Escher Girls

Float like a butterfly, Sting like a WTF!?

This is a blog to archive and showcase the prevalence of certain ways women are depicted in illustrated pop media, such as how women are posed, drawn, distorted, and/or sexualized out of context, often in ridiculous, impossible or disturbing ways that sacrifice storytelling.

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Thoughts & Opinions from Commenters, Disqus Mods, & Submitters are their own & do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of this site.

contact: eschergirls@gmail.com

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menu screen for Dragon Awaken saying "Select Gender: Four Skill Styles. Freely Switch" with a white haired man in full armor, next to him is a white haired woman in boob armor & exposed armpits

Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/27/two-genders-armor-and-boobs

Ah yes, the two video game genders: fully armored and boob window.  Although… sexy exposed armpits are a new one… so points for creativity.

(Ad for Dragon Awaken, Game Hollywood & Global Genom Corporate)

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Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/27/gaming-mags-1-weird-trick-get-your-girlfriend-do-what-you-want

From my friend Jess Morrisette on Twitter:

The May 2000 issue of PC Accelerator encouraged readers to “take these next two pages, cut them out, and slyly insert them into your wife/girlfriend/sister/mom’s copy of Cosmo.” This was a PC gaming magazine.

And further commentary from Jess:

I bet the editorial staff still has occasional shoulder pain from all the high fives they gave each other while writing this.

Not super on topic, but relevant to representation of women in gaming and gaming magazines.

I had to transcribe this and I literally hate every sentence and word. Obligatory fatphobic joke, of course, and uh… I don’t know why they did the girlfriend making out with sister thing but okay…

It’s soooo painful to read, it’s not even well-written whether the humor is your thing or not. Also 44DD? Somebody doesn’t know how bra sizes work… (it’s a US magazine so presumably that’s a US size that they think means small body and big breasts).

(As mentioned in previous posts, PC Accelerator was meant to be a Maxim styled humour magazine for the gamer set). They also did that “Age of Consent II” faux ad.

Full transcription below:

Page 1:

Top of page reads: guy spy

Top left:

Male Mind Reading
We asked 100 guys what they’d think if they caught their girlfriend orally pleasuring their sister.
19% said my girlfriend and my sister are pretty much the same person (all of these men were from the “Deep South”)
35% said whatever floats her boat, man, as long as I don’t have to touch my sister - she has cooties
46% said “eew” and got really uncomfortable

[accompanying photo of 2 blonde women ostensibly naked and kissing each other]

Bottom left:

his dating behaviour decoded
Double Standards: Why they’re so cool
Unless you have a history of being irrationally jealous (like all women), chances are your suspicions are well-founded, and your man is probably boinking every girl who looks at him. But what’s so wrong with that? ACcording to Dr. Weliskopffernuegun (author of There’s Nothing Wrong With Being His Bitch), “It is quite normal and healthy for men to lust after every woman they meet. If you place restrictions like monogamy on your man, then he will just eventually resent you.” However this doesn’t mean you can go around and have sex with every man you meet - that is just wrong. There are also great advantages to a philandering mate. He rarely demands sex and he feels extreme guilt. Take advantage of his guilt to land expensive jewelry without having to put out - the best of both worlds.

[accompanying illustration of the legs of 3 women standing around the legs of a man]

Right column:

Weird Signs He Wants You
[Accompanying photo of a man with long black hair and beard looking at the audience with the caption: “Check out the I-think-you’re-sexy subleties that a man just can’t hide.”]

Crush Clue 1: “Check out his lips - is he pressing them against yours excessively?” asks Martin Lloyd-Clueless, author of Not So Secret Secrets of Sexual Body Language (Useless Press, 1996). When aroused, a man’s kisser becomes sensitive and he usually attempts to stick his tongue down your throat.

Crush Clue 2: Does he constantly make comments like, “You wanna do it” or “Nice rack baby”? According to exhaustive research done by Lloyd-Clueless, comments like this indicate a guy is interested in you for more than your stunning conversational skills.

