This post is blowing up right now on the front page, and it lead me to the best new piece of evidence to refute the "Male Power Fantasy" argument: baldness. TL;DR at the bottom...

See, the argument about highly muscled game characters is that these characters are not supposed to be "sexy" to women. The fact that women find muscles sexy is secondary to the fact that large muscles make a man a good fighter. They say that these characters are a "Male Power Fantasy" and that the large muscles and small waists are meant to appeal to men.

Of course, if you ask women what they find sexy, they usually say "abs" or "muscular arms". Women find the a fighter's body type attractive, but because muscles are functional, it's sometimes difficult to determine the true intention of the character designer - is the male character meant to be functional or attractive.

Female characters tend to be sexy in fighting games. They look like good fighters, but usually have exaggerated feminine figures. Breasts don't help a fighter, and thus they are there to simply increase the attractiveness of a character.

So it got me thinking: is there an example of a trait that is added to male characters for no reason other than to make them attractive? Yes: Hair.

Women overwhelmingly prefer men with nice hair. I do concede that baldness can be attractive if carried properly, but there is no question that the majority prefer thick, full hair. I would even go so far to argue that hair plugs are the closest thing to a boob job that men can get.

And the greatest fighters of all time are disproportionately bald:

People think that this man, Fedor, is the greatest fighter ever.

Anderson Silva is the only other fighter who could make a claim to greatest of all time.

Other all-time greats include BJ Penn and Randy Couture, both well known for being bald.

Current and former champions like Demetrious Johnson, Robbie Lawler, Bas Rutten, and Junior Dos Santos have prominent hair loss.

Hell, even out-of-the-ring personalities like UFC President Dana White and commentator Joe Rogan are well known for being bald. Rogan is particularly interesting as he went bald, got a hair transplant, and then went bald a second time.

Hair loss is related to testosterone and thus it's not particularly surprising that so many great fighters have prominent hair loss.

And yet the men in fighting games consistently have impressive hair. Nice hair. Styled hair. This is particularly notable because hair is particularly difficult to make "look right" in games; it would be much easier to make them all bald. And it would be consistent with real male fighters in real life.

This samurai has hair that would be perfect for a hair product commercial.

This knight has clearly been using his "Pert Plus".

Why do these male characters have such perfect hair when great fighters are known for baldness? Because it makes them attractive. There is no other reason to give them such impressive hair. If you look at fighting game rosters (known for being the haven for buxom female fighters) male baldness is the rare exception and not at all the rule.

I would also like to emphasize that women, when asked about male body preference, cite muscular abs, arms, chest, and shoulders as they're favorite body parts. However, if game designers wanted to create the greatest fighter of all time, and not an exaggerated sexy character to excite straight women and gay men, that fighter would look like bald and not-particularly-chiseled Fedor rather than shredded and sexy Yun.

TL;DR - Pro fighters tend to be bald. Women find nice hair sexy and baldness unattractive. Fighting games have characters with nice hair for no reason other than to appeal superficially to female gamers... which is the same reason that female characters have nice breasts.

Edit: I reread my post and realized that I neglected to include this collage of the Soul Calibur roster and my picture of Joe Rogan was linked to a second photo of Dana White. Apologies.