Females as portrayed in video games

In general, I have often disdainfully viewed the glorified versions of women as portrayed in almost any video game containing a female character. I find them to be terribly stereotypical and extremely unrealistic, to the point of distracting me from immersion in the gameworld. Not actually being interested in Bayonetta, I dismissed the character that I repeatedly saw as part of the pre-release hype, assuming she was yet another bit of eye candy designed to cater to the generic "male nerd" gamer.

However, Penny Arcade directed me to a blog written by Leigh Alexander as part of the GamePro website, and she has a completely different view that has given me a whole new point of view on the issue.

I still maintain that the vast majority of female characters in video games are grossly unrealistic and detract from the overall experience due to their innate (and out of place) sexuality, but overall I can buy Leigh's premise that in the context of Bayonetta it is a stylistic choice in the same vein of glorified male characters that tend to dominate video games.

One reason that I think video games remains as a male-dominated hobby is the simple fact that most games condition young men of questionable social skill to view women as sex objects, there for their visual pleasure, and that there is nothing wrong with this attitude. What I would like to see in games is more than one female body-type, and an overall use of female characters as characters, and not as eye candy or for some sexual hype to help sales.

The question, I wonder, is if this is a realistic thing to hope for in an industry that is (at least currently) dominated by males?