Prototyping Custom Female Armor - Part 1. Identifying needs and issues with current armor.
Some initial study into female armor for HEMA. What else do we start with than to see what is currently out there and done in the past. Do we even need to improve the designs out there?
Turns out, ABSOLUTELY. HEMA females are stuck in some weird corner of ignoring what's already been solved for some reason; I suspect this is in part because there is overall very little information about female armor building, and in part because people are building inferior products.
From what I can gather, there seems to be a severe lack of people actually trying to address the needs of a female body in armor. There are only two schools of thought right now, and all of those only address ONE issue of females in armor--which is truly a non-issue and should have been quickly figured out and dismissed based on historical designs. Allow me digress a bit and explain.
Initial forays into what was going on with female armor from a historical perspective (an attempt to see what has been done in the past) lead me to these points:
1. Historically speaking, females overwhelmingly did NOT wear armor into battles because they did not fight, and usually disguised themselves as men when they did and used men's armor, so it's a moot point to try and be historically accurate because there is little precedence for this. (I'm inclined to believe this is, by numbers, true.)
2. Even if females did wear female armor it doesn't mean it was truly designed with women's needs in mind as not even men's needs were typically fully addressed. (Plausible. Ergonomics weren't really a thing back then.) We need only look at modern armor women are known to be wearing to see that this trend rings true today.
3. Cupped boob armor does not mean it was designed for combat and could have been ceremonial. This is very much so to distinguish the woman as such and be decorative rather than functional.
Queen Isabella, doing her damnedest to prove the first point wrong in Concept of Woman v3. Still, her armor is not designed for her truest safety in mind, going for a womanly look over practicality.
This brings me to my initial point above: people are obsessed with boob armor no matter what. It overshadows any needs a female has with armor, like the placement of the shoulders, how the weight distributes, and the apparent intricacies of protecting the hips and pelvis. They carry children, and sometimes don't know initially that they are. They have, sometimes, insane measurement differences between the chest, waist, and hips. None of these are discussed at ALL. All of it is about the boobs.
Allow me, then, to start this discussion, and to start it with laying to rest this odd obsession.
So we don't have much to go on historically. That's okay. This is 2018. I'm a woman in 2018 fighting different things than back then and need specific gear for this HEMA thing. We have artists, manufacturing, new age technology, and our sport is a unique one. Unfortunately, what we have right now also sucks because of the aforementioned emphasis and obsession people have with boobs. Spoiler alert: This is not the only, nor most important, subject and men have already solved this issue in their own armor for important physiological reasons. However, I shall lay it to rest and say plainly and loudly: Cupped, individualized boobs are NOT the right answer for women's needs, and this myth needs to die so that more important things can be discussed.
So why are some people still all about the cupped boobs? Why is this the dominating selling point in female armor in HEMA?
Contrary to popular belief “Boob Plate” armor wont kill you | Suitably Bored
A Pro Counterpoint On Hollywood's Boob Armor Obsession
http://pbthistoricalfencing.com/products/hema-protectors/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlyEwbjIcE8 (Spoiler alert: Its all about boobs still.)
HEMA seems to be in this camp based on the gratuitous use of the white HEMA plasti-bras worn as hard protection. I don't blame them. The reality is, we are likely not going to die from our sport. There is not a threatening amount of violence in it. While it hurts to get hit in the chest, any amount of hard protection placed there will be sufficient for tournaments and sparring. The reality is, people who are vouching for the modern hard protection out there are, technically, completely right.
Of course, this is where I must come in anyways and say, "Nope."
It’s Time to Retire “Boob Plate” Armor. Because It Would Kill You. | Tor.com
Enough With The Boob Armor, Hollywood — Bleeding Cool News
Boob Plate Armor Would Be a Deathtrap | The Mary Sue
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDr...r_is_hammered/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZJGvLF8tEU
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/r...men/x/12920655 (Modern designs being produced right now in other sports.)
https://kotaku.com/5868925/the-probl...ho-makes-armor
(Before you get to judging this link as a proponent of individual cups... While it did promote slide-in individual cup protections for larger chested women, this does not interfere with my main points at all does not make any claims that plates with molded boobs are a good design. As to the point about hard protection being optional for HEMA, I disagree entirely, though I am in the camp that believes women should be wearing cups as well.)
https://hemanews.com/2015/06/17/chest-protection-the-nitty-gritty-about-titties/
Let me be very clear here: Individual cups are NOT going to be as protective as an outward curve away from the sternum and softer parts of the chest. Larger women, I will concede, might want a stiff bra insert for added protection underneath all of this, but otherwise? All of these boob cups are not doing women any services, but have the illusion of working just fine because of the nature of the sport itself. The reality is: You are better protected with a plastic rain barrel heat molded into an outward curve for a fraction of the price of those bright white plastic sheets with what looks like Austin-Powers-Style-Tit-Cups-just-waiting-for-bullet-firing-nipples-to-pop-out.
