This is an opinion piece and should be treated as such… opinion.
Earlier today, we reported that Fable developer Lionhead Studios tweeted a picture for #NationalCleaveDay of character art – specifically, a bar maiden that works at 'The Foaming Jugs' (like jugs of beer, ya know?) holding two jugs of beer that are covering quite a busty chestal area. Even if the mugs weren't there, no actual middle-to-lower breast area, including nipple, would have been shown.
It was a funny picture for an immature, funny hashtag that way too many people found offensive and in poor taste. So people freaked out not because of a woman's breasts, but because of a drawing of a woman's covered up breasts… so cleavage. They freaked out about drawn cleavage. Not actual cleavage that women all around the world try to actually have, but fake, drawn cleavage.
Let me ask you something, does this offend you?
That's the classic painting The Venus of Urbino, a 1538 oil painting by Titian. I don't remember if there's another part to his name, because I took Art History years ago. Anyway, in this painting, the woman is fully nude. Fully. There's no cleavage in this. There's full on breast and a hint of bush. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's art and it's beautiful. It's the female body, and instead of shaming it and acting like it's something to be lambasted over even mentioning, we should shrug things off, laugh at obvious attempts of humor, and not get so uppity of things of this nature.
I wrote in an article a while back about Anita Sarkeesian's appearance on The Colbert Report, that “'America does violence well. Sex? Not so much.' With sex and sexualization, we take something natural and we twist it, condemn it, and freak out if a 16-year-old sees part of a nipple on TV.” As we can see, that still stands true.
Portions of the gaming community – hell, portions of humankind in general – try to find anything to be offended about… but especially in the gaming community. Whether it's an all-male party in Final Fantasy XV or a gaming studio tweeting a funny image of cleavage, if you want to feel like a victim and want to be offended, you'll find something offensive. Simple as that. Realize that I type this all while sitting next to a female colleague that is also outraged that people find Lionhead Studios' tweet in bad taste. So some females are okay with jokes concerning the fleshier parts of the human body.
Last but not least, I want you to ponder this…
How are we even sure that the person in the Lionhead Studios picture is a female? The obvious answer is breasts, but that's not a true indication of gender. Anyone can have cleavage. On the Logo TV series RuPaul's Drag Race, I've seen men make the transition into Drag Queen. Starting with no breasts or cleavage and only using the power of tape, makeup and dresses, I've seen them create some of the most impressive cleavage displays I've ever seen. So maybe that's not a drawing of a woman you're offended of, but a drawing of a man with makeup cleavage.
Lance out.
