What a fun topic.
Firstly, what is decent and not decent is completely a society based structure that you are taught. If 2 year olds had their way, we'd all be running around the neighborhood naked and just as happy and free as we can be. Those of you with kids know this
As I grow older, I find I prefer women in dresses and prefer a classic "sultry" woman over the girls just falling out everywhere. A woman with that sharp "come hither" look and an inviting smile does more for me nowadays than lolboobs did for me at 15... and I have to be honest here... they did ALOT for me back then.
Katherine Hepburn is more of a woman in my mind than more than half the currently popular female actresses out there combined. Sadly, our society has turned towards the instant "wow" factor of lolboobs and a woman's sexuality is measured in the shapeliness of her bodess and skin factor. Our youngins see this and learn to deal with it accordingly and society pushes the boundaries further. The society is no more wrong for teaching this than a society halfway around the world teaches to cover a womans body completely or else she's scandalous.
Secondly, women in this society are why women kill themselves for "the golden look". Modern Advertising is built around the planned obsolescence or revival of a fashion and literally hinges on women believing whole heartedly that a "new and revolutionary" product is EXACTLY what they need, no pause for price, to be wanted by any man and shine brighter than the next girl. Every beauty ad or commercial that hasn't made the majority of women consider themselves less valuable or beautiful without the new Brand X natural formula has failed. Essentially, its all smoke and mirrors, but women, including my own wife eat it up like its candy. Its a programmed response from a life of being told every commercial break that they aren't good enough and need to pay 50 bucks for something to make them better. Makes for one hell of a market and one messed up population of women...
Thirdly, Warcraft at its heart was a game about units mercilessly slaughtering each other on a battle map. Whole armies collide and tear one another apart. To be completely honest, when I first heard the medic die in starcraft broodwars, I took pause for a moment. Actually, it was too long of a pause because hydralisks tore down all my ranks and I lost like 10 medics at once. yeah. bad call on my part, BUT it made me notice just why Blizz hadn't been putting female units in previous to that. Nowadays, shoot... send a whole fleet of valkyres out there... awe crap. fricken towers. oh well, queue up some more... There were no female marrines. In the old warcraft, I think all the units were guys. Now there are women intermingled for a bit of flavor (WC3), but its a sausage fest for the most part. When they translated this to the MMO, they were weighed down with the burden of social conventions because these weren't just 2D units with scripted personalities we're sending to thier doom. Some game devs actually take the female model out of the game completely and just have a neuter race with male or female dominant characteristics. It makes sense when you want one race to have an overwhelmingly bulky traditional male body type to them. "Big Ugly" came from somewhere and its easier to believe they were born sprouting out of the ground then sputtered out from between the legs of a large granite Betty Boop. ymmv.
Lastly, and this is more to the OP, you sense an inequity in all this but where does that inequity really lie? At what point are there enough women characters in the game? At what point are the asthetics of a woman-ish character in game truly acceptable? Would you really create a woman character who has anything less than a perfect figure? Lets be serious. My wife loves the heck out of the destructive capacity of her rogue but she used to go straight for the leather thongs. "Sweetie, what do you think? These new leggings are epic and give +15 to all my stats, but they don't really match the rest of my outfit. Maybe I'll just stick with [Loincloth of the Monkey]"
I think the real problem here is that the feminine psychie is so varied that a man will never be able to create a game with enough variety of choice or interchangability of choices (changes of heart/mind) nor could he have a chance to make enough believable female characters with the depth that pixels can convey. The technology just isn't there yet to truly capture the female essence and trying to do so now would only serve to either create laughable 2D facilimies of the real thing or cause a space time paradox and destroy the universe. The only feasible alternative to have any semi-believable women characters in the game are to give women the tools to create blue sex vixens with horns and a tail and let the women themselves do the driving. Please forgive the devs and art teams for their total and complete failure to capture and display a true to life woman's asthetic. One day, the technology will be there and we'll all have to do quantum theory mathmatics in third grade to keep up with it. Actually, I think skynet was a woman...
*sniffs the air deeply* yeah... its good to be back
I don't really feel like this is so much the "Post-Modern" era as much as its the "Pre-Zombie-Apocalpse" era. I consider myself more of a forward thinking guy and an era that just won't die is just as feasible as a coming era, where the dead come back.
And if people are upset by seeing someone who looks better than them, well, I guess that actually happens wether they're dressed or not.
