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"Of the MMORPGs I've played, the one that had by far the most detailed and satisfying character creation with the most extensive options was Star Wars Galaxies. For the most part, it turned out to be a crap game, but I could've spent (and, if I recall correctly, did spend) hours tweaking my characters' chin- and nose-sliders. You might even remember Grrharr, my Wookiee character, whom I still miss. Most of the character species options (they're called 'races' in these games, but I'm going to call them species so we don't get confused with my rants on racism) were sufficiently animal-like that their sexiness was really a non-issue. Only the humans and Twi'leks (the ones with the long tentacle things coming from their heads, a couple of whom were dancers for Jabba the Hutt, that great unreconstructed misogynist oaf) were sexy by human standards, while the others were furry (Wookiees), fishy (Mon Calamari), reptilian (Trandoshan), or otherwise not sexbottish. Female players, who now make up 43% of gamers in the US, breathed a sigh of relief that they could make female characters who had no human sex characteristics whatsoever, who could even be - gasp! - a little bit chubby. In game, you could sort the wheat from the chaff, or rather the women gamers from the adolescent boys playing one-handed, because the former were largely not the ones playing skimpily clad Twi'lek dancers. That's not to say a woman can't enjoy being a tentacle-headed booty-shaker now and again, just that it's really, really nice to have a choice.

"Subsequently I started playing City Of Heroes, a MMORPG inspired by comic books. I can accept that superheroes might have to be physically fit, so I'm not lobbying for a paunch slider, and the majority of costume options for both sexes are spandex (with an acceptable number of non-revealing ones for women as well as men) but I see some glaring disparities between the options available for male and female characters. First, boobs come in sizes L and XL. I do like that you can be magnificent and statuesque, like Wonder Woman, and I made a character inspired by that. However, if I'm playing a skinny four-foot scrapper whose main defense is her agility, wouldn't it make sense that I might have an A cup? Also, I wanted to make a character called the Tattooed Lady who gets her powers from chemically-infused tattoos. I wanted to choose more and more tattoos for her as she progressed in skill level, only to find that the options for tattoos on women were limited to some cutesy facial decorations, such as stars, and a little smattering on the forearm. Male characters, in addition to these options, can get full sleeves, chest and back tattoos, at the very least. Also, at the gender selection screen, you can choose Male, Female or Huge. Far from being a third, androgynous gender option, Huge is in fact a super-muscular man with arms thicker than your waist and no neck to speak of. So actually, the options are Male, Female and Male, then? What about super-muscular women?