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I find the SoB armor overall to be a bit over the top. They are the Catachan equivalent of fetishizing the human body, only this case it's taking the Madonna-Whore thing and blending them all together. Anyone who knows Nuns and/or knows females in the various armed services knows that the extreme focus on looks exemplified by the sisters is nonexistent in any RL examples.

The model for the sisters is clearly nun/sex/fetish chic and designed to be sexy and titillating, so I have to reject any arguments that they dress that way because it's fantasy or fiction. While I've modeled females into my IG army as regular Guard troops (fatigues, no special emphasis on sex) I can think of a lot of ways GW could have gone with the sisters and still has a badass, fantasy collection of women warriors that don't resemble the very common dominatrix/nun fetish model.

I don't know how familiar you are with females in sci-fi and fantasy environments, but the SOB are very, very very far removed from the 'sexy and titillating' end of the spectrum...there's barely anything remotely feminine about them.

I didn't say the Sisters were at the extreme end in Leia Slave Girl/Conan Minx in billowing veil, but I do think they fall well on the sexy side of the spectrum. Boobs, bobs, butts (where visible), long, shapely legs (and if chicks in skin tight leather/plate armor strutting their BFGs doesn't do it for you, well, if you're a straight dude you're in a very small club).

Seriously, Aeryn Sun, Chani from Lynch's Dune, Starbuck from SciFi BSG, Ivanova from B5... There are a ton of examples of very obviously female fighting women in science fiction before you even graze up against the line where your figures need DDD breasts, lipstick, perfectly coiffed hair and legs that would make a vegas showgirl look like Vina in her slave girl guise. There's no reason the Sisters couldn't have been modeled after a Fremen or Peacekeeper uniform if not to emphasize the womanly bits in totally unnecessary ways.

Lynata

think you're exaggerating a bit. Where did you get the "DDD" size from, and what exactly is wrong with the SoB minis' legs now? Same with the hair; this kind of bob is probably one of the least difficult of all haircuts.

Those breasts are at least DDD. If you blew a SoB fig up to 12" tall those girls would make Barbie blush. The legs are long, curvy, shapely: not exactly unfemenine unless you know a lot of guys with legs like that. The Bob is Not one of the least difficult haircuts. A crew cut is. A bob requires maintenance, careful brushing, parting, a fair amount of product. My wife had one for the first 5 years of our marriage, just like the one the sisters have. Trust me, it's a fair amount of work. Remember how many times Starbuck had to brush the hair out of her eyes? She had half the hair you need for a bob.

Consider this: The Sisters of Battle are the female equivalent to the Space Marines. Where Marines have their masculinity stressed, the Sisters do it with their femininity.

Yeah, I don't really buy the premise. Whereas Marine armor exaggerates the attributes that emphasize the man of action, the Sisters emphasize those attributes that emphasize a runway model. Think of the terms you have just used, they are not equivalent in popular parlance, in fact they stress the very difference I am talking about. To most people Men being more masculine means they are tough, resilient where Women being femenine means they are more attractive to men, or more nurturing and soft. Science Fiction is rife with examples of tough women who are clearly female and exemplify what we call masculine traits. I feel the SoB emphasize the opposite even if they aren't in bikinis.

Do people perceive this as "wrong" because it sexualises them, or because it makes them more of a woman operating in a traditionally male area? Conversely, is it wrong that the Space Marines are sexualised? Few people criticise that, because strangely there it's okay, if not expected.

The 1st part, I think it emphasizes the wrong thing I want emphasized in my fantasy crusading nun army. The second part I definitely don't buy. There's nothing sexualized about SM figures At All. Catachan Jungle Fighters, sure, if that's what you're into, but not really. Women sexualize men in very different ways then (straight) men sexualize women. It's not even remotely reasonable to suggest that the emphasis of masculine traits (again, traits useful for fighting and doing hard work) and the emphasis on "femenine" traits (that in this case are coincidentally what men tend to call sexy and attractive) are equivalent.

