Why Did Large Breasted Protagonists Disappear from Media?

Malcolm argues the trend toward flat-chested female leads in movies and TV shows reveals an unhealthy demonization of female sexuality by progressives. He traces how vilifying anything that arouses men led to removing feminine traits, resulting in more masculine or underage-looking female characters. Malcolm and Simone debate if this stems from misogyny, class divides, fashion trends, or producers being out of touch. They agree it likely hurts young women who can't see role models that embrace both femininity and strength.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] they say anything that arouses males is bad.

Malcolm: Female dimorphism arouses males. Let's take that away from them. Right? Let's take away these big breasted characters. Let's take away these voluptuous characters. But we still want lots of strong female leads. . Now what happens if you take those things away?

Malcolm: What do those leads look like? They look like one of two things. They either look like men or they look like underage women because those are the two Groups in our society that have no breasts. Okay Those are the two groups that have this overall masculine archetype. So in moving away from this more gender dimorphic archetype They you know, I think in a way are are promoting Underage sexual attraction or the elevation of underage characters into sexual positions, which, you know, I, I regularly see, especially in Western animated shows [00:01:00] and , the removal and the erasure

Malcolm: of women, or at least women that most young girls can identify with body type wise from positions of power.

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Malcolm: Hello, Simone. This is a request that came from one of our viewers, who is actually your dad. Um,

Simone: VIP. VIP, right?

Malcolm: And I'm glad that he actually takes ambiguity. That's very sweet of him. Like my mom used to.

Simone: Hi, dad. Love

Malcolm: you. He wrote, so here's an inquiry to explore with Basecamp. All the leading ladies in contemporary fiction video storytelling have small breasts.

Malcolm: What is this about? It seems like larger breasts to less intelligent, bimbo type female characters. This is very deliberate and has been an editorial casting choice for decades. You have to go back to Raquel Welch or Sophia Loren to bring back that statuesque big breasted woman of Classic cinema.

Malcolm: [00:02:00] Thank This is really, really fascinating for me because it's definitely something I've seen and, and know that I consume primarily animated content, right? Yeah, and I mean

Simone: animated, like anime, specifically Japanese anime, since I don't know, like 2015 has really seen a spike in what, what is called fan service, which

Malcolm: is really No, I'm not talking about that.

Malcolm: I'm talking about Western animated content as well. Oh, oh, oh! And in Western animated content, there's been a growth in women in leading roles. But also in small breasts kind of intelligence, hold on, actually, before we go larger further, I got to take a gripe that I have with Western animation.

Malcolm: Okay. So there is a lot of people out there who complain that Western animation is like getting too gay. Right. And it does have a lot of gay stuff going on in it. I'll agree with that. And yes, that could be seen as a form of indoctrination. That is not my complaint. My complaint is I want to take the lesbian community aside for a second and be like, okay, I see you guys [00:03:00] are getting a lot of representation now in, in Western animated things, but in most of these arcs, one character starts trying to kill the other character, and then they fall in love.

Malcolm: You know, you can see this in She Ra, the most recent She Ra was the Catra, She Ra love arc. They're definitely trying to kill each other at one point. You can see this in the Owl House, by the way, I, I really enjoyed that show you see this, oh, or metaphors for unconsensual sex are depicted as we're seeing in Steven Universe. What's going on here? Is this normal? Are you guys like trying to kill each other out there?

Malcolm: I this was not a trope in heterosexual animated media, but it appears to be just like a very big trope in lesbian animated media. But okay, back to the main question, which is what, why are they painting small breasts as a sign of competence and strength? What are your thoughts? I want to hear yours first.

Malcolm: I've got my own thoughts on this. Yeah,

Simone: so I, part of me thinks [00:04:00] it's like a sort of post gender world that we're living in, in mainstream media. So like the more androgynous characters look, the better. And maybe it's also that like people just find it easier. To relate, especially kids and child audiences find it easier to relate to when he just looks like a child and children just look more androgynous and therefore have like flat chests or at least smaller chests.

Simone: So I feel like that must be what's going on that androgyny is seen as, as more just of a cultural norm. And we're kind of just in a so confused about gender society that making someone look super gender dimorphic is too stressful to handle. To, to full of baggage. So let's just make people look neutral.

Simone: And I find myself often just really not being sure what gender people are anymore and especially animated media. So especially Western animated media, I don't think that's what's happening. Really? So what's your theory?

Malcolm: So I think it's a confluence of things, which has [00:05:00] led to something that's actually really sexist.

Malcolm: So I'm going to try my hardest not to be straw man. So if I was going to be straw man, what I would say is the left actually have a pathological hatred of women. And so they refuse to associate gender dimorphic traits. with any positive characteristic, whether it's intelligence or anything else. I mean, look at this.

Malcolm: If you look at you know, the, the recent explosion of transitions, it's been an explosion of transitions, which never happened before. We're talking about was in trans people of, of women to men. It used to be predominantly male to female. Now it's predominantly female to male and predominantly young.

Malcolm: Well, I guess you call them men, so it's a, you know, young men who are transitioning. So females transitioning to males. What could be seen as a cause of this? If we as a culture are acting as if femininity and, and, and being womanly is this wholly negative thing and this wholly disgusting thing.

Malcolm: Of course, these young girls hate themselves. You know, of course they feel this way, which is something that [00:06:00] we didn't have in the past. You know, you had women who were excelling at being women and men who were excelling at being men. And we were able to glorify both archetypes where now we need to you know, glorify men excelling at being men and women excelling at being men.

Malcolm: Which of course leads to these women feeling like it's not actually women being celebrated. But, I'm not actually going to take that route. I am going to say that that is a strongman in this case, and I think something else is happening. I think that the left began to associate anything that elevates male sexuality or male sexual expression with the enemy, with, with something that's wrong.

Malcolm: So coming out of the feminist movement to an extent, almost,