Did you know they used you in recruit­ment ads? You were like the human ideal for six months. Then they replaced you with a com­pos­ite image they inven­ted. Guess you didn’t focus test right. The per­fect example of human­ity and they still dumped you. (Jacob Taylor, Mass Effect 2)

EDITED ON WEDNESDAY, 17. AUGUST: Bioware is hold­ing another beauty pageant. This time the col­our of Femshep’s hair is up for the vote. At this moment the red-haired model has a very clear head­start. By now I have given up on Bioware finally get­ting a clue about how to prop­erly rep­res­ent a strong female lead character.

Today I can­celled my pre-order for the N7-Collector’s edi­tion of Mass Effect 3. Because of that blonde impostor that is not Shepard.

I was so look­ing for­ward to a box cover like this… *sigh*

When Bioware first announced that they will fea­ture Fem­shep in trail­ers and on one side of the Collector’s Edi­tion box I was ecstatic. Finally, the many fans of female Shep­ard got recog­nized by the Powers that Be. I really looked for­ward to hold­ing the box with a depic­tion of the default Fem­shep that has been good enough for two games in my greedy little paws.

And then came that beauty-pageant. The guys over at Bioware presen­ted six ver­sions of some young woman in a Shep­ard out­fit to the unwashed masses at face­book and let the mob decide which of those young wan­nabes would be the one to be used in the trailer and on the box. Need­less to say that the gen­eric blonde, blue-eyed and pale-skinned one with too much mas­cara and a less than prac­tical hairdo won.

Com­mander Shep­ard is — accord­ing to the ingame inform­a­tion data­base — 32 years old, a mar­ine, a spectre. She has saved the uni­verse twice. She is a strong, cap­able, and — most import­antly — not sexu­al­ised char­ac­ter. Which, by the way does not mean that she isn’t sexy. It means that she is defined by what she does, and not how she looks or how avail­able she is. Those six nymphs that were presen­ted to the face­book mob were the exact oppos­ite. With them, the only import­ant factor was how attract­ive they are.

The image at the top of this post was cre­ated by Bianso over at devi­antart and it expresses pretty much what I cur­rently think about the fem­shep debacle. Once again, a strong female char­ac­ter got reduced to mere looks. Once again, the mes­sage that got sent out to women is: No mat­ter how cap­able or badass you are, you are noth­ing if you are not pretty.

I wanted Com­mander Shep­ard on my box, not some dolled up pretender.

Another very insight­ful blo­g­post about this whole debacle has been pos­ted by Richard Cob­bett. Finally someone who really gets it.