The other day, I was watching a guy playing through Final Fantasy XIII for the first time. I have my own feelings about the game and its design, but I like watching people play through games for the first time. That feeling of experiencing something for the first time is always new and exciting, and I wanted to relive it vicariously through him.

Final Fantasy XIII has a cast of characters who all have their own experiences in the limelight. The most popular of the six playable characters, though, is Lightning Farron. A soldier in the Guardian Corps (effectively the army), Lightning is a stern, serious woman who wields a futuristic gunblade (it is both gun and blade at the same time) and fights against her fate.

Herein lies the problem: Lightning’s physical design.

When you look at Lightning, she looks as if the single slightest of breezes could knock her over. Her arms and legs are sticks, with little to no muscle mass. This directly contrasts with her chosen battle style of “flip all over the joint swinging your sword and looking awesome,” and her past backstory of being a soldier. Yes, it’s fair to say that not every woman has muscle mass the same way, but at the same time, considering the feats she pulls off in the game, both in and out of battle, you would expect something to show for it.

Then, there’s her costume. She wears a white sleeveless tunic over a brown turtleneck shirt, with a red cape and a brown skirt. There are straps and buckles and extra pockets all over the place, but I want to focus on her skirt. The skirt is remarkably short, to the point where when �the camera might even slightly be looking up, the designers had to implement the black void of modesty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying women shouldn’t wear short skirts. I’m talking about Lightning as a character, and why it doesn’t make sense for her to wear such a short skirt, both in terms of her character and her experiences as a soldier.

Other female characters of note include Vanille and Serah. Vanille is an enigmatic mage-type character who doesn’t seem like she’s a traditional warrior type. Her outfit, consisting of a sleeveless top and an asymmetrical length skirt and countless beaded thingamabobs, suits both her backstory and her character. Vanille may be versed in combat, but she is known as being a mage, which requires more swinging staves than swinging swords, and significantly less flipping. It makes sense for her to look a little waifish.

Serah is another example. Wearing a sleeveless blouse, a see-through jacket-vest, a short skirt, thigh highs and boots, she looks the part of your average civilian in this world. Because that’s what she is. A civilian. Just your average high school aged girl, living her life until things get weird, as they do in Final Fantasy games. She doesn’t look like she’s dressed for combat, or even expected to get into a fight at all.

But then we get to Lightning. Her outfit is actually a variant of the Guardian Corps uniform, sans leggings and silly hat. With that in mind, the implication of the story is that prior to the events, this is what Lightning would wear while soldiering, which included guard duty and dealing with any hostilities to the people. With both thoughts in mind, it leaves us with the idea of the Guardian Corps women left overexposed to the elements, risking their safety. After all, if I knew there was a non-zero chance I could be shot at or stabbed on any given day, I would want to cover the important arteries in my legs with something more substantial than some tights.

This sort of bad costume choice is a problem across Final Fantasy games. Consider Final Fantasy IX’s kingdom of Alexandria, and the knights and soldiers sworn to protecting their land. The male soldiers, as part of the Knights of Pluto, all have full body armor. However, the female soldiers, making up the majority of the army, wear effectively a single piece bathing suit. Even their general, General Beatrix, wears an impossibly short skirt and leggings, despite her ranking as a soldier and her appearing in a setting where she is doing work for the army, where she could at any point in time take a knife to the leg.

Or consider the female SeeD soldiers of Final Fantasy VIII. While their dress uniform is just that, just for dress, while they are students, they wear impossibly short skirts while performing military actions, in a world with swords, guns and gunswords (Final Fantasy is weird, alright?). Consider one of the main characters of Final Fantasy VI, Terra Branford. She’s sent into battle riding a giant magical robot wearing a flimsy dress and tights, while her two soldier escorts have full body armor. Consider Ashe of Final Fantasy XII, the long-lost princess who goes into war to fight for her country in a mini-skirt.

The problem is not that women are wearing short skirts. The problem is that people keep designing women in short skirts in impossibly impractical settings. When I go out to garden in my own yard; I go out with long pants because there are bugs, and I don’t want to get sick from a mosquito bite. When we send our soldiers out to war, they wear armor and helmets and such to protect them.

Look, I get it. They’re video game characters. We’re dealing with a world with magical giant yellow ostriches you can ride around on, alien menaces, magic, wizardry, demons, and who knows what else. It shouldn’t matter what they wear. But it really does. It sends a message that ultimately, their lives aren’t terribly valued, because it’s more important for them to look appealing to the straight male eye than it is for them to be practical, well designed characters.

And you know? I wouldn’t be as likely to complain if there were male characters in the same world who effectively wore nothing. If Snow from Final Fantasy XIII didn’t have a shirt on under his puffy trench coat while he’s actively being shot at, I would not complain about Lightning’s skirt. If Adelbert Steiner, captain of the Knights of Pluto in Final Fantasy IX, had considerably shorter metal shorts on, I wouldn’t complain about Beatrix’s skirt and leggings. If the male SeeD students had cutouts in the shape of hearts on their butts, I wouldn’t complain about the short skirts. If Locke from Final Fantasy VI had a giant sticker on his forehead that said “SHOOT ME HERE,” I wouldn’t complain about Terra’s flimsy dress.

It’s not about being a prude, or being judgmental. It’s a matter of hoping for the same standard of fairness for both male and female designs.