What it really comes down to is that, throughout the centuries men have expressed their sexuality through their armor, but women, now able to be represented as warriors are not allowed to express their sexuality through their armor the same as men, ironically because of the deluded idea that equal means androgyny.
A woman can both be a warrior and express their feminine sexuality. They are not required to look as men, nor are they required to give up the same right men have to express their sexuality through their armor.
. . .
Men have been allowed to express their sexuality through armor for centuries, if one really wants to stand up for women's rights and equality, then the right way to do that is to allow women to choose to express their sexuality in the same way afforded to men throughout all these centuries, not to deny them the ability to do. There is nothing wrong with women, the female form, or the expression of it through various means.
Dude, I really don't want to prolong this discussion, nor am I looking to insult you, but it has to be said, this is biggest and most poorly-considered non-sequitur in this discussion so far, which is saying something. We are not talking about an actual, living breathing human woman making her own choices here. We are talking about a
character who was (given the dominance of men in character design, particularly in japan) almost certainly designed by a man, for an overwhelmingly male audience. Trying to turn this into a female autonomy issue
when it's almost certain that no woman had any input on this is so backwards and ridiculous, I don't even know where to start--except to say that this is pretty par for the course when men talk about women's rights.
Look, if some woman wants to show up at ren-faire or comicon wearing breast armour that she designed, or which replicates some anime character design she likes, more power to her, whether she does it out of fandom or because she feels it is an empowering representation of her femininity--you're quite correct that this is her choice and that making fun of it in a fashion that is disproportionate to how one would mock a similar male design suggests a bias. But most of us laughing at boob plate would roll our eyes and shake our heads
at least as much at a similar phallic accessory.
As for the historical context, there's another presumption in your argument (but tacitly asserted by others here previously) that I'm not sure holds water: if we'd had a more gender-equitable society all along, that women would have done all the same obnoxious things that men did. With regard to any given cultural phenomena, its possible, but far from certain and we cannot re-run history to find out. But I do believe that most women would be offended by the implication that, had they been more enfranchised in power during all of those millennia, their first order of business would have been to run around throwing fake tits all over things where they served no practical purpose, just because, as a historical matter,
some men did this with dicks.
And the "some" is worth emphasizing there, because again (and I really don't know how many times this has to be pointed out to the Tit Plate Defense Brigade who are desperate to find some sort of historical analog for men, in order to excuse this silly design feature), but dicks on armour 1) were an exceedingly rare thing, 2) exclusively used by foppish elites on armour that was going nowhere near battle, and 3) were probably as widely ridiculed by the common soldier who might have seen it at the time as we are inclined to poke fun at it today.
The truth of the matter is, in our hypothetical, more gender equivalent alternate reality where more women were commonly soldiers during the last six hundred years, then yes, maybe we would have a few more instances of breasts on the armour of the wealthy (for the reasons sytus discusses above). But that doesn't mean people wouldn't still have mocked the practice, both as a historical matter or when it showed up in pop fantasy. Just as we mock phallic nonsense in character design. And I don't know about you, but I made a lot of jokes about how over-the-top Voldo's codpiece and hip thrusting were, back when it was novel to me. I don't anymore because, after nearly 25 years, its just old hat. Tit armour isn't exactly new to the genre, so I have a similar response to Hilde's variation on the theme--but it's not because it's any less silly than it clearly, absolutely is....
So please, let's try to have some perspective here: Hilde's boobplate is no more a feminist statement than Hooters is a feminist institution; it takes more than being supportive of the presence of tits to earn the accolade of being "body positive" and supportive of women's rights and interests.
