Weirdly, there are no male angels in the Magic: the Gathering cosmology, at least in recent years. This is confusing to me. The game has of late been criticized for having a particularly regressive set of tones, themes, and artwork especially as compared to its early days. In particular, art before the Weatherlight block was much more open and accepting of a variety of artistic styles, whereas contemporary card art is essentially neoclassical painting. But the angels are weird conceptually. Why do we have an entire race of good looking women when no other fantasy trope is so gender biased? And why angels specifically? Why not goblins or orcs or vampires?
But it's not just the art, and it's not just M:tG. You could argue that the Asari from Mass Effect fulfill the same trope considering their affinity for space magic, though I think there is more sex at play there. Can we just chalk this up to something as basic as the male gaze--the sexualization of women for an assumed-to-be-male audience? While I don't doubt it's a contributor, I don't think it's the whole story. It still doesn't explain why a race of characters that are literally a messianic symbol are gendered female. Consider the Innistrad set.
Avacyn is specifically referred to as the angel of hope, and her return from exile names the final expansion of the block as a coming out from darkness. Until this point, the themes of the set can basically be said to be "We're all going to die." She is implied and seen in narrative to be extremely powerful, and in gameplay she actually prevents every card you control on the field--including herself!--from being destroyed. On top of this she is barely sexualized, perhaps less than any other female in M:tG.
This isn't the male gaze, or, at least, this is a different kind of male gaze than the sexualized one which has characterized the history of fantasy pop culture. This isn't your girlfriend; this is mom.
Although this is but one example, it's a representative one. This is a different kind of "troping" of characters, and females in particular, than I've grown up knowing and reading about in the context of gender, but I feel that it speaks to a change in the way that games, especially high fantasy games, create superheroic characters. The male fantasy is no longer the submissive, biddable woman that serves his every desire but has no agency of her own 1. It is the powerful, sheltering mother-warrior-goddess woman that can protect him from the terrifying world and, most of all, save the day in the nick of time. Men don't want Aphrodite anymore; they want Athena.
To some degree, this is understandable and not even that problematic. When we fantasize about an ideal partner, we want someone who is strong enough to help us when we are in trouble and kind enough to act as a balm to soothe our wounds. Furthermore, when you look at forms of media that are at least perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be created for a female audience, you find that the same kinds of power figures there are weighted male. Supernatural? Twilight?
To some degree, this is understandable and not even that problematic. When we fantasize about an ideal partner, we want someone who is strong enough to help us when we are in trouble and kind enough to act as a balm to soothe our wounds. Furthermore, when you look at forms of media that are at least perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be created for a female audience, you find that the same kinds of power figures there are weighted male. Supernatural? Twilight?
If this is what we think of when we think of a perfect woman, I say bring it on. This allows women to be idealized in a way that has nothing to do with their sexuality. Athena burst forth fully formed from her father's head. She never lost a battle, ever, marking her as perfect in the traditionally male dominated sphere of war. Her wisdom and compassion were legendary.
Is the mere presence of the Athena character empowering to real women, though? Doubtful, but I'm not convinced it's oppressive either. I think it's less that the standard portrayal of an ideal female is changing and that that's bad, but that we get more idealized females than we get idealized males, and that we have fewer non-idealized females than non-idealized males. Non-sexist writing doesn't mean we can't have Wonder Woman and Black Widow. It means every woman shouldn't be one or the other.
And more controversially, I think if we want to be fair and equal about the presence of some characters being idealized hero-goddesses that we can unconsciously fantasize about saving us, then maybe we need some male counterparts? Sometimes people talk about the muscled super-hulk being a male power fantasy rather than a female sexual fantasy, and I buy that to a degree, though I'd speculate it's probably more a matter of creators who imagine that's what women want. But there are a few examples of powerful male gendered characters representing both male power and female sexual desire.
More Thor? As a guy, I could live with that.
1 - Ironically, Avacyn is an artificial creature created by the wizard-vampire Sorin to protect his home from falling too far into darkness. This might say volumes itself, but this aspect of the character isn't emphasized on any card and is buried in the backstory, and by the time the set occurs, Avacyn is an independent character with her own agency.
1 - Ironically, Avacyn is an artificial creature created by the wizard-vampire Sorin to protect his home from falling too far into darkness. This might say volumes itself, but this aspect of the character isn't emphasized on any card and is buried in the backstory, and by the time the set occurs, Avacyn is an independent character with her own agency.
