The key question is "are you making that character into an object by making him/her sexy?"
There is this misconception that a female character (I read this in a USA Today article about the personae women are taking on in pop music) has to be a virgin or a whore, that there's no real sliding scale between a woman portrayed as mostly asexual, or a slut, but i very much disagree with that assessment. Take a look at Sex and the City, where each woman was hot (in a different way), each one was quite sexually active (Miranda's periodic droughts notwithstanding), yet none of them were portrayed as "whores," that is, women who lived simply to be sex objects for men. Even the insanely sexually active Samantha demonstrated that she was very much in control of almost all of her encounters. This show is good evidence (though only one piece of evidence), that sexy and sexually active female characters are not necessarily misogynistic in portrayal, and can still be seen as quite empowering.
In video games, Bayonetta is a good example. She's was designed to ooze sexuality, down to the whole "strip for powerful attacks" mechanic, but she defines her own sexuality, she strips to *attack*, notably, not as a sign of submission. She owns her own sexuality and revels in it.
On the other side, we observe Dead Or Alive, especially the Volleyball games. The fighting games, now, are more legitimate because the women are portrayed as fully-fleshed characters, where their sexuality is just a part of who they are. The Volleyball games are all about reducing their stature to mere objects, dating sims and girl/girl shenanigans and buying accessories and all.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
