What is up With the Controversy Surrounding Femshep Characters?

Rhillis of Gaming Irresponsibly writes: Controversy surrounding the default female character skin in BioWare’s upcoming title, Mass Effect 3 has begun to stir. Many people with different views, and from different backgrounds (especially sex) have commented, written articles, and lashed out via Twitter about the outrage of the recently selected model.

[Bigpappy]

There is no controversy. Just a bunch of no name web sites looking for cheap hits, but thring to invent one.

[Rushing_Punch]

It certainly looks like a few major sites jumped all over this. I think the question here is "Does it matter?"

[starchild]

I see nothing wrong with the way she looks.

More importantly, who cares? You can create your own character if you don't like it. I think that is what most people do anyway.

[Solans Scott]

Finally some logic.

[SageHonor]

My female shephard is customized and looks better than all of those :P... Matter of fact.. arent most female shephards customized anyway?

[Nadasico]

Considering the horrible selection of hair for fem shep in both 1 and 2 I doubt she looks better than number 4. Unless you modded your fem shep.

[Bay]

It's because people forget that you can customize your own damned Shepard.

[LightofDarkness]

"And ladies, we all know that Shepard isn’t even a woman to begin with, so all this bantering is just ‘two ole hens, clucking in the hen house’, so to speak. But just to be certain, look up at the blonde Shepard, then down at the auburn Shepard, then look at all the female Shepards, now look at the bottom of the screen, that is the real Shepard. And he is a man, baby."

Yeah, that's not sexist or inflammatory at all. Way to take an unbiased, reasonable stance. :/

[MidnytRain]

I'm sorry, but ever since playing Modern Warfare 2, I can't help but think of a gruff-voiced, aggressive, middle-aged man when I hear "Shepard". Seriously, Shepherd was one bad dude. I can't shake the connotations now.

[theonlylolking]

The media hates males. From talk shows, movies, cartoons, etc... they hate males. Girls can get hurt pretty much just as badly as boys when hit in the crotch but in cartoons only boys get punched there. That is when kids are watching tv shows and kids learn that hitting boys in the crotch is ok and is SUPER EFFECTIVE. I could make a huge list of reasons but I think everyone knows what I am talking about since pretty much everyone has watched cartoons.

It is not like you cannot just change the way the character looks. So those peeps that are complaining should stop trolling.

[GameZenith]

So we get about 5 "white" women and only 1 "ethnic" looking female.

[sarcasim]Boy we have really came far....[/sarcasim]

[zeal0us]

I don't blame ya for using the
[sarcasim][/sarcasim]

Some ppl up here tend to take things the wrong way

[GameZenith]

In a way, I was sort of serious.

It is sad that we have "supposendly" came a long way as a society in terms of racial diversification but yet still hold onto old 1950s standards of beauty.

Bioware should have done was created 2 white women, two black women, two hispanic women, and two asian women and called it a day.

Instead we get 5 white women (one with tan skin) and one sorta ethic female who could be black/mixed/hispanic.

This "poll" was clearly biased towards the white female.