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Intern_Waffle_64's avatar
Intern_Waffle_64
Seasoned Ace
5 months ago

The problems with Masc Frame content...

Lemme open with: Feminine or "girly" or outright "made for women" clothing on guys is fine. It's a totally fine thing. My OC/selfsim/whatever wears several feminine pieces regularly. One of his iconic looks is a full skirt. I regularly get upset fem frame items don't work right on him because I want to use them. It's totally cool.

That said, please, when we've been begging for ten years for masc frame sims to get more and better clothing and styles, can we stop with the masc frame items that are decidedly feminine in design?

I used to track this stuff, religiously. I counted pieces every single time a pack came out and kept a direct comparison of how many pieces fem frame had versus masc frame. And for the bulk of Sims 4's lifespan, it was nearly 2:1 on everything. Hairs, tops, bottoms, full body, shoes. The full body catalog for fem frame is probably 4:1 if not more at this point. The gap elsewhere has gotten smaller, but it's still a problem.

But especially we seem to keep facing the problem of masc frame content...being less masculine in design in general. (Again- that in itself is not a problem. The problem is we are aching for more masc frame content,  and keep getting it in a format that doesn't solve that issue.)

The sweet allure kit has masc pieces but they're girly in design. Frilly and with little bows and such. Culturally feminine signifiers. There's several full-on dresses that were recently released, tagged as masculine, found in the masculine catalog, and valid for randomization onto masc-frame sims. These are not masculine items. They should not be tagged this way. And do not get me started on the Modern Menswear kit- the 4th set in the ENTIRE HISTORY of The Sims as a series to have more items for men than women...........which was expressly described as "breaking gender norms", features multiple skirts, and otherwise has an unusual and high-end style created by a designer whose M.O. is questioning masculine design.

Our one chance to get a kit for men- I haven't counted them, but we all know there are many kits that are expressly "for women", whether they have a piece or two for men or not- and even then, it was built around challenging gender norms, and thus, was not truly a masc item kit for masc frame sims who need more masc styles. That sucks so bad, when fem frame CONTINUES to get decidedly feminine items.

If EA had released a "Modern Womenswear" Kit and it had straight cut jeans, steel toed boots, and button down shirts- everyone would riot, because we all know those are not what you think of when you think "clothes for women". But they make a "Menswear" kit with several skirts and cozy high-fashion sweaters and because it presents itself as "breaking gender norms" we're obligated to praise it for being progressive and not be upset with it for ignoring the actual issue of mens content in the sims.

It's hard to have this conversation because if you're not acting in good faith, or even just simply confused by the tone or intent of the phrasing, the above paragraph could read as being actively opposed to non-binary or trans identities or the very concept of gender non-conformity. That is ABSOLUTELY NOT THE CASE- the issue is that men, and masculine leaning clothing and styles, and traditionally masculine pieces, that read as "mens clothes for men", are and always have been lacking in this game. (And while controversial, I do think they intentionally used "We're breaking gender norms with this one" as a deflection of criticism because it's a bad look and difficult conversation to say "I wish you hadn't broken gender norms with this one" lol)

When men BARELY have basics- we just got the very first half-tucked kinda-wrinkly t-shirt in the game, probably the most basic stereotypical men's shirt you can imagine, in businesses and hobbies- why are we STILL getting content that includes things like THIS?

The men need so much menswear, who is out here clamoring for THIS? This isn't menswear! And that's fine, in a vacuum, but we aren't in a vacuum- we're in a limited-number-of-options virtual doll game where the options continue to be limited *because* we get things like this instead. 

I'm glad it is no longer Sims 2 times and we get more items in every single pack than that game got for men over 4 full years, but can we PLEASE give the guys some more love? We could go 3 straight years with no new pieces for the girls and they'd still be outdoing us.

(And please, don't tell me "This is how it is in real life too". There may well be a larger market for womens fashion IRL than mens fashion, but there's millions of pieces for both- and we do not have millions of pieces in the sims 4, so we have yet to exhaust all our options and there's nothing forcing the devs to maintain a higher ratio of fem content to masc content.)