I'm not one for settling for a proven inferior design simply because it's happened to work so far. A serious blow to the sternum will still cause very bad injuries, and we are fighting people 2-3x our weight class in HEMA. We don't always know who we are fighting, or if they are going to truly pull their hits appropriately. (I have personally been to a tournament where a woman was in the Top 3 fighters in the women's tournament, then turned around and entered the beginner's tournament despite not being a beginner out of intimidation. While I cannot speak for why she did this, I am sure the weight and size class differences are not to be ignored entirely here.) Commotio Cordis is a real thing. The sternum still needs real attention addressed to it. Plus, even if it didn't... It hurts! Why not protect properly against hits and walk away from a tournament not feeling like you were hit by a truck? Men's armor historically showed a curve away from all the vital organs for good reason, it should be no different for women--though the design itself might be.
On top of that, molded cups FORCES a female to push the hard armor closer to the skin instead of on top of the padding. Proper thick padding will not mold into the individual cups. When did you ever see a male knight with his gambeson on top of a hunk of metal?
This is where I am ending the discussion on boobs. There is a clear, superior design out there already. It is, I must emphasize again, also not at all the most important aspects to highlight on female armor. It just gets the most attention. I guess people just like boobs, who knew?
Something I DO have experience with is women wearing modern protective gear and the issues that arise from improperly fit and designed gear.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/...uniforms_n.htm
(The military tested out female-centric armor. Turns out, shorter men and women alike needed different pieces.)
The basic takeaways from this assessment were the things I experienced:
1. A single sheet garment of any sort limited range of motion.
2. Anything too long would numb the legs in lunging/sitting positions and cause decreased range of motion. (This is less of an issue in HEMA, but we do have very low lunging positions and it is important to note that if we can design something that allows this without bumping into the thigh that'd be great.)
3. We do have narrower figures that are often unreflected in the cut. Conversely, we often have wider hips that we have to ensure the size fits over (because this is 1 piece being created), creating far too large garments limiting mobility being worn in an attempt at protecting the bits that need protecting.
4. Our hips are constantly hit against and being damaged as the majority of the garment's weight rests on and shifts against them as a result of 3.
To us (my instructor/armor builder/all-around badass Loch and myself), based on our experiences with military IBAs and protective gear, and based on the limitations of the current gear on the market, the way to address the issues females are coming across in HEMA is a multi-faceted approach:
1. Multiple pieces in a layered design. An outer, upper chest protection set, with a lower belted set. (And plenty of small details in-between.) These two things can interplay and overlap; they create mobility and separate the weight vs relying on a single piece to be held by the shoulders or rest on the hips.
2. Stopping the chest protection at the waist where the body bends more, the taper inwards to the waist being the endpoint.
3. Tapering the armor in the armpits and shoulders to the smaller shape of the upper body to allow for mobility in the arms and shoulders. Leather is a fantastic medium for this because as you find small binds, you can just literally slice more sections away.
4. NOT putting an unnecessary separation deep between the breasts, but providing the outward curve and slopes necessary to fit the female without taking away the necessary padding underneath. We are at this time unsure if we need to add anything here, but if we do anything, it will be placing a small foam-and-gel insert piece inside the armor. This might maintain the shape of the armor in the long term, and provide some added cushion to potential thrusts. We will revisit this point later with prototyping.
5. The curvature of the belted piece making a distinct gap in the hip bones. This will result in a more hour-glass shape exaggerated compared to the chest piece, but more importantly, it will protect the bones themselves and there is no chest piece to bump against them either. We might be adding padded gel in spots to help cushion harder hits, a point we will visit with prototyping. This is more for me personally, as I have chronic hip problems.
6. Armor customized to the woman's shape and dimensions. The reality is, women have serious differences and swings in measurements that men just tend to not have.
We're not re-inventing the wheel here, but certainly, this subject is not one talked about in depth or given proper space, and so I decided to detail each step of the process during the creation of my own armor pieces so that women in the HEMA community might be able to make use of it.
