Getting the Girl

1up.com has a great article up entitled Getting The Girl. Zoe Flower discusses female gaming stereotypes, the role of women in gaming, and the mythical "girl formula" for gaming success. From the article: "Lara Croft continues to personify an ongoing culture clash over gender, sexuality, empowerment, and objectification. It was while standing in my first-ever ladies' room line at E3 2004 as I pondered the Playboy bunnies, the return of Leisure Suit Larry, and the slew of buxom virtual ladies headlining each booth that I questioned whether the industry had evolved at all."

Comments

Booth Babes

[Brandybuck]

Do booth babes sell product? I can recall only two sets of booth babes at a LWCE. The first was the BSD Daemon Babe, Cerwin Ercen. She remains popular to this day. But her popularity has more to do with her geekiness, ordinariness, and her obvious play on the booth babe stereotype. Cerwin as a booth babe is clever hack. It's screaming to an unlistening world that you don't have to be a lobotomized and plasticized supermodel from the pages of Playboy to look sexy.

But at that same expo there was another set of booth babes (and a couple of booth studs for "balance"). They were the epitome of the stereotype. What booth was this? Frankly, I can't remember. These people were so out of place at the convention that even the models looked embarassed.

They didn't show up at the next show.

Re:What about the studly men!?

[kaiidth]

Well, both sexes are regularly 'objectified' (if anybody's a believer in "objectification is just a politically correct excuse to whine", see this site for a bit of not-too-crap research and discussion on the matter, such as it is), although it's a relatively recent phenomenon for men - there's a vaguely interesting article on the subject here.

One suggestion in this article is that the increasingly frequent appearance of these idealised images of men are causing similar effects to those often seen in women, blamed on objectification by feminists, and laughed away by the rest of the world :-) And I quote:

The bodies in advertisements come to represent an ideal that individuals seek to achieve, and hence provide the foundation for a masochistic or punitive relationship with one's own body. It becomes possible to think about one s body as if it were this thing which followed one about and attached itself unevenly to the ideal outline which lingers beneath (Coward, 1992, p. 416). The dislike for the body becomes pathological and has very real consequences such as low self-esteem, distorted self-image, eating disorders, and even changing the body through painful plastic surgery (Coward, 1992; Kilbourne, 1999;Wolf, 1991).

Increasingly, these consequences are manifesting in men, who are responding to a consumer culture that is less and less forgiving of those who are not sufficiently young, thin, and attractive. In response to these images of the perfect male, men are getting manicures and facials, dyeing their hair, concealing blemishes, and spending millions on plastic surgery.

In 1992, men spent $88 million on liposuction, facelifts, nose-reshaping, and eyelid surgery. This number increased to almost $130 million in 1997. In 1996, men spent $12 million on penile implants, and silicone calf and pectoral implants are rapidly increasing in popularity (Fraser, 1999). In addition, men now account for almost 10% of individuals suffering with eating disorders (Fraser, 1999). In short, men are increasingly dissatisfied with their bodies, go to great lengths to achieve a more youthful and hard-bodied appearance, and are suffering the psychological consequences that are a side effect of consumer culture.

So there we are. Finally, equality of the sexes; we all get to have bad self-image thrust upon us! The bonus side is I suppose that one day it might well equal out; when we're all totally freaked out, bulimic gym zombies, maybe there'll be an advertising revolution of some kind.

And the cynical part of me also wants to add: what goes around, comes around...

Re:Target Audience

[Marvelicious]

sexual stereotypes created by men

Sit on a bench in a mall for a couple hours sometime. You will notice that women dress almost in uniform by age group. I'm sure no man decided all women should do that "streaked" hair thing, but In my area 75 percent of women in their 20's have it.

I'm sorry, but people have to take responsibility for their own actions. If you dress a certain way, it's your choice. If you let advertising or stereotypes influence that, it's your choice to do so. If you think you need to lose weight because of some perceived stereotype, go ahead - after all anorexia and bulimia aren't a drop in the bucket compared to obesity in this country, and the majority of us could stand to lose a couple pounds. Doesn't matter to me, I'll still be in sandals, levis and an aloha shirt with long hair. Every few years or so, I'm accidentally fashionable!

Re:What about the studly men!?

[identity0]

Jesus, this topic is filled with so many misconceptions of what women find attractive that I feel the need to interject. (disclaimer: I am a guy, but I tend to pay attention to what women want more than to the latest kernel release, unlike most slashdoters)

You know what videogame character I've heard women I know be attracted to the most? It's goddamn Link, from the Zelda series. Not some steroid-abusing freak from Serious Sam or Duke Nukem, but the cute little dude with elf ears. The Final Fantasy guys are popular with girls, too.

The muscle-bound tough guy is more of an asperation for guys than an attraction for girls, though girls like that to a certain extent. Girls tend to like the more realistic, cuter guys who have an personality than one-liners about kicking ass.

Simple question: have you ever seen Arnie or Stallone on the poster for some chick flick? No, it's always some relatively wimpy-looking guy like Cusack or Cruise. So stop pretending that Nukem & pals are trying to attract women - they're clearly not.

As a side note, Nintendo seems to be doing a much better job of attracting women than other companies. The girls that I knew in high school who played lots of video games always seemed to be talking about Nintendo games like Pokemon, Mario, Donkey Kong, Kirby, etc.