7 Replies

  • Francoisf30's avatar
    Francoisf30
    Seasoned Ace
    22 days ago

    Thanks for this... This is the post I needed, an explanation that I cant put on words otherwise. Yes, this is precisely what I think of masculin content in this game in general, not only for clothes but for thematics, gameplay stuff... and advertisement plublicity... never will you see a straight white male being strong, intelligent and indepedant in this game, even in the recent pack, in the lore, they keep tagging male to being ''lazy'' or ''jealous'' to destroy the image players have of men in general... it is a underlying issue with the devs that are prominently women and super queer... to the idea of making a man, manly and strong and better than a women will never happen here... they always like to make male represented as goofy, stupid, lazy, jaelous, weak and followers...

    This is such a comedy and insult to genders imo... this is like making sure the poor mentally challenged women out there feel empowered by a game, but will eventually make its way to the unconscious and make them believe men are that way. Which is the complete opposite irl...

    I really feels the hatred by the sims team sometimes...

  • Intern_Waffle_64's avatar
    Intern_Waffle_64
    Seasoned Ace
    21 days ago

    oh bud this thread is not a safe space for you, do not ally yourself with me, we are not on the same page 

  • HollownessDevour's avatar
    HollownessDevour
    Seasoned Ace
    21 days ago

    My female Sims simply have more outfits for their individual styles than any of my male Sims because of this. I may play dress up more with the female Sims (well, my main), but there is much to be desired for male/masculine framed/aimed Sim clothing. I barely can do a full wardrobe of my favourite male Sim—let alone all outfit slots. I mean one male Sim is the outdoorsy type so, yes, between HR and OR, they have some selection. But my other male Sim I needed various packs for even some placeholder outfits till more of his individual style gets more fleshed out.

    But it does look like it is harder to dress a fashionable or even "style specific" male Sims that isn't stereotyped into Vampire fashion or something. Even RoM their masculine fashion is mostly distressed/comfortable casual (5-6), classy casual/formal (3), and clubbing/couture (3) (not including the footwear classification which is a bit rocker/goth leaning). And I feel the clubbing couture doesn't exactly fit the magic theme either.

    Don't get me wrong, Sims 4 really improved CAS by having items transcending between feminine/masculine frames, leaving more options and being more inclusive. But there is definitely a noticeable fashion gap. And I honestly do not know if you make more sales on feminine geared CAS kits vs masculine, but that shouldn't be the reason to not provide more of a selection in EPs/GPs.

  • NoahLGP's avatar
    NoahLGP
    Seasoned Ace
    21 days ago

    Actually when I see the lack of support for the threads about Masculine content during these last 15 years, it makes sense that Maxis has less interest for the male sims.

    But, at the same time, the studio still listen to the requests and had improved the quality of the clothing, male sims look better than the previous games.

     

    Now the community is more feminine than TS2/TS3, the studio and EA Entertainment have became more feminine, The Sims 4 is probably the reflection of this trend.

     

  • logionX's avatar
    logionX
    Legend
    20 days ago

    When the Modern Menswear kit was released there was quite the commotion over at the old sims forums, the timing was interesting because we had a large thread where we discussed clothing that we wanted for men, we talked a lot about wanting more formal wear. And when the kit was announced a lot of people (including me) were very clear that sweaters with holes in them and skirts was not what we wanted.

    But I think that Maxis have improved since then, packs after that often featured some unique clothing for men, including shirts, pants and formal wear. I still think we need more jackets and sweatshirts as those are so common for masculine sims, but it's way better than what it used to be.

    Tops in Business & Hobbies tagged for masculine and not available for feminine sims unless you deselect the tag.

    Maxis sometimes tags feminine clothing for men, you can see that I cut out some tops there that are more feminine (and are also tagged feminine) but what they seem to do more now is that they make clothing that are a mix of feminine, masculine and also gender neutral. At least that's the impression I got from Business & Hobbies which I bought recently. It also looks like they put in work to make clothing very compatible with both frames in this pack as well, no jagged lines or anything like that like we have seen sometimes.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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