onion-souls:

onion-souls:

onion-souls: its-just-jesse: onion-souls: People who criticize fantasy artwork for female nudity are either willfully ignorant of, or deceptively omitting, the sword and sorcery genre. Aight bud go ahead and explain why the chainmail bikini is justifiable. I’m genuinely curious. Sword and sorcery heroes are barbarian heroes, a reaction to chivalric heroism. Chivalric heroism is the heroism of adornment - armor, training, magical gifts, the favors of lords and ladies, and the blessings of God. Barbaric heroes are nearly naked to emphasis their rejection of these notions and recall a humanistic and neoclassical self-centered antiheroism; there’s no coincidence that Howard was a Nietzschean. They rule by muscle, cunning, nameless, functional weapons, and rejection of “civilization.” That’s the stock argument but it ignores the homoerotic nature of a lot of barbarian art, the work of male-attracted women like Julie Bell, and that sexualized men will be portrayed as physically powerful. Furthermore, a very primal eroticism is necessary to the genre, as a free, humanistic eroticism is barbaric and opposed to both prudish civilization and the destructive, oppressive sexuality of decadent societies.

Sword and sorcery art usually focuses on an idealized and eroticized human form (not its text form, though, which is usually grittier) to emphasis is focus on internalized, heroic might and social freedom. It’s rare to see the male characters particularly roughed up either, except some nice glistening chest sweat or maybe a cool, nonthreatening cut. Though powerfully built women can be seen even in Frazetta’s art, along with figures whose nudity exists to be more strange and otherworldly than sexualized - see his Banshee, below- and practically the whole of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell’s work. Julie Bell actually is the model of many of them (bottom two images). And of course, some versions of Red Sonja (her muscular flip-flops constantly).