Why is the argument against fanservice always "you degenerate virgins need to go meet real women"? I mean, I've been with my wife for 25 years and have two kids. I may be a degenerate, but I'm not a virgin, and I'm in a long term, committed relationship with a female human being. Truth be told, I'm almost certainly more well adjusted, sexually, than the people arguing for less fanservice.
If you wanted to be more truthful in your argument against fanservice, it would look something more like:
I have ISSUES. Because I am incapable or incompetent, I'm going to FORCE everyone else to deal with my INSECURITIES so that I never have to spend a MOMENT in self reflection and understand why I TRULY feel the things that I feel, which is: I also think fanservice is SEXY, but I'm AFRAID that if I were to ever ADMIT this, it would make me look WEAK and like the VIRGIN I accuse everyone else of being. By DENYING my true NATURE, I see myself as strong and virtuous, despite looking like a FUCKING IDIOT to normal, well adjusted people.
The argument is always to run down other people because of some feeling of superiority.
You need to get out and talk to a REAL woman like a REAL man. Haha. Feck off.
Like you said, that probably is an overcompensation to hide some insecurities.
I think most of us understand that we will not end up with some super-hot hollywood actress, probably couldn't even snag a middling Instagram model and that's fine. There's no shame in saying I am attracted to women that would not even give me the time of day. No shame in realizing your place in the grand scheme and accepting the closest you'll get is "just looking". So long as you treat the women in your life with care and respect you can have a wee glance at hotties once in a while.
Knowing your place is better than pretending that it's actually really pathetic to be attracted to hot women while trying to impress some blue-haired, diabetic, hambeast with how much you hate objectification.
Some lads can't handle it though so they overcompensate BIG TIME with a big show of how much they care about portrayals of women in media while also making a show of how women can also do whatever they want.
Don't you dare be looking at hot ladies, that's immature. If a lady wants to make a big public show of being hot? Well don't you DARE question that.
I always laughed at Kotaku for doing this thing where they'd have writers bemoaning the fact that women in games are over-sexualized but at the same time they'll be running cosplay articles where women are dressed up like the over-sexualized characters of yesteryear.
You can almost see them running "Jade's new look in MK11 shows how the industry is growing up" right alongside "check out this awesome old-school Jade cosplay from famed cosplayer Bigtitties McGee".
On one hand we need to cover up women in games and all you virgin nerds need to get with the program.
On the other hand you'd better respect the rights of cosplayers to dress however they want.
Mixed messages.
I wonder if it's grounded in the idea of consent.
The cosplayer can wear whatever she likes and is not obligated to cover up because her body her choice. Fine.
The fictional character, on the other hand, can't consent to being "forced" to wear a sexy outfit so that's not cool. Maybe?