women without alteration. It all seems to boil down to whether or not you have a reason for wanting it to be obvious that you're female. Some women think it gives them a tactical advantage. Makes some guys not fight as hard.
Jeez. They let women be knights in SCA now? Back when I was involved with it, being a warrior or knight was not an option for women because the organization was about historical accuracy, and with VERY few exceptions, there weren't many females walking around in plate armor because they were forbidden to do so simply because it wouldn't have been decent or moral for a woman to wear armor and learn to fight as a soldier or knight would.
And that's the real point here-- Almost anything that has women in plate armor is going to be fantasy-based, not historically-based, and is therefore open for creative license. No, having boob shapes in plate armor isn't very protective or smart, but then the idea that a woman would be wearing plate in a world that echoes Earth's 15th century is equally fanciful and fictional, and a product of creative license.
This is not an opinion of women as warriors. I say "you go girl" if it's up to me. But if we're going to gripe about accuracy, then to be accurate would be to forbid women to wear plate armor or pretend to be a knight in the first place.
Even Joan D'Arc appeared essentially the same as any (wealthy) man on the battlefield, because nobody ever thought to make armor for a woman's body and though hers was specially commissioned, it wasn't "girl armor" in any way. It was a standard (excellent) suit of armor that merely fit her dimensions and treated her chest like any barrel-chested man's would be treated.
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Look at a modern co-ed combat sport where heavy armor is still used: kendo. Kendo armor has a very heavy breastplate because the chest/torso is one of the three primary strike areas on kendo. Here's a page with kendo armor manufactured by Meirin, one of the big martial arts equipment manufacturers in Japan:
http://budo.nipponto.co.jp/budo20/shohin22.htm?PHPSESSID=d2956605cce10b387897fb87a8087fbf
The site's all in Japanese, and all but one of the armor sets is made unisex. The one that's not (the white one) is made specifically for women, but you'll notice the shape of the breastplate is no different from any of the others. The reason that one is labeled as for women is simply fashion/tradition with the white color, not because of any difference in the form or function of the armor. Even then it's not that common, most adult women that do kendo use the same blue/black as the men.
@kegs obviously that won't do. Her armor is utterly unrealistic so I must doubt the verisimilitude of the image.
@derioderio @kegs @vermilionone There's my point exactly. If we're going to have fantasy girl warriors who are created specifically to be titillating and not necessarily truly capable in combat, we might as well have boob-forms and high heels.
If you want warrior women who look realistic, they probably don't look terribly different from male warriors: Dirty, short-haired, stocky, and clad in genderless armor.
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I'm imagining a female warrior charging into battle... and then she trips! And then she rolls as she falls, picking up a gun that shoots dinosaurs with lasers for eyes and kills all of the British soldiers and wins the Spanish-american war.
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@vermilionone that was a pretty good movie but the original where she defeats the penguin apocalypse = classic
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Remember that there is a lot of padding under plate armor which gives you a lot of wiggle room for fitting it. Historically women used the same armor as men. Plate armor all had to be fitted to the wearer but that's really renaissance era stuff and when it was made for women (Joan of Arc) and IF it was needed they generally gave just a little more room at the top of the breastplate. In fact the armor shown in the Deadliest Warrior episode Joan of Arc vs William the Conqueror is accurate and they actually tested its functionality pretty well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8ewt50gSCg
@nix.nightbird @Gallen_Dugall of course most of the Queens of England of the Tudor era did for portraits so there's ten easy - wearing it into battle is another issue.
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That said there is nothing wrong with boob armor - have you seen men's ceremonial armor? Two words - massive codpeice! While the boob armor may not be historically accurate it's not an unreasonable extrapolation from this sort of nonsense
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@Gallen_Dugall Massive codpiece, two words not heard together since Schumaker first pitched his take on "Batman".
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@Gallen_Dugall except if a man falls over and lands square on the codpiece, he's got other problems.
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I feel that this is a bad idea (I'm locked out of the original article at work). If you put a man in that scenario listed above the same thing would happen. Just because a girl's boobs are flattened down by a chest plate doesn’t make getting smashed in the chest more dangerous. And I would think unless the chest plate was contoured to the girl’s chest so her breasts fit perfectly (which I think would be incredibly expensive to create) it would be uncomfortable. Plus! In war you want everyone to look the same so yes, let’s put a ‘breast’ plate on a girls uniform so the enemy can decide if they want to pick off the girls or guys first.
