Slashdot Mirror
On The Feminine Form In Gaming
heartless_ writes "The GamerGirl team over at Gamergod.com has an interesting article delving into a male driven industry. This time the subject of discussion is the sometimes overzealous portrayal of women in games." A well-considered piece, with thoughtful references to the works of Camille Paglia and Naomi Wolf. From the article: "He also highlights several games that, instead of focusing on the female form in its big-breasted glory, showcase women who are intelligent, strong, and powerful. He insists, 'The protagonists highlighted above illustrate that plenty of excitement can be provided by female leads who will, in turn, bring in female gamers - not to speak of richer gameplay options. Additionally, as McIntosh says, most women gamers are "confident enough not to feel threatened" by sexist imagery, merely finding it annoying and disappointing.'"
It seems to me that this is stating the obvious: the over-sexualized female avatars in games are there to attract male players, not women. If game makers want to draw in a female audience, they need to have characters that women want to play - and that means strong, complex, and capable... not falling out of her clothes.
I found it ridiculous and frustrating that even in a golf game there were no realistic female avatars to choose from. It's hard to get into a sports game when you're playing a character who wouldn't be able to see past her boobs if she were real. It makes it harder to suspend disbelief and to feel like you're actually in the game.
I think the kind of over-sexualized images you see in games has a negative effect on society's attitudes towards women, but that doesn't have to be the motivation to change it. If game makers would go with the demand and sell games women want to buy, I think the market would take care of itself. The problem arises when there's a kind of feedback loop: games have so far been mostly targetted toward men, and therefore men are the main consumers, therefore there is little incentive to make them more appealing to women. I suspect there are a lot of guys who would prefer having more realistic women in their fantasy senarios - isn't it more fun to fanasize about something that is potentially possible? - but what do I know...
Though I agree that many games feature perfect/nearly impossible Barbie dolls...they feature a lot of Ken's too. How often is the main guy character a perfectly chiseled muscle man?
Yeah sure, lets go and replace all the male game heroes and Hollywood actors with pale, thin geeks instead of bulky, muscular chick magnets, because surely that's sexist too?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
By "confident enough not to feel threatened" I'm sure they mean ""intelligent enough not to feel threatened".
Just how retarded do you have to be to feel threatened by the shape of a video game character?
Yes, current video game imagery - like 90% of the rest of 'entertainment' is pretty damn sexist in its representation of the genders. However like anything else money goes where the suits think the biggest profit will return from. If they don't believe there's profit to be made from a more balanced view, well that's just part of the trade-off of living in a society where people are allowed to make the games they want to, play and watch what they want to, and think what they want to.
I'd rather live in a society where female video game characters are portrayed the way horny teen males wold have them rather than a society where character designs are dictated to you in the name of equality.
Nearly every (human) male hero is portrayed as a tall, muscular Greek-god-like figure. There are a few exceptions, like the goofy short and/or fat guy, but, in general, male characters, like female characters, have the "perfect" form.
"...intelligent, strong, and powerful..."
Alyx Vance, for example? She was a brilliant scientist who knew her way with a gun and built huge robots for fun. If she is not a strong female character, I don't know who is.
This seems silly. Men aren't exactly portrayed realistically either. Male characters are often tall, have full heads of hair, muscles, deep voices. There is no bias against women. Just like in hollywood almost all characters are like that.
I find that thought annoying and disappointing. "Sexist imagery" can be enjoyed simply for what it is, or ignored. It will be a very gray world if everything that offends somebody is removed -- regardless of how many other people enjoy it.
It's almost like thought control. How dare you like that. I'm offended. Nobody can have it because I will complain.
Of course, video games are like thought control too. Play this game now! Give us more of your money!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Women who are intelligent, strong, and powerful" typically look somewhat like Roseanne.
Picture your average tough-as-nails, smart-as-hell nerd grrl. What does she look like? Yeah, that's right, she's around as attractive as the average nerd guy.
Not exactly prime material for game characters.
I'm an RPG geek, but in the games I play, members of both genders are typically attractive. Look at Final Fantasy IX, for example. The male lead (Zidane) is a cute bishy boi, and the female lead (Garnet/Dagger) is a cute girl.
