Fantasy Armor

Oh boy...

The short version of it is that people involved in game designing (both traditional and video games) tend to design female armor to be more sexually attractive than functional. This topic can lead to lively debates.

Categorization

How people react to the tiers of armor

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• Category Four: Armor with cleavage, mid-riffs and similar, leaving portions of the body exposed for blades, spears and arrows. Also appearing at this point are high heels, and not the kind intended for riding.
• Category Five: Chainmail and plate bikinis. At this point we are not dealing with armor but rather armor themed stripper costumes whose only purpose is for pure fanservice. The male example is roman gladiator armor which usually only consisted of armor on a single arm and a belt.
• Category Six: Included only for completeness sake, a cat 6 is no armor and no clothing you run into battle completely naked.

Ubiquity

Even for all it's silliness, the bigger issue is not that this stuff exists. If it was something which cropped up once in a blue moon it would be dismissed as a quirk of a few series who are a bit more fanservice heavy than others. The real issue that it has become effectively the norm rather than the exception. That said, there has been a bit of a backlash against this in recent years.

Perspectives on Female Fantasy Armor

On the one hand you have people who are against revealing female armor. It's self evidently badly designed for the purpose of protecting it's wearer and exists for reasons of cheap fanservice. That it has been allowed to become the norm also reflects poorly on people who like the genre, making them come off as juvenile and sexist, as well as keeping away women who might otherwise be interested.

Then you have it's proponents/defenders. Said people would argue that it adds flavor to the setting and that it looks nice. When confronted with it's deficiency in terms of protection, some people will try to defend them by making points such as "women being unable to carry as much weight as men" (in general terms true, but mostly this has to do with upper body strength in the arms, strength in the legs and spine is more even between individuals of both genders of comparable size and build and armor is mostly carried by the shoulders for the same reason a backpack is), "increased mobility" (leaving aside the matter of high heels or the cumbersomeness of wearing an armored corset), or "distraction" (assuming that all men are dumb and horny enough to automatically let their guards down to stare at tits, double sexism ho!). Others, who realize that it's a bad design would bring up that A) The name of the genre is Fantasy and its defined by moving trees, animate statues and giant armored winged reptiles that can fly and spew fire out of their mouths without incinerating their tongue, so unrealistic elements are to be expected and B) in real life women seldom served as warriors during the middle ages in any case.

A third group exists which settles somewhere in between the previously mentioned groups. These are people who feel that it depends on the setting. If it's a setting where male and female soldiers fight in pike formations and phalanxes supported by companies of crossbow armed soldiers using volley fire, halberdiers, mounted archers and lancers and otherwise aims for a degree of realism, have reasonable and functionally designed female armor. For more overtly fantastical stuff and stuff like Conan the Barbarian where you have guys wearing a single pauldron, a bandoleer for a sword, a kilt and a pair of boots into battle, the chainmail bikinis fit the tone and are fine.

Female Armor in Real Life

A modern female soldier in BDU. Notice how you can't differentiate her from a male soldier? The entire point of this flubdubbery.

In the ancient times, there were many instances of women on the battlefield. The Sarmatians, who gave the Persians, Greeks and Romans hell in the form of horse archers outlflanking and outrunning heavier or more numerous units if any of those people set foot in their territory. They used bronze armor, purportedly, though given their closeness and possible part of Scythian civilization it is more likely they used what the Scythians used, chainmail, who fought employing both genders as well, their Queen, Tomryas, was the one to behead King Cyrus of Persia on the field of battle, marking a clear boundary Northwards of Persia. Many Celtic tribes men and women both went to war, in beserker with an iron longsword style, which usually meant, and depending on the tribe, that most people ran into battle wearing only pants and with blue warpaint all over their bodies, and some were more tactical (or lucky to have the resources) to employ bronze and iron armors. To give them credit, they did usually use a testudo-like or heavy shield of some sort. and their As a rule of feudal-premodern warfare women did not serve on the front lines as soldiers in the middle ages and as such generally did not wear armor. The reason for this was that armor was expensive, took a lot of time to make and generally they wore what armor was immediately available on hand. There were exceptions that came up now and again (Joan of Arc in France, Onna Bushi in Japan) and when it happened they wore armor basically identical to male armor, at most falling into Category One. In modern times, many first world armies allow women to serve as soldiers, in which case they wear basically the same combat uniforms as their male comrades in arms do and are about as flattering. Though this is somewhat of a problem: a soldier's gear is highly standardized and set to a number of size variations, and unfortunately for female soldiers, "woman" is not one of them. This often also includes soldiers of an uncommon body shape (aka huge dudes), making it a problem across the entire armed forces.

And if you think that this is the reason that women should either stop bitching or not join the military, please go teabag a bear trap.

Gallery

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  Jenette Vasquez from Aliens in Category Zero. As seen with Hudson as a comparison, her armor looks exactly like the ones male marines use (apart from the extra equipment used to allow her to use a Smartgun system).

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  Elspeth Tirel shows off a suit of Category One: while being without a helmet and with a flowing long robe this is the standard suit of armor for the knights of Bant, who will not exploit these two weaknesses when fighting their honorable duels.

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  Sister Miriya of the Sisters of Battle in Category Two. Category Two armor is generally the most acceptable form of female armor for most fantasy fans since it logically looks like it can protect the user while remaining aesthetically pleasing.

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  An Eldar Farseer in Category three. Although, while it is tight-fitting, Eldar mesh armor is designed to be tight while still allowing users free movement. Plus, while the picture is of a women, Eldar men wear the exact same armor making this an out of universe type three, but in universe type two since she still has a boob plate.

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  Lelith Hesperax in a Category Four/Five Hybrid. While it can't protect her, it is nearly impossible to strike Lelith in the first place due to her borderline-supernatural agility, and so her armor is optimized to be as lightweight(and thus easy to maneuver in) as possible. Additionally, Dark Eldar culture demands that Wyches and Succubi be as sexually appealing as they are deadly in combat- a Wych that isn't attractive enough for the crowds inevitably ends up in an arena match that she can't win and the male members of wych cults dress about as skimpily.

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  A male category 2 muscle cuirass. It has largely the same problems as female category two. They even went to the trouble of hammering out nipples and a navel.

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  A male category 4/5 historical roman gladiator. The exposed chest is considered to be the gladiators badge of honor. If you've pierced that, you've pierced the gladiators honour.