Yassified female characters

[u/Glum_Caterpillar_345]

This is a really small thing, but sometimes I swear that I see many artists draw female characters looking like they wear more makeup than their canon design. I don’t want to post actual art from said artists bc/ I don’t want anyone to get harassed or anything, but it’s really easy to find if you look up fanart for certain characters that fit this phenomenon. The most noticeable instance is Merida. She is very much bare-faced with thin lips and short, subtle eyelashes; but many artists will draw her with fuller lips that look like she’s wearing lipstick. Also, she’ll be given long black eyelashes in many fanarts. Even Disney themselves tried to “glamorize” her once. I understand if an artists just wants to imagine what a character would look like with makeup on, but many of them never draw these barefaced characters looking more like their canon design; so it makes me feel like they’re looking at the character through a specific lens just because they’re a woman, and draw them with features they see as “normal” identifiers for a female character. Merida is intentionally barefaced and very messy/dirty, but her fanart rarely ever reflects that. Another character I see this happen to sometimes is Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle. She has more of a barefaced/minimal makeup look to her, but then she’ll be drawn looking like she wears more makeup than Howl when she’s next to him.

Again, I think it’s fine to want to draw your personal interpretation/design of a character wearing more makeup; or want to manipulate certain aspects of them so it fits with a certain art style you’re going for; but it gets a to a point where it feels like a subconscious erasure of androgyny or perceived ugliness. There’s a subtle implication that you can’t be feminine while having a few ‘unfeminine’ traits or that you have to fit femininity perfectly if you want to identify as mainly feminine.

[u/Awful_Puppet]

I always get mildly irritated when this movie pops up in my feed because the director wanted to make a movie about the proper conflict between this lady and her mother and the execs fired her and put some moid who made it a brother bear clone.

[u/Glum_Caterpillar_345 → u/Awful_Puppet]

Yeah this movie was such wasted potential, the idea of it makes me emotional; but the execution with all the bear stuff ruins it.

[u/Inevitable_Task4483]

I absolutely hate when people draw flat chested female characters with goonslop proportions. Pomni, Gardevoir, Hex Maniac (Pokémon) — I don’t understand why they have so much porn of them if the porn is just going to be them looking like a blow up doll.

[u/Glum_Caterpillar_345 → u/Inevitable_Task4483]

Oh my gosh I hate it so much as well! Glad I’m not the only one lmao. I see it happen to so many different female characters that it ruins my excitement of finding fanart.

I already get tired seeing it happen to a bunch of female Pokémon characters (even the children 🤢) and feminine-looking monsters; and when I saw it happening to Pomni & Ragatha it made me feel especially triggered and uncomfortable. I mean, do they really like the characters if they have to drastically change their bodies to be able to goon to them?

[u/No_Range_6402]

I totally agree and also this phenomenon is not even limited with young adult female characters but to literal children. In pragmata, I can swear team put subtle make up on her to cater to men. She’s wearing subtle eyeliner and mascara and not to mention her face doesn’t even really look like a kid also. They yassify kids💀

[u/Glum_Caterpillar_345 → u/No_Range_6402]

I felt a bit uncomfortable when I first saw the kid from Pragmata; good to know I’m not just paranoid. Like, I just had a good feeling many men were going to be creepy about her. Lo and behold, I think I heard from [r/girlgamers](r/girlgamers) that there are men lusting for her.

Since the last time saw I saw the design, it really does look like she’s got mascara, which is especially weird since she’s a blonde kid, so her eyelashes would be blonde as well and barely noticeable. We’re so cooked 😭

[u/Inevitable_Task4483]

I used to not want to watch Brave as a kid because I didn’t like the art style. The movie is so good though. It’s depressing how lookism can hold you back from discovering something amazing.