Anyone familiar with my stance on this kind of mini will probabaly be able to predict what I am going to say – I am with @chibi on this. As Chibi points out, the image of a woman as a gift plays into existing tropes in society of the commodification and sexualisation of women. If this mini was a one off, it would be in rather bad taste but would not be societally toxic, but it isn’t a one off; within wargaming, grossly sexualised depictions of women with biologically improbable builds often in anatomically taxing if not impossible poses (the infamous ‘butt and boob’ twist springs to mind – a pose that would leave the world resounding to the sound of shattering vertebrae if women actually habitually did it) is more than merely the norm, but is rather dominant to the extent that it can often be hard to find examples of minis that don’t conform to sexist memes and design conventions in some regard of other. In that context, ‘pin up’ sculpts like this move from the territory of tasteless oddity to that of component in an openly misogynistic trend.

This point relates to @panzerkanzler‘s objection to Chibi’s analysis. When it comes to partially nude minis, context is vital, and when that context is one of the consistent sexualised depiction of women within the industry, then a largely naked female mini in a sexually suggestive pose must be treated differently than a hypothetical male equivalent (though you would be efry hard presed to find a trule equavalent male mini, which is part of the problem).

I would also suggest, with respect, that it is not for panzerkanzler to tell Chibi what to comment on. This is not a question of being thin skinned or easily offended. Sexist representations of women are a pervasive blight within our society – they contribute directly to a culture that can and does treat women very badly along multiple axes of potential oppression from restriction of access to abortion services to the prevalent vicitim blaming rape culture that foments an attitude where the first response many people have when hearing about an attempted or completed rape is to pontificate on what the rape survivor must have done to ‘ask for it’. This kind of thing it not simply a matter of purely detached aesthetics and personal preference – it all plays in to a cultural discourse about women and their place in society, one in which terrifying large numbers of people do not truly recognise the personhood of women at all, and really do see them as living sex toys and/or ambulatory incubators, and nothing more.

@jay188 feels that chibi needs to take a more light hearted look at this issue, but not everyone can afford to be lighthearted when dealing with a culture that is experiencing an exponential rise of what can only be called a twisted renaissance in misogyny, as can be seen by numerous cases of the online harrassment of women who express feminist opinions online with rape and death threats (just google Anita Sarkeesian and see the way she has been treated if you don’t believe me), not to mention the heinous and corretly entitled Republican war on women that is ongoing in the United States. Sexist minis are only a tiny part of the culture that spawns these horrors, but it is still a part of it, and that cannot be ignored. As wargamers, we have a vested interest in cleaning our own house.

@lotan2012 raises several objections to Chibi’s position, pointing out that you cannot determine the intent of the woman in question. While it is important to distiguish between self-chosen sexiness and imposed sexualisation, the point remains that this is a digital render of a planned sculpt – ‘she’ is fundamentally incapable of intentionality of any kind. The sculptors intent is what must be addressed, and here we run into the problem that it is very likely that the sculptor is a man (statsitically, probably a straight man) who is sculpting this image of a sexually idealised women (according to certain values of ideal womanhood) for the consumption of a wargaming community that is overwhelmingly male and straight. In that context, you have a sculpt of a woman created by and for men, and how that sculpt is conceptualised and executed speaks of an attitude toward women held by the sculptor, and – through his miniature acting as a mode of communication with wargamers – influencing the community’s attitude toward women. In this context, this very clearly a case of a sexualised image of a feminised object, not an image of a woman that is voluntarily choosing to present herself as sexy, or an image created by a woman, or more likely than not with any real imput from women, that expresses an aspect of female sexuality. This is a classic example of the male gaze.

lotan2012 also draws a parralel to the well known trope of the muscled barbarian wearing only a loin cloth, and asks whether this should also be seen in the same light as the subject of the OP, but this really misses the point that the two sculpts are not equivalent. This mini was clearly sculpted with at least the awareness that it might serve to titillate men. It is a representation of a straight male sex fantasy. The hypothetical muscle bound barbarian, however, is not intendted to titillate straight women or gay men in the same way. indeed, overly muscled men are not univeraly seen as sexually desireable within either group. Rather, the barbarian mini would be an expression of a male power fantasy, the flip side of the coin of the above mini’s function as an expression of a sex fantasy – it is still the male gaze at work. Another mini by and for straight men, with any titillating aspect being purely coincidental rather than being the clear focus as it is in the case of our be-ribboned friend.

