Incidentally, it is my understanding that the reason Wizards changed the cover artwork had nothing to do with the female character. Rather, it was changed because several European distributors thought the male tiefling would bring up old stereotypes about the game being associated with devil worship. As such, I think it’s difficult to argue Wizards was trying to appease those offended by the portrayal of the female character in the original cover artwork, since that wasn’t the reason they changed the artwork in the first place.

As far as your comment about the female character on the front cover of the PHB not being white, I should like to point out that neither is the image on the front cover of Mirabella magazine. That image was created from the features of six models from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Nevertheless, I think you would find that if you gave either woman blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, they would not look at all out of place.

In any event, the primary focus of my blog entry isn’t about the character’s ethnic background (whatever that may be). Rather, the primary focus is on the portrayal of women in Dungeons & Dragons fantasy artwork as a whole, and how that portrayal resonates with the points raised in Jean Kilbourne’s movie. If you think that the exclusive portrayal of women that only represent 5% of the population in media and advertising isn’t a problem, or that the sexualization of violence towards women in media and advertising is fine, or that portraying women of color as animals in media and advertising isn’t a societal comment on their supposed lack of humanity, then I would say we have something we can legitimately disagree on. However, let’s just be clear on what it is that we’re disagreeing about. That’s all I’m saying.

You would be even more upset to see what was planned as the PHB cover (http://1d4chan.org/images/6/6c/4theditionOPHB.jpg). Not only is she neither European or African (there are other races, you know), but she is guarding her male companion. I’ll leave it to you to decide if her breasts are of a politically correct size.

What the PHB cover does imply, and you completely fail to mention, is that rather than standing behind the meat shield, the artist has placed her beside it. A completely out-of-genre situation, which can be explained one of two ways:
1. The artist has taken pains not to offend easily-slighted women by having her in a position no fragile arcane character would ever willingly be (compare to the original cover).
2. She is an idiot.

So, if teachers assume boys to be better than girls at maths, then boys will, in general, fare better than girls.

From what I remember, girls do have a higher average and lower variation, so that there are more boys who are really good or really bad at math. This all applies in Finland, maybe elsewhere.

This is great. Thanks for writing it up. Onward to part II…