Hex Wu | 2025.04 | full article download
INTRODUCTION
Gender, feminism, and sexuality have long been a central topic of cultural and academic discussion. For decades, scholars developed ideas to help women move toward a freer, more autonomous, and more respected social position. However, many fundamental theories of beauty have been developed throughout history and now require additional modern contexts to be examined, extended, or even challenged. Therefore, a valuable site under plausible investigation would be video gaming culture. As one of the most influential forms of contemporary pop culture, games of the young generation bring together visual design, narrative structure, and interactivity. By examining how femininity and female roles are represented in games, one gains a clearer sense to understand how feminism and beauty standards are applied to current society (Wolf, 2002).
This paper will argue that female character design in mainstream video games reflects dominant beauty standards shaped by postfeminist sensibilities and neoliberal consumer culture. I will show how these characters promote superficial ideals of femininity, that, though marketed as inclusive and diverse, their visual representation across global media platforms ends up in reinforcing sexist, colorist, and racist aesthetics.
BACKGROUND
Beauty used to be accused of an “oppressive power” against women, whose norms and standards vary chronologically, often reflective of dominant ideologies. Naomi Wolf illustrates in her work that such ideal regulations on females appear to be unachievable, ultimately developing into a beauty myth that haunts females with denial and self-doubt (Wolf 2002).
Postfeminism is short for post-modern feminism, as explained by Gill (2007), is a sensibility from feminist discourse that emphasizes upon self-surveillance, monitoring, and self-discipline while criticizing the superficial celebration of subjectification, sexuality, and self.
Angela McRobbie sheds light on how femininity is appropriated by neoliberal consumerism, where individual responsibility is emphasized over structural inequality, placing the burden on women and commodifying their bodies on a global scale (McRobbie 2008).
In video games, female characters are often underrepresented. They appear less frequently than men, play smaller roles in game narratives, and are assigned weaker functional actions in gameplay.
For every fleeting moment when they present, female roles would follow gender stereotypes: passive, submissive, and pandering. This situation effectively reflects what Sandra Bartky explained, the “docile body” (Bartky 1990), where such portrayals reinforce a binary view of gender where male characters’ action, glory, and authority foster their masculinity, while female characters’ femininity is revealed imperceptibly in appearance and submission.
Such imbalance among video characters’ representation was acknowledged by Friedberg, who conducted a statistical examination to show that most female characters appear in supporting roles, while male characters dominate the narrative (Haines 2019). For instance, in the multiplayer action game League of Legends, most male characters occupy central roles with high responsibility for major damage output — the “strong” and “powerful” classes, such as assassins, fighters, or tanks. In stark contrast, female characters are often assigned to supportive or mage roles, which carry less responsibility in team play. These female roles are sometimes significantly easier to operate, under the pretense of being more accessible for less experienced or “casual” female players.
In video games, female characters are often underrepresented. They appear less frequently than men, play smaller roles in game narratives, and are assigned weaker functional actions in gameplay.
For every fleeting moment when they present, female roles would follow gender stereotypes: passive, submissive, and pandering. This situation effectively reflects what Sandra Bartky explained, the “docile body” (Bartky 1990), where such portrayals reinforce a binary view of gender where male characters’ action, glory, and authority foster their masculinity, while female characters’ femininity is revealed imperceptibly in appearance and submission.
Such design echoes with Bartky’s concept of the docile body — a body made recognizably feminine as a consequence of constant social coercion and power (Bartky 1990). As Bartky puts it, this process produces “a specific repertoire of gestures” shaped by norms of posture, movement, and controlled action. Female characters in video games reflect this through their visual features that turn them into ornamented surfaces—superficial, visionary objects with emphasized aesthetic appeal, but also with unequal discourse or narrative power under patriarchal constructions.
Furthermore, this pattern of gender representation closely mirrors our real-life situations. As Bartky notes, femininity and masculinity are not innate traits but are produced socially through norms, expectations, and operations of power. Judith Butler adds to this by claiming femininity as an “artifice,” as well as an achievement from gendered cultural dichotomy (Butler 1990). In video games, female characters “most frequently appear as secondary or tertiary characters” (Lynch 2016), which supports Bartky’s claim that femininity is regarded as “an inferior status” that not only reinforces gender binaries but also demeans women’s social value.
Another example would be Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, where the narrative usually begins with Princess Zelda being kidnapped. Players would take control of the male protagonist, Link, who fights monsters, solves puzzles, and finally rescues the princess. Across the roughly 60-hour gameplay, the princess appears seldom, or merely in scenes where she is calling for help. The story concentrates entirely on Link and his (often male) allies, reflecting such a gender imbalance in which the female figure is powerless, yet the male hero is active, capable, and central to the storytelling.