Now imagine Final Fantasy IX with a Zidane looking like the goatse guy and a Garnet/Dagger looking like Tubgirl...
And then, for a REAL shudder, imagine if all the Manthra^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMithra running around Vana'diel in Final Fantasy XI looked like their players...
It's entertainment, people. It's fantasy. It's not supposed to represent "average-looking" women-- OR MEN. The day Duke Nukem has a pot belly and is balding, the day Lara Croft has saggy boobs and wrinkles... well, that's the day the VG Cats people take over all the game studios, I guess...
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Don't forget, male characters in video games are rarely pesky, brains-before-brawn characters, either. And the ones that do feature such lead 'men' (Earthbound, Katamari Damacy, Ico), while beloved by hardcore gamers, aren't exactly nailing the kind of acclaim and sales that musclebound games like God of War do.
The element of fantasy and excess in video games, let alone popular culture, is nottttthin' new. If anything, there's more respect and gender appreciation paid to women now than there ever has been in popular culture. Leave It To Beaver, anyone? If given the option, I think most would choose busty, gun-toting dynamos over subservient housewives, at the very least, as a "lesser of the evils" stereotype.
In case you haven't noticed, the male characters in games are an over exageration of expected masculine characteristics. The muscles are bigger, the hairlines aren't as receded, the player is expected to be something more than a normal man could ever be. The games themselves stereotype men as having to be able to complete the mission and solve the problem to be successful. In real life, failure is an acceptable result, and the games place unrealistic expectations on men.
Of course men are aware the game is an escape from reality, and don't tend to bitch about such things.
Reviews like these paints some women as jealous bitches who can't stand to play or even see a female video game character with qualities they don't find in themselves.
Female beauty is worshipped by men and women alike.
A quick scan of the covers of the most popular magazines with women confirm this fact. They like looking at Katherine Zeta Jones in an elegant, tight black dress just as much as we do, though for slightly different reasons.
As long as this is true, female game avatars will continue to be hotties, no matter who the game is "targeted" at.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
No. I don't get this whole thing about realistic women, I don't know but I find playing Warcraft quite acceptable and yet I don't have 22 inch biceps. Nor am I athletic. Quite frankly, Warcraft would be quite boring if all the male characters looked like me.
You know what? We buy what we want to buy. We see what we want to see. And there should be no one out there who goes about saying "hey! Why don't you like women with small breasts and is overweight?" To all the women complaining, go back and sulk while munching those twinkies and MAYBE one day a clue will come your way.
I don't get offended when a dog barks -- that's what they do! Men do what men do... want what men want. It's NATURAL. Don't bitch about nature 'cause it ain't gonna do any good. What it does cause is needless, health-robbing guilt!
Meet the most offensive demographic: ME! White-male, early-middle-aged, straight. I like women. I'm responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened to a woman, a person of non-white ethnicity and to gays and lesbians. I'm the freakin' devil right? At some point, you just have to turn your back on this crap and just be who and what you are -- the days of "Political Correctness" are numbered.
Because the women ranting about sexism in video games don't have them.
Who the hell modded the parent insightful? It was obvious from the moment that this article was posted that we'd see the nearderthal Slashdot element emerge from their basements. In this case, we have the tired cliche that feminists are only unattractive bitter women. Do you really think that any woman who expresses an opinion about the way women are portrayed in games is doing so because she's not sufficiently endowed according the your standard? Congratulations on single-handly personifying the Slashdot stereotype of the nerd who's never interacted with a real live female of the species.
The crux of articles on this topic post doesn't seem to have anything to do with talking about feelings or an over-emphasis on "intelligent, strong, and powerful" women. It just would be nice to have a little variation in the female figures presented in games (which is true from the perspective of many of us guys too).
Which I think goes back to the point of the article somewhat. The gaming industry perpetuates the "buxom babe" stereotype through its characters, but at the same time they take on new proportions (e.g. Lara Croft). Unfortunately, the feministas are too busy deriding her female attributes to realize that she represents a woman who goes far beyond her sexuality, using it as well as putting it aside. There's no reason to look at these characters solely for the physical attributes unless you have an agenda or are out to prove a point.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Really, what would these writers think of fertility idols?
