Armour graphics and variation by gender

When I created my post on green quality cloth outfits a little while ago, I mentioned that many outfits change drastically dependent on the race of the character.  Of course, they also vary hugely by the gender of the character too.  Anyone that has posted over a pair of formidably imposing leg plates from their male character only to be dismayed with the resulting hotpants on their female alt will have already been aware of this problem.

A friend of mine has been searching for a plate outfit for his Death Knight alt.  He had put in a lot of time and effort to get the outfit collected/bought and had based it from a picture he had seen on a website.  He felt that this set carried the gravitas and foreboding that he wished to convey, whilst opting for a blood-red colour scheme instead of the black armour collections that many tend to choose for their Death Knights (me included - I have a Goth Dwarf...what more can I say!).

He linked the set pieces over to me to view and give an opinion on.  At the time I did point out that as I was playing a female dwarf, the look could be fairly different to the human male version he was looking at, but he asked me to look anyway.

My friend saw an imposing-looking human male Death Knight clad in armour that perhaps was a slightly lighter shade of red than he had seen in the website picture, but impressive none-the-less.

I saw this:

Those boobs really leap out of the picture at you, don't they?

Now admittedly, I assumed that the male version that my friend was looking at had a little more coverage than the version I could see, but my eyes were instantly drawn to the heart on the belt and the overall impression it gave me wouldn't be out of place in a Care Bears cartoon.  Pink, hearts and probably highly sought after by every female paladin in Stormwind!

I tried to convey by chat the girly fantasy that the armour pieces were showing as to me but I really couldn't do it justice.  Did the male version really look sort of pink and have hearts on the belt, I asked?  There was a silent pause (presumably while my friend hurriedly checked the armour again) and then...why yes, the male version also has a heart on the belt and sort of looks a lot less 'blood red' and rather more 'pinkish', but "honestly I had never noticed that when I collected the set..."

We are now on the search for a more manly set of dark red plate ;)