Here is one of my Veterans I'm modeled into a Sergeant. This is my idea of a woman in combat in the 40th century. She's part of my Elysian Guard so I stylized her thusly, but I don't see anything inconsistent between her being female and her representing a strong looking fighter in my army (granted she also has the equivalent of DDDs as well). If I were going to tweak the Sister's I'd do it in much the way the OP did.




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Really though, as mentioned by others, it's hard to distinguish women from men in bulky power armor at 28mm scale.

Yeah, but, no. Not really. There are plenty of good examples of female figures that don't go for Pole Dancer Chic to get their point across-besides: Is the point of playing the sisters that they're a Female army, or that they're a codex you like to play? Does each figure in your army have to Scream that they're a girl from across the room when it's hard to pick out the Nobs from the Choppa Mob from more than a few feet away? For that matter, is the only reason women would get Womanly emphasis because they are such an exception in the world of 40K that they belong in the category of Eldar and Orks rather than the Imperium of Man: An Alien that needs to be modeled to show the extreme difference from the norm that is Human?

Nice try.

This is a female in my army

Nice. Yeah, I had to shrug over converting my Krieg figs to femmes (not to mention my 2K+ Ork army) and settle for the ambiguity of having no idea what's under that mask and that coat. It's how a good platoon should work anyway, what's under the fatigues ain't as important as how well it works in the uniform.

LunaHound

This doesn't look sexualized at all, anyone that says other wise bust be a

...a person with a very different opinion thatn you?

You know if the actual SoB unit stood alone I might be persuaded that that outfit, grossly enhanced breasts aside, falls into an enhanced woman armor category, much like the female freman outfits from dune. However, the shoes really take it out of Battle Sister and into Dominatrix Celestina category for me. I mean, what could be a very cool and very sexy suit of armor is totally undermined by the boobs and the shoes:

Here again:


But don't get me started on this:
http://lexicanumwiki.tumblr.com/image/28056910099

I actually saw a lot of cosplay variants of the SoB uniform where the women in them tweaked them to have more practical shoes, hair pulled back, or to cup their proportional sized breasts. I was pretty impressed with how just a few tweaks can leave someone still clearly femenine and very badass without undermining the womanhood of the wearer by hyping up the sexiness for the sake of the male gaze. It's just not necessary.


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Kaldor:

This is ironic, since the SoB range is one of those examples of female figures that don't go for pole dance chic.

You're saying that seriously, without a trace of irony yourself?

Considering the chest plate is hardly even visible on most of the models, I doubt changing it would hurt sales. I mean, Sisters don't sell very well as it is. An entirely new look might be in order if Games Workshop ever decides to re-introduce the line.

Excellent point! I have a squad of sisters I just traded for, but I ultimately decided that having the women in my life take me remotely seriously was more important than playing the one female army in the 40k universe. It would be nice if I could take the sisters a little more seriously--I mean the wife rolls her eyes at my Guard and thinks the orks are funny, but she just laughed out loud when I showed her the WD codex for the sisters.

Well you could run an all female DE army,

I did think of trying that. My goal was to have an integrated army, and by integrated I mean more than having a Smurfette in every other squad. DE is really the only army that accomplishes this, but when I found the Abbithan Banshee guard upgrades I decided to go the customization route instead and build a guard outfit.

If you blew up a SoB fig up to 12" tall, a lot of other things would have to be changed as well. And this goes for any mini in the 40k line. -> "Hero Scale"

Naturally, but I everything blown up for HS is a choice. Breasts half the size we are talking about would be plenty visible. Boys like big boobs, we find them sexy, blowing them up caters to ONE possible impulse, therefore the boobs were made that big, that distinct, and the designers made damn sure the bolter didn't cover them up to show off how dang sexy they are. QED :p

Though I will say that the armour is probably mass produced in a way that it can be worn by anyone, so certain parts like the chestplate might be bigger than necessary.

It doesn't work that way in the real world, so if we are going to use real world ides like mass production I think the idea of OSFA completely falls apart when we are taling about form fitting armour. But this point has been covered by people who know a lot more about armour than I. I will say, the one time I had to get fitted for armour (many years in the SCA) its fit being right was of paramount importance to the armorer.

the Sisters aim to attack and dismantle this stereotype that wants to tell them they'd have to stop looking like women to be regarded as competent? That only men and men-lookalikes are considered "worthy"? I do not deem it impossible that the ancient Temple on San Leor designed its members' uniforms with that thought in mind.

