Hi
The other male smogon feminist here
I got ZERO fuckin problems with characters looking good. Midriffs are nice, clearly someone likes them a little too much, but that's just quirky. Also, one of my favorite characters, Leona, bit on the bulky side and that's nice.
Some of those links blatantly say that depictions of characters may come across as empowering to SOME women. If you've ever been to a convention, you can't say that's not true. One of the links is a pretty good defense of how LoL isn't sexist.
There's also whining that we don't get excessively weird and grotesque female characters but then they go on to specifically not count non-human women... one even says why don't we have a woman like Tryndamere... because he's not hot???
Obviously women should be MORE than just good to look at but I've always valued Riot's character designs in story and personality as well as visual design.
I realize that people are always going to say that something is sexist when you fill a piece of media with male and female characters who for the most part look attractive. And then they'll say that we make each gender attractive for different reasons. But that's not feminism. That's gender conformity. Because I'm a man, I can't possibly like beautiful male and female characters for the same reasons I like flowers and sunsets? It's called aestheticism. How is that something that has been lost in this dialogue when we're talking about art? Because I'm a man, any good looking male has to be made so that I can live vicariously through them... but what if I want to live vicariously through beautiful women that I'll never be? I honestly find this specific train of thought really fucked up and insulting at times. Yes, sexualization goes too far all the time, but sexuality is not a boogeyman at all.