lotan2012 also raises the qiestion of whether all female nudes are sexist, but again the critical issue is one of context. If the vast majority of artistic depictions of women were of nudes, and particularly nudes posed for sexualisation, then the answer would be yes – in that environment, the situation has become so toxic that further nudes simply compound an existing problem. Fortunately, the bulk of artistic depictions of women are not sexualised. A minority are nudes, but the majority of artistic nudes are not constructed to be sexualised nudes. The same cannot be said of the miniature industry, where the vast majority of female minis are sexualised, and the substantial fraction of partially or fully nude female minis are almost always sexualised nudes, and not infrequently deliberately degrading images of sexualised nudity, as can be seen from Brother Vinni’s victim girls range. Context cannot be ignored here – as the dose makes the poison, so the context makes an image or sculpt problematic.

Finally, lotan2012 argues that their interpretation that the mini depicts a woman freely offering herslef to another unrepresented character as a form of consensual sex play has equal validity with Chibi’s interpretation that it depicts objectification of a woman used as a gift. While lotan2012 is of course entitled to his or her interpretation, as noted above the imagined intentionaluty of an inanimate object or image is not relevant, and the intent of the artists cannot be absolutely determined (unless anyone here has funky mind reading powers). All we are left with is the context of the image and the existing course of dealing with how such images are received in the community. In that light, Chibi’s objectification scenario has by far the greater weight of supporting evidence of the two.

@drax mentioned the recent spiderwoman alternate cover controversy, and the problem there was not only with the weird anatomy and seemingly free floating head levitating in front of her body (seriously – look at it again; the impression that she doesn’t actually have a neck is impossible to ignore once you first notice it), but with the fact that the artists who created the image – Milo Manara – is a well kniow erotic illustrator in Europe, and he lifted the pose for the character directly from some of his other works that illustrate naked women disporting themselves in an unambiguously sexual context. An unusual chocie for Marvel to say the least, especuially when illustrating the cover of a comic series intended to attract more women to Marvel’s universe by countering the notion that all their female characters really amount to is sexualsied window dressing. This debate is culture wide. It is no surprise that it also impacts wargaming.

Several posters have argued that sex sells, as if this explains and excuses all. The problem with this is that ‘sex’ doesn’t exist as this seperate entity divided from individual people. Sex is a social concept that ultimately finds expression through living, breathing human beings in a society that is still not even close to gender equal – a still deeply patriarchal culture that is riven with often iniquitous power dynamics and gradients, pretty much all of which work to disadvantage and disenfranchise women. Taking this into account, exploiting sex because it is financially expedient is not an ethically neutral act. Unless done with the greatest care, it can and does indirectly harm real people. And all this before we even address issues of society’s existing problematic attitudes toward sexuality and gender identity. As much as society stomps with repugnant glee on cissexual and heterosexual women, its treatment of lesbians and transwomen is even worse.

This whole area is a powder keg with a vast potential to cause harm, and a sculpt like this amounts to just another privilege-blind bloke running around with a lit match in hand.

Apologies for the lengthy post.

My original comment still languishes in moderation? I didn’t even do the Monty Python sketch bit… 🙁

I suppose it was probably a bit long, Curse my involuntary loquaciousness.

Short version; I agree with Chibi. This sculpt is problematic in its depiction of women since it plays into the male gaze and existing societal misogyny in a way that a notionally equivalent male mini (the loincloth wearing barbarian trope) does not play into any hypothetical widespread societal misandry, actually finctioning as a male power fantasy, complementary in mindset and effect to this mini that evokes a male sex fantasy – it is all by and for straight men. That narrow, exclusionary focus will ultimately be deliterious to the wargaming hobby.