In defence of Lara Croft

By James Southworth

The debate to which this post refers has come back into gaming circles recently due to the release of the Tomb Raider reboot, in which well-loved archaeologist cum pistol marksman Lara Croft has undergone a few fundamental changes. Gone are the bare legs with gun holders designed to look like suspender tops, the shining perfect skin (even when crawling through Egyptian ruins and muddy swamps) and, probably the most significant change, a reduction in breast size to something less evocative of two swollen basketballs. In steps a young woman wearing cargo pants, a generic vest top and covered in bloody grazes and dirt. It seems like a change for the better, no?

Well, seemingly, yes. Despite my less than loving opinion of the game itself, its portrayal of Lara is really good. A driven, ambitious, normal girl is thrown into a horrible situation and uses nothing but her own strength, courage and intellect to survive. She’s funny, caring and goes to extraordinary lengths to save her friends, making her a pretty damn good role model. Much better than that bimbo she used to be, eh?

Well no, actually. Most of how I described the new Lara just now can be just as easily applied to the old Lara; smart, strong, funny,  and driven. However, the common opinion of Lara is not based on her character but from the portrayal of her image by the mass media. Many of you who are reading this, even if you don’t know much about games, will likely be familiar with this image of Lara, and think that she was exploitative and over-sexualised to appease teenage boys playing the games. Despite the fact that I think a less provocative image is clearly a better way to portray a female character, I would argue that Lara was never altogether that provocative. I would argue that she has always been a very empowering figure for women, especially those entering the, at the time, largely male dominated gaming world.

In 1993, graphic artist Toby Gard drew up a number of designs for the lead character in Core Design’s new in-production game. After initially designing an Indiana Jones-esque character, he believed it would be more interesting for the character to be a female. Gard wanted a character who “was a heroine...cool, collected, in control, that sort of thing”. He said that he wanted to work against what he saw as the stereotypes of women in games: either “bimbos” or “dominatrix” figures. He also wanted the design to have a certain amount of exaggeration, much in the same way as male characters are exaggerated with hulking muscles, broad shoulders and big chins to reinforce the characters masculinity. The impossibly thin waist, wide hips and short shorts were simply a design choice to create a feminine aura around Lara. The breasts, however, were actually an accident. When adjusting their size Gard accidentally enlarged them 3 times, instead of 50% as he intended, which his team then unanimously agreed to.

Then came the problem- the media. The original Tomb Raider game on Playstation was widely praised and Lara, unique amongst game characters, was rocketed to stardom in both the gaming world and mainstream culture, something that no set of polygons before, or (I would argue) have done since. As well as being one of the mascots for the Playstation system, she sent a message that games can have a strong female lead and still sell. Unfortunately, because of her appearance she was featured in multiple magazines, portrayed by models in Lucozade adverts and became a heavily used icon in the mass media. It didn’t help when Angelina Jolie was cast in the two (dreadful) films, causing Lara to become a parody of herself. Despite her remaining a gun wielding badass, the media focused primarily on her figure and skimpy clothing. Sex appeal was what people were concerned about, and the running gag about her always had something to do with her... assets. This image of Lara was so widespread at the time that a lot of people now automatically class the games as being somewhat exploitative and kind of pervy. Gard himself actually left Core Design for a while because he was unhappy with how the image of Lara had exploded, and he was being given less and less influence on design. You may know of a mythical code in Tomb Raider 2 that makes Lara naked? Well it doesn’t exist, precisely because Gard used what power he had left to refuse point blank to program it into the game.

But the underlying point of Lara in the games has never changed. She has always been independent, brutal, cool as hell, talented in hilariously varied ways. Gard has said that “It was never the intention to create some kind of 'page 3' girl to star in Tomb Raider... you could argue that Lara with her comic book style over-the top figure is exploitative, but I don't agree. I think it's ridiculous to say that portraying stylised people is degrading”. I agree with this. Using an over the top design can give an immediate impression of who a character is. Lara’s is designed to impress upon the player that she is a feminine woman, even though she’s doing all this stuff you would normally associate with burly men. Obviously this can be taken too far. By the time you get to making a woman fight in the snow in a chainmail bikini whilst hundreds of lines of computer code deal with the unnatural shaking of her gigantic boobs, you’ve probably crossed the line into just being a drooling perv. But that’s another issue.

I think Lara was done in a smart way, and I know of many girls and women who find Lara to be very empowering. The irony is that a lot of feminists completely overlook her character and influence on the way people thought about females in games and only focus on the media sexualisation of her. Who cares that she was a strong feminine icon for girls playing games, she had big boobs! The whore! Her designer set out to create a true heroine, and people need to forget about the extra stuff and realise that he succeeded. Not only that, but he succeeded in a way that, sadly, hasn’t really been repeated since. Hopefully the new-look Lara will spur others into trying to make more iconic female leads.

So yeah. Lara Croft is awesome. Whilst I do think it was the right decision to have Lara become less boob-y and stereotypically sexy for the latest game to get rid of the stigma, one issue still irritates me somewhat. Why can’t a female character be sexy and attractive without being brushed off as an attempt to appeal to teenage boys? Sure, the breasts were over-the-top, but why can’t a female character have large breasts? Women sometimes have large breasts, big deal! Okay, it made some of the acrobatics in the games come off as kind of ridiculous, but that was surely part of the appeal? A gunslinging, relic stealing, quip-throwing, athletic, hard-as-nails adventurer who, in spite of everything those descriptions normally suggest, was a woman?  A very womanly woman doing things that would make most men crumble? At least that’s what the games always said to me.

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