Some thoughts on women's fantasy armor

 I hate the argument that “women aren’t strong enough to wear armor” or “women are agile, not strong.” First off, this is stupid. Secondly, besides the fact that armor is more maneuverable than most people assume, female armor mostly shows up in fantasy, a genre often known for its poetic or cinematic breaks from reality. A man can cleave his foe in twain in slow-mo, but a woman with good upper body strength breaks suspension of disbelief? Wut?

Besides, fantasy isn’t about what people “should” do. If you think about it, an illiterate, but pure-hearted peasant really shouldn’t become the king. Maybe the heroine should have learned a more agility-based fighting art. But she didn’t, because she must be a knight, like her father before her!!!111 Well, why not? If you can use “it’s not real life” to justify skimpy armor, you can use “it’s not real life” to justify a 16 year-old waifish elf girl in full plate one-handing a zweihander.

Playing the devil's advocate, yes, skimpy armor occasionally allows people to "dodge," though not as often as video games would have you believe. Real life sometimes imitates art. There’s an Indian martial art called Kalaripayattu that emphasizes flexibility and flying leaps. It’s amazing to watch. Weapons include swords with shields, daggers, and a whirling, whip-like sword. The male practitioners fight in thongs or loincloths, and give each other therapeutic oil massages as part of their Yoga practice! If these were ladies in D&D, people would be screaming “sexist”. Ironically, the women practitioners IRL are more modestly dressed due to religious conservatism. So yes, in certain traditions, fighting naked or in little clothing is perfectly feasible. But I’d still rather have a woman be unarmored than stupidly armored.

I personally dislike the idea that skimpy female armor is to distract men. Not from a realism perspective but from an artistic one. A good action hero has agency. His badassery stems from doing things, not in the influencing of other people to do things. If a lady warrior wears impractical armor to mess with men, it’s exactly the same stupid, sexist argument that was mocked in a widely-linked anti-feminist bingo card: “Women have all the power over men- you can reduce us to an uncontrollable jelly of lust!” I’m not like, outraged that a woman warrior is sexy- that’s appealing also- but I like to see a female warrior, when she’s on the field, rely more on her skills than on head-gaming men.

In a non-sex-related example, sensitivity is important in a female surgeon, both as a doctor and as a woman. But in her professional life, more emphasis should be placed on the job’s primary medical skills, not secondary social skills. If some medical drama about her only showed how damn NICE she was and didn’t show much actual surgery, I’d be pissed.

An anthropologist once noted that in all societies she’s observed, little girls aimed to please. Little boys aimed to excel. I want my women heroes to excel.

In response to an essay by Sara Douglass in defense of fantasy: (From my comment on Talvikki's DeviantArt journal)

"Escape from the modern world" is not a defense that fantasy fiction needs right now. Actually, right now, "escapism" is its most severe condemnation. I think with her anti-modernity argument that Sara Douglass has argued for fantasy's appeal, but not for its value. So, this right here is a critique of a fantasy apologetic from someone who is herself an apologetic.

No, modernity, rationality, and science absolutely aren't antithetical to wonder. Diving oceanic depths, reaching into far-flung outer space, smashing infinitesimal particles into clouds of light and heat add more to the imagination, not less. Logic and science only oppress the imaginations of people who weren't very imaginative to begin with. Rapidly changing, highly diverse cultures feed the garden of my soul (as Sara Douglass puts it) more than an idyllic medieval village or pristine wilderness. If you look at medieval illustrations, even classical myths and Biblical stories are given contemporary, provincial settings. Peasants thought Jerusalem was just around the corner and imagined Joseph and Mary as better-looking, bourgeois versions of themselves. They were fundamentally incapable of imagining life drastically different from their own. Sarah Douglass argues that knowing everything makes the world seem safe and lifeless, but science isn't about (and never can be about) knowing everything, it's about finding new things. That's as pretty opposite of the mundane as you're going to get with any philosophy.

Good fantasy doesn't tap into some vast, ancient, unchanging archetype, but acts like a funhouse mirror to everyday life. It takes the ordinariness of our lives and exaggerates it into Other, such that we recognize it as truer than reality. Assume that we run with the supposedly generic, Western medieval fantasy world, which despite my criticisms, I adore. Say, a world where the printing press was the dangerous cutting edge of modernity, or women unchaperoned were risque, or armed men weren't that "noble knight" schmaltz but just as proud, vindictive, and tragic as rival drug lords or CEOs. This is a world where its appeal comes not from somber ancientness, but from chaos, change, modern life run riot, not knowing "how it ends", from making all old things anew. Is that world really different from our own? Tap water is boring until we're confronted with the logistics and sheer beauty of a Roman aqueduct's soaring arches. Never mind light bulbs, or microwavable food. Good fantasy makes us see our own world with new eyes.