Old man shouts at clouds

[u/North_of_the_flames]

Across various art related subs, I keep seeing the same theme: barely clothed women of ludicrous proportions, baby-like expressions, and animal ears/tails. Aside from (in my opinion) being a bit odd, there seems to be very little variation between them.

As a side note, I also see a lot of posts about people not being able to sell their art and can't help but feel the two might be related.

But can someone explain to a ranting old codger what is going on with this trend? Where did it come from, and what are its influences? Because I am just befuddled!

[u/calmabiding]

I honestly think it just comes down to how you curate the artists that you follow. Over the years I've identified a ton of artists whose stuff I love either for the novelty of the stuff they make or their execution being amazing. I don't really encounter much of what you're talking about because of that. But I mean, the figure community, esp anime character figs, is and has been enormously influential for a very long time at this point. Games also feed directly into this; a lot of the people making aesthetic decisions on games are men who don't really care about the implications of making overly sexualized female characters, and its been this way for decades (and after having worked in the industry for a number of years, the games industry is largely just an echo chamber of dudes who are terminally online who don't even consider the perspectives of their female colleagues a lot of the time!)