I think the idea is that their exaggerated body parts symbolise what those gods are good at. If idols that had nothing to do with fertility, but, say, the harvesting of crops or whatever, had those same exaggerated body parts, then that would be as odd as what we have now.
It's not quite the same thing as spandex clad people with big breasts or bulging muscles shooting at each other.
Very very few of the male gamers out there actually look like Duke Nukem or any of the male characters in todays video games. Even Gordon Freemen, an engineer with glasses who should, by that description alone, be at the top of the geek stereotype, is a buff, cut good-looking individual. Do these unrealistic characters drive away the male populace? Not at all. Part of playing a game is escaping from your ordinary life, and this is enhanced by role-playing as a good-looking, visually appealing character. When given the choice, not many choose an ugly avatar for themselves in the game world.
Now, if every game was designed to attract females as well as males, what would female characters look like? There may be some change, but most, especially those that serve as player representations, wouldn't change much, because females like to roleplay too. They like to imagine they are the incredibly fit and attractive heroine, as opposed to an average-looking everyday character. Bust sizes may be a little less top heavy and closer to the realm of believability, but they will still be on the higher end of the scale. Why shouldn't females be allowed to indulge in as much role-pplay and fantasy as the guys?
But what about male characters in games that aren't handsome or fit? Rare, but when used, are often playing a stereotype or primarily comic role. The fat man isn't the hero, he's either a hapless shmoe in need of rescue, or a bungling foe that is easily dispatched. Now, female counterparts to these stereotypes exist in the real world, but we never see them in games. Why? Is it because females are objectified? I argue that this is at least in part because developers have too much respect and/or fear of females in general to throw them into a game. White males, being the "majority" and the de facto "ruling class" are fare game for satire and ridicule, but females are still viewed as the injured "minority", and as such are beyond such blatant stereotyping, one of several Sacred Cows if you will.
I'm not trying to pass any moral judgements here on how people in games shoud be represented (for the most part anyways), just trying to type out my own observations. That's just how I see it so far.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It's just like how guys want to play cool-as-ice spies and muscular street fighters.
If we're going to be realistic about women in games, then we should be realistic about men in games.
So now you have to fight in underground street fighting tournaments with a 120 pound guy who's never so much as slapped anybody before. You also have to play games where your 350 pound character has trouble getting into cars he's hijacking. You should see him try to fit into an air duct.
Until these changes are made, I say we just accept that women in games will be hotter than women in real life, just like men in games are cooler than men in real life.
This is just like women and lesbians. They just don't understand it. Don't ruin our entertainment because you think it's "disappointing" or dumb.
We don't ruin your chick flicks by asking for less compassionate male roles. Honestly, most males are pricks, and should be portrayed as such in women's films, not as some perfect expectation of a knight in shining armor we can never live up to.
I'm willing to bet that if every "inappropriate" image vanished out of every game tomorrow, you'd be hard put to find the change in society the day after.
Of course, but that's not the point. All of the small, subtle biases that surround people add up to an overall influence that is non-negligible. Just because something is not THE most pressing problem in the world doesn't mean it's not worth doing anything about.
Society will change and women will be treated differently when they demand such treatment and accept nothing less!
Certainly. And pointing out negative images of women where they exist is part of that. It's not a matter of "blaming" video games for all that is wrong with the world, it's a matter of standing up and saying "I'm not going to spend my money on product which makes me feel objectified and is therefore not fun to play."
Beyond Good and Evil was one of the best games ever. The main character is a young, strong, intelligent, realistically proportioned (or as realistic as you can get for the cartoony style of the game) female freelance journalist who spends most of her time taking care of a group of war orphans.
Technoli
Plus, your argument (that because many popular magazines feature pictures of only certain types of women this means that women value that too) is not logically valid. Economics is driving what's on the magazine, and perhaps there are a subset of women who buy the magazines and like the pictures and spend a lot of money, but a large group of other women don't.
First you say it's not valid, then you say economics (in other words, SALES) is what drives them to do it.
