Why I don’t play League of Legends: sexualization

League of Legends gets a lot of publicity for its toxic environment, its gameplay, and its champions. But I don’t see many people talking about the blatantly sexualized female characters. C’mon. It’s pretty hard not to notice.

Miss Fortune

Proportions

Miss Fortune, pictured in the header, has big breasts and a small waist. There are some women with such proportions, but the majority of women do not look like this. Breast size varies, so I can’t argue against the size of Miss Fortune’s, but her waist is ridiculously small as compared to the majority of women. The yellow line across her waist was copied and moved down to her leg. Keep in mind that it was moved down the leg to a part just above the knee, a smaller part. This waist line is actually a little smaller than that part of the leg. 

Now take into account these two real life cosplays done by KNami and RayRayRaww on Deviantart. 

The line across their waists was shifted down to the about the same point that it’s on Miss Fortune’s leg. You can see that, in real life, women’s waist sizes are bigger than than that of their leg sizes, not smaller. They’re bigger by quite a bit, too. Miss Fortune’s waist size is just too small. 

Outfit

Her top doesn’t cover much of anything at all. You can clearly see the tops of her breasts (I’m surprised she’s even wearing a top considering how much she’s exposing). Her stomach is clearly visible for everyone to see. Upon zooming in, you can see that her pants aren’t even covering her skin properly either. There are gaps within her pants that reveal the entire side of her leg. Consider how far down her pants are as well. Her bellybutton is really high up and her pants aren’t. Any lower and you would probably be able to see all of her business. Either that, or the proportions on her body are just as far off as they are with her waist. Again, it brings up the question of why she is even wearing pants if so much is being revealed.

Her Portrayal

She’s even presented in a sexualized position. She’s twisted so as to present both her breasts and her butt. There’s a huge curve in her back. You can see the heavy make-up on her face with the red lipstick standing out even against her red hair and the heavy eye liner. She’s even blowing on the smoke of her right gun, which forms into a heart. A heart. She is clearly made to be seductive. 

What about the rest of the female champions?

Some Don’t Qualify

I will clarify that not all of the female League of Legends champions are sexualized. Some of them are normal, like Kayle who is pictured left (even though you do get to look directly at her breasts). However, there are ones that are really bad. I tore apart Miss Fortune just to explain how bad it can be. Tearing apart every single one would take days and make this article much longer than you would probably care to read. Think about this though: right now there are 126 champions in League of Legends. Out of those, 42 of them are female. We can immediately cut out Anivia and Rek’Sai because they are not even humanoid characters. Orianna can be cut since she’s a machine made up of clockwork parts. Annie, Lulu, Poppy, and Tristana can also be cut because they are children or childlike, and it would just be plain creepy if they were sexualized. That leaves us with 35 female characters. I’ve already mentioned Kayle as being relatively normal. Karma and Riven also fall into this category. We’re now down to 32. 

In-Between Characters

Many of the female champions are in-between. This list makes up 16 of the original 35. Some of them include Akali, Lux (pictured right), and Vayne. Lux has big breasts that are clearly visible to the eye; they are brought out to the front as one of the first things you notice about her character design. She has annoying and impractical boob armor. She has the impossibly small waist Miss Fortune has. However, she does not have a skimpy outfit. Nearly everything is covered. She is not wearing a whole bunch of makeup. You can’t see her butt either. She’s bad, but not as bad as some of the others.

Oh god why?

There are plenty more like Miss Fortune though. The full list:

• Ahir
• Caitlyn
• Cassiopeia
• Elise
• Evelynn
• Janna
• Katarina
• LeBlanc
• Morgana
• Nami
• Nidalee
• Sivir
• Syndra
• Zyra

Syndra, on the right, makes you question why she is even bothering to wear a top.There is no practicality in what she’s wearing. She’s basically wearing a strip that starts at her breasts and points downwards to her genitalia. Once again, her legs are clearly shown. Her waist is impossibly portrayed. You can easily see her breasts. You are basically looking up her skirt. It’s terrible, just plain terrible.

The Skins

Making it more obvious

Look at any of the popstar skins. Many in the community refer to them as porn stars because of their small shorts, tight shirts, and ridiculously high heels. Pictured right is Popstar Ahri. She’s so skinny, you can see her rib bones popping out below her chest. She’s wearing a lot of makeup. Her breasts are clearly showing. She’s better off just not wearing the shorts because of how little they do for covering her body. If it wasn’t for the microphone on the right side of her face I would be convinced she was going out to stand on a street corner somewhere.

Ruining good characters

Earlier I included Riven as a normal character because she wasn’t sexualized. She looked pretty much normal. You could argue the length of her skirt, but considering some of the other characters, I don’t think it was worth mentioning. However, Riot decided to ruin her innocence when they released her Battle Bunny Riven skin, pictured left. I don’t even know what to say about this. Her shorts are basically underwear. She’s wearing high heels and a form-fitting top. You can now clearly make out a small waist. For crying out loud, she’s wearing bunny ears and a cotton tail. Just looking at her makes me want to cry. 

Sexualized males?

The male characters in League of Legends are not presented in this way. You could make an argument about their shoulder to hip ratio, or their muscles, or how some of them appear shirtless, like Lee Sin pictured right, but that depends more upon your focus. I personally view that as more the epitome of masculinity than sexualization of the male figure. They’re not wearing tight clothing clearly meant to show off “certain features.” There’s no outline of their butts, chest, or legs. They’re not wearing heavy make-up. They’re not even sexualized. They’re just there to be masculine and nothing more. The females are meant to grab your attention and they’re meant to grab it with their bodies.

Where does that leave us?

The sexualization of females has been an ongoing plight for years. With Riot being a more modern game company you’d think they would know better, but clearly they don’t. If this bothers you as much as it does me, we need to do something about it. Boycott Riot’s games or keep pestering them about it until they do something. It’s the only way. Make it known that this is not okay in such a wide scale. They should not be getting away with this.

[Images source]

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