This article sucks because it basically has absolutely no information about the study itself, but I wonder if its referencing games where women seem to be portrayed as these beautiful scantily clad goddesses. Even games like fortnite have slim women with tiny waists and big asses and this sets the expectation that this is what “a real woman” looks like.

I’ve seen a growing trend among young gamers who seem to only want “beautiful” people in their videogames, and while sure, we all don’t want abominations for main characters, the standard of what “beautiful” means to gamers these days seems to be women with large breasts, big asses, and completely fake faces like as if they had a face filter. God forbid a game create a regular looking person as the main character without facing serious backlash from terminally online chuds. Look at games like Ghost of Yotei, Witcher, and Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic for examples of what reactions you get for having “normal” looking characters.

All this is to say that the way people are portrayed in media has a profound affect on what they perceive they should look/act like in the real world. We’ve progressed for the last few decades in trying to cut down on the sexualization of women in media, only for it to ramp right back up again in the past few years as people praise eastern countries for making “Anti woke” games.