Crush Clue 3: Zoom in on his package. Is it bulging? If a man spots eye-pleasing prey, his animal instincts kick in and he gets “wood”. The better to stick you with, my dear.

Crush Clue 4: You’re in a bar, it’s closing time and you are the only girl in a 40-foot radius. Accoring to Dr. Wylie (author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Idiots), “At this time every man in that bar wants you, no matter how disgustingly fat and ugly you may be.” So pick your mate and … uhh … mate.

Crush Clue 5: Has he ever bought you anything? A drink, a salad … it doesn’t really matter. Wylie states, “Men have a close association between their wallets and their penises, and they wouldn’t spend a dime on you unless they thought it gave them a better chance at getting laid.”

Bottom of page: “Men have a close association between their wallets and their penises.” - The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Idiots

MAY 2000 COSHMOPOLITAN [sic] 103

Page 2:

top of page reads: why don’t you…

top left:

…look like this?
Face facts: if you don’t look like this, then you are ugly.

[accompanying photo of a thin white woman in lingerie lying on a chair in black and white]

top right:

…grab him a beer!
Why? Why the hell not? He’s thirsty and the lovely collection of hops and barley is just what he wants. For variation on this winning tip, you can also bring him several beers, bring him beers in the buff, and make him some food to go with the beer. Get to it.

[accompanying photo of a thin white woman in a bikini pouring a pitcher of beer into a cup]

middle:

…wake him up with a hummer
Not only will it make your man happy, which is always important, but scientists have also proven that a man’s … uhh … man milk makes for a tasty, low-calorie, fat-burning, life-enriching treat. New studies have shown that frequent falatio actually reduces your chance of cancer, gets rid of unwanted cellulite, eliminates the needs for periods, and lessens cravings for chocolate. Isn’t it time you started going down?

[next to the paragraph are a small photo of the back of an overweight woman with the word “Before” next to large photo of a thin woman in a bikini lying down on a beach with the word “after”]

bottom left:

…shut the hell up!
Silence is golden and no, he doesn’t want to hear about your day at work (unless of course, it involves hot woman-on-woman sex), your problems, or any of that other trivial shit. Shut it already!

[accompanying photo of a blonde white woman with her mouth open and the caption: “What men hear: "blah, blah, blah”“]

…realize that bigger is better
That skinny no-boob Kate Moss look is so five minutes ago. Sporting anything smaller than a 44 DD bra size is an insult to the women who pioneered much-needed breast augmentation research. Besides, guys love big ta-tas … and maybe you will too if given half a chance.

[Accompanying photo of a blonde white woman with a tight top over large breasts pressed against her body with the caption: "Almost there”]

Bottom of page reads “104 COSHMOPOLITAN [sic] MAY 2000”

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Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/04/red-sonjas-having-nightmare-where-you-show-work-without-underwear

Red Sonja forgot to put on her underwear before going into battle and she’s showing us the boobs and butt pose she’ll twist us into if we don’t stop staring.

(Unknown Comic Books variant cover of Red Sonja: Age of Chaos #4, Dynamite Entertainment)

menu screen for Legacy of Queens showing a blonde pale girl with angel wings in a white bikini top and bottom standing in a boobs and butt pose with her back bent at over 90 degrees
menu screen for Legacy of Queens showing a blonde pale girl with angel wings in a blue bikini top and bottom standing in a boobs and butt pose with her back bent at over 90 degrees

Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/23/legacy-queens-being-rubber-boobs-and-butt-centaur

A sexy Tetris block got stuck in quicksand and if you pull her out you become queen.  That’s what the game is about right?

(Screenshots of Legacy of Queens, 101XP)

promo art of Breath of Fire 2's Katt as a Shaman, long blonde haired purple girl with long pointy ears with red colouring covering her breasts and side down to her butt, she is in a boobs & butt pose

Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/23/boobs-and-butt-katt-would-you-not-stare-plzkthx

Katt would very much like you to stop looking at her doing the boobs and butt pose while she cleans up the ketchup spill on her body, thank you very much.