Real men IRL came up with this fluff. I'm casting a particular aspersion on the motivation for the design of the SoB, which was to push the spank factor up as high as they could before they crossed into Robert Howard/Frank Frazetta territory using Nun/Dominatrix fetish.

You don't understand. I am not suggesting that Space Marines were designed with an emphasis on the manly bits because it would attract women, but because ...they are ultimately tailored to appeal to a male audience this is a form of sexualisation as well.

Fair enough, then no, there is nothing wrong with this because it's not exploitative of men to do so. It gratifies men to be objectified thusly both for the observer and the observed. Objectifying women to appeal to men after the fashion of the SoB is inherently demeaning to men and women because it exploits aspects of women for the sexual gratification of men. It Reduces women from their whole being to a set of attributes that have nothing to do with war and everything to do with Ensign Woody and his little troop of seamen.

Lynata:

Here's a revolutionary thought: Objectification should be okay where it is employed equally.

Not terribly revolutionary, it was called the Sexual Revolution and the theory goes a lot further back then that. The upshot was that a lot of guys got to party hardy and a lot of girls got called sluts and ostracized because the power dynamic is still ridiculously slanted towards men in our universe, just like in the 40k universe. Unless you equalize before you objectify your objectification is going to have different affects on different groups. Right now, in the real world calling a man a slut and saying "Nice Butt" to him is going to have Zero Negative Affect on him and is likely to build his ego as well as encourage his friends to think highly of him. Say the same thing to a girl and at best you have her friends up in your face for being such a dick and at worst you've stripped her dignity away and left her feeling like an object for you to perv on. This is just the real dichotomy that exists. It's not the way it ought to be, but operating from a place where objectifying women in our wargames is okay because we objectify the men is okay is a false dichotomy.

Am I the only one that finds it ironic that Sororitas armour is now singled out as being sexualised after all those years it was hailed as "female armour done right" on the internets?

This argument has been going on since day one, it isn't just now. You may not have noticed, but the cover of the 2cnd ed codex (posted above) drew immediate criticism for the stripper pose on the cover with all the creepy old men leering in the background.

Honestly I think there's a lot that's right about the Sisters, I just don't think the designers at GW were able to keep the little tropes that keep women so marginalized in fantasy and gaming in general out of the line, though I would guess there were some very sincere efforts to do so. I think there's plenty of art and versions of the sisters where the Problem Areas are really marginalized in favor of the overall aesthetic of Nuns with Guns (Soulstorm comes to mind).

All I'm saying is "people don't stab at other people in armour",

No, but they shoot arrows, they throw spears, they point lances at your chest when you are charging them on horseback. There is, in fact an entire school of swordplay devoted to picking out the weaknesses in plate armor, but the Entire Reason for the crested design of a chestplate is to Defect Blows away from the body and the head. Yes, the Mace and the Flail were innovated during the late medieval period with barbs and flanges to overcome this problem in tandem with the evolution of plate armor, but you are confusing a response to the armor's attributes with some weird design feature.


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n0t_u

The heels everyone seems to talk about come from one artwork by Blanche.

Pop quiz: What was that One relatively unknown obscure piece of artwork from?

Hollowman

I just can't see what you mean here...<snip>

You are welcome to read over the numerous posts I've made attempting to explain my point, my reasoning, and my opinions. You are even welcome to consider why I see things that way, to the limited degree that I've explained that I do, but you are not welcome to dismiss everything I've said without demonstrating even any attempt to understand or respond to what I've said. You've made your point, it's not supported by the evidence, mine is. I'm not even going to bother to give you more consideration than that. I mean, I was working with you, but you said, "I'm a little perplexed by a worldview that magically makes something objectified simply by making it female." which is a stupid red herring since I think my first post on this topic listed 3 women who were awesome examples of sci-fi women fighters.

In my experience, the only guys who have complained about this had no experience with women and were fully engaged in all out white knighting against any supposed criticism or teasing directed at women.

That's a pretty base personal attack.