We're designing this armor out of leather primarily with fur, gel, and foam being potential secondary materials.
Turns out, ABSOLUTELY. HEMA females are stuck in some weird corner of ignoring what's already been solved for some reason; I suspect this is in part because there is overall very little information about female armor building, and in part because people are building inferior products.
From what I can gather, there seems to be a severe lack of people actually trying to address the needs of a female body in armor. There are only two schools of thought right now, and all of those only address ONE issue of females in armor--which is truly a non-issue and should have been quickly figured out and dismissed based on historical designs. Allow me digress a bit and explain.
Initial forays into what was going on with female armor from a historical perspective (an attempt to see what has been done in the past) lead me to these points:
1. Historically speaking, females overwhelmingly did NOT wear armor into battles because they did not fight, and usually disguised themselves as men when they did and used men's armor, so it's a moot point to try and be historically accurate because there is little precedence for this. (I'm inclined to believe this is, by numbers, true.)
2. Even if females did wear female armor it doesn't mean it was truly designed with women's needs in mind as not even men's needs were typically fully addressed. (Plausible. Ergonomics weren't really a thing back then.) We need only look at modern armor women are known to be wearing to see that this trend rings true today.
3. Cupped boob armor does not mean it was designed for combat and could have been ceremonial. This is very much so to distinguish the woman as such and be decorative rather than functional.
Queen Isabella, doing her damnedest to prove the first point wrong in Concept of Woman v3. Still, her armor is not designed for her truest safety in mind, going for a womanly look over practicality.
This brings me to my initial point above: people are obsessed with boob armor no matter what. It overshadows any needs a female has with armor, like the placement of the shoulders, how the weight distributes, and the apparent intricacies of protecting the hips and pelvis. They carry children, and sometimes don't know initially that they are. They have, sometimes, insane measurement differences between the chest, waist, and hips. None of these are discussed at ALL. All of it is about the boobs.
Allow me, then, to start this discussion, and to start it with laying to rest this odd obsession.
So we don't have much to go on historically. That's okay. This is 2018. I'm a woman in 2018 fighting different things than back then and need specific gear for this HEMA thing. We have artists, manufacturing, new age technology, and our sport is a unique one. Unfortunately, what we have right now also sucks because of the aforementioned emphasis and obsession people have with boobs. Spoiler alert: This is not the only, nor most important, subject and men have already solved this issue in their own armor for important physiological reasons. However, I shall lay it to rest and say plainly and loudly: Cupped, individualized boobs are NOT the right answer for women's needs, and this myth needs to die so that more important things can be discussed.
So why are some people still all about the cupped boobs? Why is this the dominating selling point in female armor in HEMA?
Contrary to popular belief “Boob Plate” armor wont kill you | Suitably Bored
A Pro Counterpoint On Hollywood's Boob Armor Obsession
http://pbthistoricalfencing.com/products/hema-protectors/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlyEwbjIcE8 (Spoiler alert: Its all about boobs still.)
HEMA seems to be in this camp based on the gratuitous use of the white HEMA plasti-bras worn as hard protection. I don't blame them. The reality is, we are likely not going to die from our sport. There is not a threatening amount of violence in it. While it hurts to get hit in the chest, any amount of hard protection placed there will be sufficient for tournaments and sparring. The reality is, people who are vouching for the modern hard protection out there are, technically, completely right.
Of course, this is where I must come in anyways and say, "Nope."
It’s Time to Retire “Boob Plate” Armor. Because It Would Kill You. | Tor.com
Enough With The Boob Armor, Hollywood — Bleeding Cool News
Boob Plate Armor Would Be a Deathtrap | The Mary Sue
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDr...r_is_hammered/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZJGvLF8tEU
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/r...men/x/12920655 (Modern designs being produced right now in other sports.)
https://kotaku.com/5868925/the-probl...ho-makes-armor
(Before you get to judging this link as a proponent of individual cups... While it did promote slide-in individual cup protections for larger chested women, this does not interfere with my main points at all does not make any claims that plates with molded boobs are a good design. As to the point about hard protection being optional for HEMA, I disagree entirely, though I am in the camp that believes women should be wearing cups as well.)
https://hemanews.com/2015/06/17/chest-protection-the-nitty-gritty-about-titties/
Let me be very clear here: Individual cups are NOT going to be as protective as an outward curve away from the sternum and softer parts of the chest. Larger women, I will concede, might want a stiff bra insert for added protection underneath all of this, but otherwise? All of these boob cups are not doing women any services, but have the illusion of working just fine because of the nature of the sport itself. The reality is: You are better protected with a plastic rain barrel heat molded into an outward curve for a fraction of the price of those bright white plastic sheets with what looks like Austin-Powers-Style-Tit-Cups-just-waiting-for-bullet-firing-nipples-to-pop-out.