(Art of Shamanized Katt from Breath of Fire 2, Capcom)

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Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/video/2021/08/19/update-infamous-melancholy-haruhi-suzumiya-leg-swap

Okay since we’re on the topic of Escher Legs That Break Your Brain, I was going back and fixing animated gifs that were broken during the move to the dedicated site and came across the infamous leg swap from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya where the character turns around but her legs don’t physically switch places, her right just becomes her left and vice versa. (This wasn’t actually an Escher Girl, just an animation goof).

I thought I’d post it again since I had to upload it to the site anyway, and also add an update!

In the original post way back when somebody left a Disqus comment saying that the gif was edited to remove frames & the original didn’t have this error. It turns out this isn’t true! The original did have the error but it was fixed for the DVD and dub releases.

From the Anime News Network’s Encyclopedia entry on The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya:

In episode 8 (10th episode in chronological order) where Haruhi and Kyon are talking outside their rooms (at 4:20), we see Haruhi’s legs as she paces. She pauses and turns to Kyon but her legs turn individually, her right leg becoming her left and her left becoming her right. This was fixed in the DVD version and dub.

I’ve included the before and after clips so you can see the fix they did (video clips from a Reddit thread on this same topic)

Note to my dear tumblr readers: Because Tumblr only lets me upload one video per post, I could not put both videos here, so you only see the animated gif illustrating the error and the fixed video, if you want to see the gif and both videos please click through to the main Escher Girls site.

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Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/19/legendary-quantum-schodinger-girl-appears

the-pigeon-king submitted:

Hadn’t gotten this ad on Tumblr before. At first I was like “whatever horny gamer bait” but then I looked at her hips….her skeleton confounds me

At first glance I was SO CONFUSED about what was going on with her legs. It’s all the frills. It looked like her legs were just really pushed over to our left side and just squeezed together with her panties between them but then it also looked like there was another leg on the right? (Images with rough edits to show the way my brain was looking at it). Like she was in two positions and once and maybe this was the fabled Quantum Escher Girl? (Maybe I need a new site called Schrödinger Girls…)

But then after staring at this thing for way longer than I wanted to, I think the ruffle that’s also merging into her skirt (which is what makes it confusing) is meant to be either her skirt pushed to the side or something like an apron that’s falling between her legs which is dividing up her left leg (the one on our right) and the skirt is just drawn really weird. I think.

It’d be more interesting if she was a quantum girl though…

(Ad for Girl Cafe Gun, Seasun)

ad for Dragon Awaken with text: "design your own goddess" & a blue haired girl with breasts that look like they're coming out of her collar, and a red haired red armor bikini girl with a boobwindow


Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/19/collarboobs-vs-boob-window-dawn-sexy

Design your own goddess!  Will you make Collarboobs Sorceress or Boob Window Demon with Cup Holders Covering Her NIpples?  The choices are endless!

(Ad for Dragon Awaken, Game Hollywood & Global Genom Corporate)

ad for Legacy of Queens with a dark haired pale skinned elf girl wearing nothing but a string bikini top and hiked up lace underwear, with her hand on her hips, showing her butt at the audience

Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/19/help-i-accidentally-superglued-my-hand-my-butt

TFW your bikini is tied too tight against your breasts but you can’t fix it because you’ve also accidentally superglued your hand to your butt and you’re trying to wrench it off without throwing out your back, but also there’s a photoshoot for a video game going on.

(Ad for Legacy of Queens, 101XP)

card art of Magisa from Rage of Bahamut moblile game, she is in a witch outfit with black stockings, and in a boobs and butt pose from a below angle

Originally published at: https://eschergirls.com/photo/2021/08/16/boobs-and-butt-upskirt-angle

POV before she stomps you for trying to get a boobs and butt angle from under her dress.

(Card art of Magisa from Rage of Bahamut, CyGames)