All dolled up and nowhere to go
Even if you haven’t watched the film in its entirety, you’re probably acquainted with the scene in Barbie where Margot Robbie steps out of her heels only for her feet to stay in their perfect pointed shape. Whether or not the Mattel-backed movie commits to much of a feminist message, it’s a neatly illustrative joke about the impossible ideals placed on girls by consumerist societies. It’s notable, then, that Eve in Stellar Blade endures the same podiatric condition, remaining erect on tiptoes even in shoes that have nothing to prop them up. Notable, that is, because in this case there’s no punchline.
Indeed, with Eve’s exaggerated physique, Shift Up has created a character less like Robbie’s Barbie than the toy itself, although surely not one intended as an aspiration for young girls. Rather, Eve’s alias might be Male Gaze Barbie, a doll in the sense of a child’s figurine but also of a kind sold to adults only. As with Barbie, you get to play dress-up with Eve, but her outfits come in just two flavours, skintight and skimpy, and few are occasion-appropriate. Her face, meanwhile, is perhaps the least expressive area of her body – in contrast to male character Adam – and less animated than her breasts, which perpetually attempt to wriggle free from captivity.
From an aesthetic standpoint, as the protagonist in a character-action game, Eve’s design lacks, well, character, coming across less as an individual than an assembly of parts. That sense is only emphasised by the genre’s default camera position, hovering behind the star like a paparazzo, stalking while dodging her line of sight, as if waiting for an upskirt exclusive. It’s been no real surprise, then, to see Eve adopted as some kind of poster girl in a perceived fight against ‘woke’ design (shorthand, it seems, for anything that doesn’t sate some gnarled sense of masculine entitlement).
Still, looks and framing aren’t everything and, to quote Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel, what’s wrong with being sexy? The answer is nothing at all, but Eve differs from comparable feminine videogame leads in that she displays no sense of ownership or awareness of her allure. Bayonetta, for example, is overtly sexy on her own terms (although still often objectified by the camera),