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@GeekGamerGirl except that part of the deal with the feudal system was that the individual knights needed to stand out and be easily identified. In part to prove they were fulfilling their service and in part so that they would be captured instead of killed on the battlefield and in the very late period out of vanity as well. The main thing that the boob armor forgets is that there is a heavy layer of quilted armor underneath the plate that would eliminate any cleavage contours along with any advantage to putting them on the armor.
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@Gallen_Dugall @GeekGamerGirl Honestly, Gallen, that argument is the most convincing to me. Heck, I scarcely wear CLOTHING that explicitly contours my cleavage. Adding layers of thick, protective armor renders those curves basically a moot point.
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@Someguy yeah but by the time plate armor becomes practical to manufacture it has lost all protective value due to the rise of firearms which are themselves only practical to manufacture due to the same metallurgical advances that make the plate armor possible. If women were part of the culture that wore armor as a status symbol it's quite possible that you might see boob armor along side the absurd cod-pieces. It wouldn't be functional but it could happen and weirder things have.
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@Gallen_Dugall @rabidronnie @GeekGamerGirl In Japan the female Armor was mostly like the male counterparts. Many wrapped their breast to their body as well. Same thing in Europe, armor was armor. In the article it talks about sticking your breast into slots, it would never happen. I'm also not sure if a person would want protruding breast plates because that would keep them a little off balance. Simple to make, simple to use. That would always be the warrior creed.
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@rabidronnie @Gallen_Dugall @GeekGamerGirl you can simulate the effect by wrapping an ordinary comforter tightly around your chest three times. You can also rapidly grasp how uncomfortable the stuff was since any heat your body built up stayed next to your flesh and perspiration did nothing to help. The padding helped distribute the blunt force trauma that went through the armor - the plate, scale, chain or whatever just kept the wearer from being punctured.
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I've long thought the sexy stormtrooper costumes (or scout trooper, etc) were stupid looking. Actually most sexy female costume versions of popular characters are dumb as hell. There's plenty of sexy characters to dress up as, aren't there?
@Tarkin4Granted I've long wondered just exactly what function the storm trooper outfit served in general. It certainly wasn't for protection from the lasar beams (I'm not a Star Wars canon guru; maybe it was). Maybe they were for protection from the elements or for intimidation, but in either case, making a sexy female version would undermine the intended use I would think, judging by the version pictured above.
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Stormtrooper armor was made to be basically protective against standard blasters (Instead of having a huge hole in your body, you had a small burn, ideally) and greatly protective against melee attacks (you don't want to punch a Stormtrooper with his helmet on).
The problem in Star Wars is that Han Solo didn't use a standard blaster. He used a heavy blaster, and it tore through armor like a Hutt penis through an Alderanian princess. The armor's also pretty useless against lightsabers, and heavy blaster rifles.
But remember, the weapons held by the rebels were not the weapons the common, every day citizen of the Empire would have in their possession. Most people, if they had anything, would be getting by with a holdout blaster which WOULD be stopped by Stormtrooper armor. It also helped that the Emperor outlawed weapons on many planets, and when armed revolutions started his Admirals were known to take Star Destroyers in-system and obliterate the landscape, melting cities into slag, as an "example" of what happens when you go around shooting Stormtroopers.
Also, as the Imperial ranks swelled, the quality of gear lowered dramatically.
Finally, as many Stormtroopers were clones or lower class citizens, they were considered somewhat expendable resources so maximum protection wasn't a priority. Members of the 501st had notably better armor than others because Vader equipped them better (and many were original clone veterans of the Clone Wars).
The downfall of the troopers was that their armor was never meant to fend off stone arrows, spears or hatchets. Quite simply, they never considered people wielding such weapons would ever get close enough to actually use them. In short: Arrogance was their weakest point. They were equipped to handle high-tech weapons, but not low-tech stuff.
