Fantasy Armor

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How people react to the tiers of armor

Oh boy...

The short version of it is that some people involved in game designing (both traditional and video games) tend to design female armor to be more sexually attractive than functional. This topic can lead to lively debates, as seen below and in the discussion section.

Categorization

Here's a brief rundown...

• Category Zero: A female character is simply clad in regular armor that is identical to what male characters have and is purely functional in design. If it has any ornamentation, it is simply the sort of ornamentation that is common for that region. Some examples include chainmail shirt and a helmet, a suit of plate, gear worn by modern female soldiers in combat situations, etc.

• Category One: Armor is specifically made to be worn by women, but is still functional. Ornamentation, if present can be more feminine. Think of the difference between a man's and a woman's suit. Cat One armor is either as good or better for a female wearer than Cat Zero armor.

• Category Two: (Boobplate) Specific to plate armor, this involves a pair of boobs being hammered into a breastplate. This will direct a sword blow (or worse: a bullet) inward towards the heart. A simple raised section in the armor to accommodate breasts would fall into Category One. Special note has to go to the real world Greek Muscle cuirass which had sculpted boob plates, only it was worn by men (ie the Sanguinary Guard), and further only by officers, making it a rare case of male Cat 2 or 1. That said, since a six pack and abs is flatter than a pair of boobs it's much less of an issue.

• Category Three: Female armor which is really, really tight fitting, thus making it hard to put on or take off, decreasing its effectiveness as armor, and making it hard to move comfortably in. In most fantasy settings, form-hugging catsuits are typically the most popular example in this category (Although the suit itself is designed to allow the user to move with ease).

• Category Four: Armor with exposed cleavage, midriffs and similar, leaving portions of the body exposed for blades, spears and arrows. This may also include high-heeled shoes/boots, and not the kind intended for riding. Category 4 is mostly the mainstream for settings where it tends lean on the fanservice side of things, but doesn't go all-out, and is pretty much the staple for most modern animu female warrior types (I.E: The armored schoolgirl look).

• Category Five: Chainmail and plate bikinis. At this point we are not dealing with armor but rather armor-themed stripper costumes whose only purpose is to be visually appealing, rather than protective. The male example is Roman gladiator armor which usually only consisted of armor on a single arm and a belt, and, like lady Cat 5 armor, was intended for spectacle rather than utility.

Perspectives on Female Fantasy Armor

The Best Argument in favor of slutty armor.

On the one hand you have people who are against revealing female armor. It's self evidently badly designed for the purpose of protecting it's wearer and exists for reasons of cheap fanservice. That it has been allowed to become the norm also reflects poorly on people who like the genre, making them come off as juvenile and sexist. This is not to say that anyone who disagrees with said position is necessarily sexist, only that it can give an impression otherwise.

Then you have it's proponents/defenders. Said people would argue that it adds flavor to the setting and that it looks nice. When confronted with its deficiency in terms of protection, some people will try to defend them by making points such as "women being unable to carry as much weight as men". In general terms this is true, but mostly this has to do with upper body strength in the arms, strength in the legs and spine is more even between individuals of both sexes of comparable size and build and armor is mostly carried by the shoulders for the same reason a backpack is, though females are typically of a lighter build than males (hypothetically, if the strength/gender discrepancy was universally true, one could simply make women's armor lighter without making it revealing). Which means that the actual problem with this argument is that it ignores that a smaller person has less area for armor to cover, and thus the weight of the armor is lighter. Another oft quoted and lacking of understanding of physics is "increased mobility", leaving aside the matter of high heels or the cumbersomeness of wearing an armored corset. The only named fictional character who gets away with this is the current Samus, because her high heels are actually jet-heels [1] which also allows her to kick opponents in the face and burn them at the same time. Characters who come from horse riding cultures also have excusable heels (to a degree, stilettos are still stupid) and can also get away with high heels since the "heel" was originally designed to work with a stirrups and fashion just extended it to a stupid degree. The 'socially pragmatic' card is "distraction" assuming that all men are dumb and horny enough to automatically let their guards down to stare at tits, double sexism ho! Others, who realize that it's a bad design would bring up that A) The name of the genre is Fantasy and its defined by moving trees, animate statues and giant armored winged reptiles that can fly and spew fire out of their mouths without incinerating their tongue, so unrealistic elements are to be expected and B) in real life women seldom served as warriors during the middle ages in any case.

A third group exists which settles somewhere in between the previously mentioned groups. These are people who feel that it depends on the setting. If it's a setting where male and female soldiers fight in pike formations and phalanxes supported by companies of crossbow armed soldiers using volley fire, halberdiers, mounted archers and lancers and otherwise aims for a degree of realism, have reasonable and functionally designed female armor. For more overtly fantastical stuff and stuff like Conan the Barbarian where you have the male hero wearing a single pauldron, a bandoleer for a sword, a kilt and a pair of boots into battle, the chainmail bikinis fit the tone and are fine. Notably, Dark Sun was specifically designed as a desert world solely to make this style of armor make sense and because the developers forgot that actual desert dwellers have to wear concealing full-body outfits to prevent sunstroke.

Gallery

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  The Greeks were always big fans of Nipple Armor.
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  Correction: the Greeks were flaming ass-bandits.
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  Jenette Vasquez from Aliens in Category Zero. As seen with Hudson as a comparison, her armor looks exactly like that of the male marines use, apart from the extra equipment used to wield a Smartgun system.
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  Elspeth Tirel shows off an ornamental suit of Category One. (For the purposes of this discussion, just assume she'll take off that stupid cloak and put on an actual helmet if she were headed into actual combat.)
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  Sister Miriya of the Sisters of Battle in Category Two. Category Two armor is generally the most acceptable form of female armor for most fantasy fans since it looks like something that's both recognizably feminine and reasonably protective.
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  An Eldar Farseer in Category Three. While eldar armor mesh removes many of the problems of this type of armor, sculpting the navel is probably a bit much. Also, even the male Banshees have to wear the boobplate.
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  One of the more popular fantasy characters in the olden age, Xena's a pretty popular example of Category 4. Its armor.....but by the gods, there are about a dozen ways to easily circumvent that.
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  Lelith Hesperax in a Category Five. Again, in the context of 40k's fictional universe, this is somewhat justifiable: Lelith is not only nigh-supernaturally fast and entirely focused on dodging rather than tanking, but a female gladiator taking part in highly-ritualized combat games intended to sexually titillate the crowds.
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  A male Cat 2 cuirass. It has largely the same problems as female Cat 2. They even went to the trouble of hammering out nipples and a navel.
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  A male Cat 5 gladiator's armor. The exposed chest is considered to be the combatant's badge of pride. If you've pierced that, you've stabbed him right in his honor. No, his other honor!