Through the examples, we see female characters are designed as subordinates with low functionality, and demonstrate those dominant beauty norms are impacted by the patriarchal values of the society that produces them. On the other hand, these portrayals do more than reflect social standards—instead, they actively build upon them. Once circulated, such images would encourage women, both players and relevant audiences, to manage their bodies in ways that appear as personal choice, but are at the same time deeply influenced by postfeminist pressures of “self-surveillance” and external judgment, as a result of social construction.
In this way, video games do not merely mirror gender hierarchies; they help reproduce and reinforce them. Women remain visually appealing but structurally powerless, while men continue to represent control, strength, and authority. Up to this point, the limited opportunities for female characters to participate equally in video games are shown. Now it is worth investigating how their visual (physical) representation reflects the social norms under which they are created.
In the rare moments when female characters participate, they are often depicted in a sexualized manner, with some of their bodily features exaggerated. Video games seldom include those without remarkable physical traits; instead, the hypersexualized bodies—emphasis on thighs, breasts, buttocks, or heavy makeups—serve as a form of “beauty capital” for characters, granting them opportunities to appear along with dominant male figures. As Craig (2006) argues, beauty functions as a symbolic resource that is shaped by both gender and race, often used to sustain some dominant ideologies.
These so-called “personalized” or “elaborately designed” appearances are performances of discipline rooted in postmodern feminism (Gill, 2007, 149). Although women shift their focus from objectification under the male gaze to subjectification of self, they remain confined to a gendered visual culture that continues to shape and constrain their representation.
One example is Bayonetta, the female protagonist of the game series of its same name. Famous for her sexy look, she is designed with exaggerated curves, wears skin-tight clothing, and performs combat moves that emphasize her body. Her attacks are often combined with camera angles focusing on her chest, hips, or legs, and some of her skills would lead to partial nudity. Although framed with strength, her entire presentation centers on sexual display.
Brian McNair (1998) describes sexualization as the widespread and increasing presence of sexual content across various media, including the frequent erotic display of women’s, girls’, and, to a lesser extent, men’s bodies in public spaces. The hyper-sexualization of female characters in video games lies in their dressing in minimal (cleavage) clothing, moving in exaggeratedly seductive acts, and speaking in sexually suggestive tones to players. These physical portrayals illustrate that female characters have to perform such sexual availability to be acknowledged or included in interactions. As Angela McRobbie notes, “The young woman is either congratulated for having achieved parity with her male counterparts… or is re-inscribed with a duty to perform femininity.” Rosalind Gill further contributes to this by explaining how power is reformed under postfeminist sensibility. This is to say that authority is no longer imposed only from the male side — gazing, judging, or blaming — instead, such control is incrementally internalized through females’ self-surveillance. Standards and norms on beauty are established against women, yet it is women themselves who initiate the effort to conform, becoming both the object and the enforcer of sexualized norms (Gill, 2007; McRobbie, 2008).
Through the previous examples, we see that female characters are rarely unaware of being watched. On the contrary, they often present themselves with confidence and self-awareness, and genuinely control their body image. However, this confidence reflects a deeper conformity to patriarchal expectations. Contemporary beauty standards—such as thin, white, curvy, and sexually appealing—define the criterion for visibility and acceptance. Those who align with these standards are rewarded with social attention and general approval, therefore encouraging women to endeavor through self-discipline. Hunter (2011), in their work, introduce the concept of “racial capital,” where lighter skin and Anglo features are often commodified and rewarded in global beauty markets. Likewise, virtual female characters gain popularity if and only if they comply with these beauty standards, often through exaggerated portrayals that amplify their physical features.
In this context, female characters’ bodily display, though framed as empowerment by allowing for alluring movements with sexual suggestiveness, remains rooted in a superficial visual culture built up by male desire. In the post-modern feminism era, where subjectification of the body seemingly masks the obsolete rhetoric of patriarchy, female submission to power remains hidden.
In the era of postfeminism, we see how subjectification and individual choice take over the main ideology. On top of that, consumerism plays a significant role as media and internet advances, forcing feminism to appear as key to capitalism and profit.
In contemporary culture, consumerism does not merely point to a sort of enjoy and view of female figure, but more to the commodification of female figure in branding and marketing. Define consumption as beyond simply viewing or enjoying the female figure (McRobbie 2008), but involves the commodification of women’s bodies through branding and marketing. We claim that the so-called “girl power” public images are often used as a marketing force, concealing those patriarchal structures as a commercial strategy that reinforces the status of women’s bodies as visual commodities.
In McRobbie’s work, she analyzes female magazines as “windows of opportunity for consumption”, where the focus mainly lies on goods and products. Likewise, such consumerism exists in video games as well. Players are encouraged to spend money on cosmetic upgrades, such as character outfits, animations, or bonus activities. It is worth noticing that, despite in lack of gameplay functionality, female roles generally receive more detailed and visually refined designs than male characters. Their physical appearance is carefully crafted. For instance, in many Asian mobile games such as Arknights, Azur Lane, and Genshin Impact, developers dedicate significant resources to the artwork of female characters, yet unsurprisingly, these elaborate looks are sold at higher prices than usual.