@nix.nightbird @ketsuko @Tarkin4Granted you put far more thought into that than Lucas did
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Did we need science (I don't buy the sternum argument really but there's plenty of practical reasons you shouldn't design your plate mail the same way you would lingerie), to make the argument that that female characters in fantasy are unrealistic and most there for eye candy?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Llxf0Z81zHA/SODyhKP-CVI/AAAAAAAABYs/Q5xpRHxfAW8/s1600/RedSonja3.jpg
Exhibit 1. I have no further evidence.
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Historically old news.
I always wondered why Stormtroopers wore the armor at all. It didn't stop them from being shot, being knocked out, or so it would seem from RotJ protection from an arrow that was sharpened at the end single lined bow pulled with the strength of an Ewok?
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The armor is more about trooper anonymity (dehumanization) and presenting the remorseless face of the Empire.
Perhaps it's only good against bullets. Only industrial age cultures can easily be beaten by stormtroopers?
Next you'll be asking why they have no knee pads and the shin armors aren't the same, unlike their clone trooper ancestors.
Ewoks aren't strong because they are small? Chimps can rip your face off.
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@Tarkin4Granted The anonymity argument didn't matter back when they were Clonetroopers, though. They all had the same face - yet customized their armor so you'd know who some of the individual commanders were.
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@Tarkin4Granted Yes, Chimps can, and if Ewoks were that strong Wicket would have torn the troopers leg off instead of hitting it with a stick. The movie itself shows very low strength of the Ewoks.
I also never saw evidence of the Armor deflecting anything, including bullets. If it was just for showing a face of the Empire the Higher ups would have had their faces covered up too.
Actually we all know it's a movie and they cater to budgets and really no one disputes that, it's just silly.
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@Someguy Yeah, given that the Magnaguards easily wield staffs that are lightsaber-proof, you'd think they could make armor out of that.
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I thought their staffs were saber proof because they emitted an energy field that blocked the saber.
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@10glfan59 So is Phrik lightsaber proof, or is it an energy field? Don't leave me hanging!
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@Tarkin4Granted I think they we re made from Cortosis alloy which is can deflect them
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@Tarkin4Granted Is that the in-canon explanation? I haven't seen much Clone Wars, but in ROTS it looked like Obi-Wan's saber was actually hitting the metal.
Either way, it was pretty damn stupid of the Empire to forget that technology.
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I turn my brain off when i watch Star Wars. I just want to watch it and enjoy like when I was a kid.
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@Someguy
Well someguy, the problem is that Star Wars occurs in a universe where the laws of physics are subtly different than in our own.
For instance, you can hold a lightsaber, whose beam is hot enough to easily burn through several feet of whatever badass metal you would use for the bulkhead of a battleship, without burning your hands or even feeling hot really. This would indicate that air has a heat transfer coefficient than oxygen, which means that they probably aren't carbon based life forms as we know it and entirely a sheer coincidence of evolution that they happen to be exactly like humans.
Or, you know, it's a movie and just run with it. Never sell life insurance to henchmen.
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@Someguy It's supposed to deflect blaster bolts.
However, it's thus useless against anyone who can aim for the parts where there ISN'T armor. Like, say, Princess Leia, who is the best shot in the OT.
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See my big response above.
Short version:
Regular citizens had low-powered weapons. Holdout blasters or sporting blasters. These WOULD be stopped by Stormtrooper armor.
Rebels were ARMED MILITANTS and had heavy blasters, blaster rifles, and other military armaments. They were able to kill Stormtroopers because the troopers were equipped to deal with ordinary citizens, not soldiers or guerrilla fighters. The same goes for pirates, smugglers, and most criminals-- Better weapons.
The Empire wasn't worried about Rebels, smugglers, or pirates because they didn't figure the fights would be infantry battles-- The figured most of those sorts of enemies would be ship-to-ship battles, and you can't deny that Star Destroyers pretty much trump anything the smugglers could throw at the Empire.
@GeneralTekno @Someguy "Aim" is a relative term in a galaxy where being able to hit the broad side of a Sandcrawler was considered marksmanship. The safest way to win a gunfight against someone not named Han, Leia, or Chewbacca was probably to run up and club them over the head.
I won't even get into the bounty hunter Greedo, who in Lucas' mind couldn't land a shot even in the vicinity of a stationary target two feet away.
