Image: Tomb Raider (YouTube) Long-argued is the theory that embodying a lithe and thin Lara Croft in Tomb Raider might make women gamers feel worse about their own bodies. It’s an argument that women like me have used to justify the importance of adding more realistically-proportioned, less-sexualized characters to our favorite games. Yet according to a new study by researchers at Stetson University and Fairleigh Dickinson University, playing sexualized female characters in games may not have as great an impact on women’s body satisfaction as conventional wisdom holds. “Arguing that, at the very least, there ought to be more diverse games and ones that present stronger and less sexualized female characters makes sense,” said the study’s co-author Chris Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson, to Kotaku. “But whenever an advocacy platform develops not just saying ‘We ought to do something because this is the right thing to do,’ but we drift into claims of casual harm that don’t ...