I'm not one for settling for a proven inferior design simply because it's happened to work so far. A serious blow to the sternum will still cause very bad injuries, and we are fighting people 2-3x our weight class in HEMA. We don't always know who we are fighting, or if they are going to truly pull their hits appropriately. (I have personally been to a tournament where a woman was in the Top 3 fighters in the women's tournament, then turned around and entered the beginner's tournament despite not being a beginner out of intimidation. While I cannot speak for why she did this, I am sure the weight and size class differences are not to be ignored entirely here.) Commotio Cordis is a real thing. The sternum still needs real attention addressed to it. Plus, even if it didn't... It hurts! Why not protect properly against hits and walk away from a tournament not feeling like you were hit by a truck? Men's armor historically showed a curve away from all the vital organs for good reason, it should be no different for women--though the design itself might be.
On top of that, molded cups FORCES a female to push the hard armor closer to the skin instead of on top of the padding. Proper thick padding will not mold into the individual cups. When did you ever see a male knight with his gambeson on top of a hunk of metal?
This is where I am ending the discussion on boobs. There is a clear, superior design out there already. It is, I must emphasize again, also not at all the most important aspects to highlight on female armor. It just gets the most attention. I guess people just like boobs, who knew?
Something I DO have experience with is women wearing modern protective gear and the issues that arise from improperly fit and designed gear.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/...uniforms_n.htm
(The military tested out female-centric armor. Turns out, shorter men and women alike needed different pieces.)
The basic takeaways from this assessment were the things I experienced:
1. A single sheet garment of any sort limited range of motion.
2. Anything too long would numb the legs in lunging/sitting positions and cause decreased range of motion. (This is less of an issue in HEMA, but we do have very low lunging positions and it is important to note that if we can design something that allows this without bumping into the thigh that'd be great.)
3. We do have narrower figures that are often unreflected in the cut. Conversely, we often have wider hips that we have to ensure the size fits over (because this is 1 piece being created), creating far too large garments limiting mobility being worn in an attempt at protecting the bits that need protecting.
4. Our hips are constantly hit against and being damaged as the majority of the garment's weight rests on and shifts against them as a result of 3.
To us (my instructor/armor builder/all-around badass Loch and myself), based on our experiences with military IBAs and protective gear, and based on the limitations of the current gear on the market, the way to address the issues females are coming across in HEMA is a multi-faceted approach:
1. Multiple pieces in a layered design. An outer, upper chest protection set, with a lower belted set. (And plenty of small details in-between.) These two things can interplay and overlap; they create mobility and separate the weight vs relying on a single piece to be held by the shoulders or rest on the hips.
2. Stopping the chest protection at the waist where the body bends more, the taper inwards to the waist being the endpoint.
3. Tapering the armor in the armpits and shoulders to the smaller shape of the upper body to allow for mobility in the arms and shoulders. Leather is a fantastic medium for this because as you find small binds, you can just literally slice more sections away.
4. NOT putting an unnecessary separation deep between the breasts, but providing the outward curve and slopes necessary to fit the female without taking away the necessary padding underneath. We are at this time unsure if we need to add anything here, but if we do anything, it will be placing a small foam-and-gel insert piece inside the armor. This might maintain the shape of the armor in the long term, and provide some added cushion to potential thrusts. We will revisit this point later with prototyping.
5. The curvature of the belted piece making a distinct gap in the hip bones. This will result in a more hour-glass shape exaggerated compared to the chest piece, but more importantly, it will protect the bones themselves and there is no chest piece to bump against them either. We might be adding padded gel in spots to help cushion harder hits, a point we will visit with prototyping. This is more for me personally, as I have chronic hip problems.
6. Armor customized to the woman's shape and dimensions. The reality is, women have serious differences and swings in measurements that men just tend to not have.
We're not re-inventing the wheel here, but certainly, this subject is not one talked about in depth or given proper space, and so I decided to detail each step of the process during the creation of my own armor pieces so that women in the HEMA community might be able to make use of it.
We're designing this armor out of leather primarily with fur, gel, and foam being potential secondary materials.
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