The ‘One Piece’ Problem: When Female Freedom Ends at the Waistline
In recent years, One Piece has inspired more than just cosplay and fan fiction in Indonesia. At youth-led protests, demonstrators have waved the Straw Hat Pirates’ Jolly Roger—Luffy’s flag—as a symbol of rebellion against injustice and government overreach. The story of pirates fighting for freedom has become shorthand for resistance.
But behind this beloved tale of friendship and freedom lies a long-standing contradiction. While the crew fights to liberate the world, One Piece still visually traps its female characters in narrow, often objectifying standards of beauty. These women are strong in story, but their strength is often undermined by how their bodies are presented—curvy, nearly identical, and tailored to a male gaze.
Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, has always included powerful female characters. From Boa Hancock, the Pirate Empress whose beauty literally turns men to stone, to Nami, the Straw Hat navigator with unmatched intelligence and command of the weather, the women in One Piece are far from one-dimensional.
They are not damsels in distress. They are fighters, leaders, and thinkers. Even when their stories involve romance, it’s rarely the centerpiece of their arc. Instead, they are portrayed as having their own dreams and dilemmas.
But their physical appearance is another story.
Oda, a self-described fan of drawing “beautiful women,” often uses the SBS (Shitsumon o Boshū Suru—”I’m Taking Questions”) column to directly interact with fans. In this section, he’s frequently asked about female characters’ body proportions. Readers, for example, noted that Nami’s breasts increased in size over the course of the series. Oda casually attributed this to her “growing up.”
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One Piece’s female characters are strong but looking the same
Over time, nearly all women in the series began to follow the same formula: tiny waists, large breasts, flawless skin, and eternally youthful features—regardless of age, race, or narrative role.
Take Nefertari Vivi, the princess of Alabasta; Carrot, a half-rabbit mink; and Jewelry Bonney, who can manipulate her age and often appears as a curvy woman in her twenties despite being biologically twelve. Each is designed with near-identical body types—slim, sexualized, and conventionally attractive.
Meanwhile, older female characters are either erased from the plot or drawn as grotesque caricatures. Big Mom is one of the Four Emperors of the Sea and commands terrifying power, but her body is exaggerated to emphasize her monstrosity. In flashbacks to her youth, she’s shown to be slim and beautiful, because of course she is. This happens with Gloriosa, a frail and grumpy elder, who was once Amazon Lily’s Pirate Empress.
Only a few older women—like Shakuyaku (Shakky)—escape this treatment. Despite being the same age as Gloriosa, Shakky is drawn as youthful and desirable. Oda jokes in SBS that she appears this way because she found love or achieved her life’s goal. The implication? Youth and beauty are rewards, while age and physical change are signs of failure.
While Oda has the creative right to depict his characters however he wants, the repetition of these patterns over decades reinforces harmful messages: a woman can be powerful, but she’d better be hot while doing it.
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When Netflix gets it (mostly) right
Surprisingly, it’s the Netflix One Piece live-action adaptation that challenges some of these visual tropes. In Season 1, female characters are portrayed with realistic body proportions and wear costumes that fit their roles—not just fan-service aesthetics.
Nojiko, Nami’s adoptive sister, is played by a Black actress, and while Usopp and Arlong (both male characters) were also cast with actors of color, most of the criticism was directed at the women. When Charithra Chandran, a South Asian actress, was cast as Nefertari Vivi for Season 2, some fans pushed back, claiming she looked “nothing like the manga.”
Ironically, Oda himself had stated that if Vivi existed in the real world, she would be South Asian. He even assigned real-world nationalities to the main characters: Usopp is African, Luffy is Brazilian, Zoro is Japanese. Season 1 followed this mapping fairly closely, yet the strongest backlash came when darker-skinned women stepped into the frame.
That double standard exposes something deeper: many fans are more invested in preserving an outdated, homogenized “ideal” of femininity than in respecting the creator’s original intent. It also shows how the anime industry’s visual tropes have become so normalized that anything outside the narrow “waifu” mold feels jarring.
What makes the One Piece live-action promising is that it reminds us characters don’t have to look like runway models to be engaging, memorable, or inspiring. The actors bring complexity and humanity to the roles, allowing fans to connect beyond the surface.
More importantly, the live-action opens up discussions that rarely happen in anime fandom: conversations about colorism, the male gaze, and the politics of representation. Manga as a medium has its limits—and often prioritizes visual fantasy. But as One Piece grows globally, its intellectual and cultural responsibilities expand, too.
The Netflix series is far from perfect, but it sets a precedent. It shows that adaptations can remain faithful to the spirit of the source material while pushing back on regressive aesthetics. If Luffy’s flag is to remain a symbol of freedom, then that freedom must extend to all characters—especially the women.
Because if women are still only “free” when they’re drawn young, thin, and beautiful, then One Piece is only telling half the story.
