I kept going back and forth about posting in this thread for a while now, but always thought that my wall of text will probably get ignored and overlooked by trolls anyways. I realized though that there are many people that keep coming back here and really read all the posts, so I guess I will post my little story after all.
A little bit of an introduction, I am a 21-year old male from Germany now and have been saying I want to one day make games since I was in Kindergarten. I thought my chances of breaking into the industry were highest if I went to a uni in Japan, applied for it and was all set to go live halfway across the globe. As part of my preparation I participated in a "language exchange", and luckily directly fell in love with one of my study partners in Japan.
And now to get more ontopic:
When I was in highschool I would also drool over sexualized character designs, like so many other boys my age, it was completely normal to me. It didn't help that my mom was always in a very high position in her work, so I never felt that women would be at a disadvantage in any way, I mean my mom made a huge career with a not so great school degree. My now fiancée and living a while in Japan with her has completely opened my eyes, though. I have heard crazy horror stories from her, was with her when she herself got sexually harassed at work and simply saw the effects of obectification of women on a woman's psyche. It made me open my eyes and realize that there are just so so many small things which all come together to create this large picture of sexualization and objectification, from things like "Chikan" which happens way too frequently in Japan to things like my SO being told on her first day at her new office that she should "keep her distance from the vice president as he is known to like women a bit too much", yet no one spoke up. I thought they didn't speak up because they were weak when I was young, but in that moment I realized that they didn't speak up out of so many reasons, for my SO it was fear for example. You have this person in a position of power forcing himself onto women with the chance that when they do speak up he would simply fire them. This might sound "anti-japan" now, but the fact is that that last example actually happened when she had to move to the US for her job and that was how she was greeted at the new office halfway across the globe from home.
Anyways, I'm getting offtopic and I guess I just wanted to share that, but seeing my fiancée suffer so badly due to this subconscious behavior men often have towards women was bad, like really really bad. It made me hate teenage me especially looking at those trashy games I bought and played when I was younger. And even though she was not a big gamer when I met her, my passion for games made her fall in love with them, too. And in my honest opinion it can't be that she sees a female character design in a big game and in her words feels "uncomfortable" seeing it. My personal biggest issue with these designs is that they are an incredibly easy to see symptom of this big issue that our society has, and yet so many people ignore it, or they even say "I love boobs in my games", not seeing that this might not be the root of the way many men treat women, but a symptom, one we can actually fix and get rid of if we were vocal enough. I am incredibly grateful for the many things she made me learn and understand in these past 3.5 years, and I truly hope that at one point more people realize just how deep this issue is, and to be able to one day fix the root of this we have to start with something, and rejecting designs like this would be a great first step to also increase inclusion in our hobby. Being able to share my hobby with my SO is one of the greatest pleasures in life, and I really hope that at one point no character design will make her uncomfortable anymore.
Anyways, that's my story. Anyone that made it through the end, thank you for reading, and let's all work together to make that hope come true.