The TF2 community shows more maturity than expected.
I came upon this thread on /r/gaming where someone thought that if more females played TF2, the class models would look like this:
Cringeworthy, I know.
So anyway, I went into the thread, expecting the usual privileged circlejerk that I would have to fight over to point out that the above art is extremely objectifying to womenm but I was pleasantly surprised when not only the top comment, but the majority of comments already made the same point.
I don’t if this says something about the TF2 community, or about reddit’s TF2 community but this is honestly the first time I’ve seen this happen. It’s usually the other way around, where I get downvoted to oblivion when pointing out that perhaps having all females dressed provocatively is just a tad sexist.
As weird as it seems, I think it has to do with the fact that the game didn’t have any official female models from Valve which would have been very likely to be dressed in skimpy outfits, simply because the original concept artist might not have given it a two second thought (anymore than they gave a thought to the idea that hey, maybe some of the characters should have been female). And from then on, it would have been an upward struggle to change the set perception where exposed cleavage, midriff and thighs should not the norm for females.
Now, that all the models are originally perceived as fully clothed, the expectations are different, leading in fact to fans creating empowered females when they try to create such models. Examples ((Unfortunately I don’t have direct link to the sources)) :
Lets hope that if Valve ever considers finally repressenting the other half of the human race in the game, they’ll go with such a design.