Fashion magazines vastly out-sell female-targeted magazines which feature photos of men. Even in the teen market, YM out-sells Tiger Beat by a long shot. This is simple economics pointing out that women like looking at pretty women.
Or perhaps women buy the magazines for other reasons (informative content) and simply tolerate the images.
If there was any truth to that at all, some ambitious publisher could make a killing by publishing an informative women's magazine which doesn't feature all the ultra-expensive photo-shoots of beautiful models. Apart from "Martha Stuart Living" (which has a promotional agenda outside of sales of the magazine itself), I'm at a loss to think of a magazine which even attempts to do so.
Finally, even if many women do have the attitude that the pictures on the magazines are the ideal of female beauty, does that mean it's all okay? No, not necessarily.
It also doesn't mean that it's not okay.
Can you look like Tyra Banks? Probably not, but by the time you are in your mid-twenties one would hope that you've learned to come to terms with that fact. It actually is possible for you to gawk at how shockingly pretty Adrianna Lima is without turning into a quivering mass of self-loathing every time you look in a mirror. Most well-adjusted womwn learn to do so.
But all this is drifting away from my point. It's a very simple point, which is that sexual imagery in media boils down to one very simple truths:
1. Most men like looking at sexy women.
2. Most women also like looking at sexy women.
The (obvious) lesson here:
Women are pretty.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I think one of the hottest female characters to ever hit the video game market is Samus Aran. Throughout the game and most of the advertisement graphics etc, you never see her without being covered in a huge metallic spacesuit. And yet... somehow I find her a great character. The suit adds an aire of mystery to her, and we don't really know much about her background. But she's out to save the fucking universe and she's got an arsenal of big guns. I find Samus a particularly cool character for all these reasons. She is treated by the story just as if she were any other hero, but she happens to be female, and they never go out of their way to make her femininity part of the plot in any way. She is just a girl who wants to kick some alien ass. I love it.
Why would female characters need more depth than male characters? For the purposes of a video game, they don't. But they don't need to be used in a sexist way just to make them likeable, either.
1) It's not about how large the girls' breasts are, but the opinion that only girls with large breasts or this and that physical feature are "worthy".
Instead of basing themselves on the average woman, with average breast size and average face, the media guys (not necessarily game makers) give us some sex goddesses.
AND THEN the models are compared to real girls, and, because they can't be compared, they think they're not worth having a boyfriend and end up having depression / anorexia / etc.
2) The guys fantasize, because, since they DON'T HAVE a muscular Arnold kind of body, girls DON'T pay attention to them. And yes, I mean you, britney girl who doesn't date anyone with less muscle than Joe-the-Football-Player. So what happens when these low-selfesteemed guys can make their dreams reality, dreams about having a very strong body and getting not only girls, but the BEST girls around, with even more bust than the ones who rejected them at school?
See, discrimination goes two ways. What we need is society (both men and women) to stop judging others upon the physical aspects, and appreciate people as they are, with their virtues: Intelligence, Patience, kindness, generosity, etc.
Then we wouldn't need games with "bodacious" women to satisfy our overcrushed ego.
(As a side note, the Bible says the flood was sent because men became evil and only married the most beautiful women. Interesting thought, isn't it?)
Me, I play Tauren or Gnome. I hate to think what you'd make of that. I've done an elf and an undead, but not on any kind of a regular basis. Everquest, I went Erudite or Barbarian - and my clothing collection was of armor, not lingerie.
I'm not going to deny that a lot of people do what the people you know do, but I think you'll find the same proportion of girl-who-picks-buxom-redhead to guy-who-picks-muscular-heman. It's an overall tendency to pick a character to project yourself in a way that you perceive would be attractive to others or that is attractive to you. It's all about what you want to get out of the game.
Personally, I think that more people choose their characters based on the personality that they want to project, but then again I do tend to play on roleplaying servers so I get a rather skewed view of the mmorpg population.
(And yes, I'm a real life female.)
~ Leilah
I read a fascinating book recently called "Female Chauvenist Pigs." It's really a great read. The book's thesis is that there are women in this country who exploit their sexuality to gain power. While this is hardly surprising, the women who do it brand their behavior as a form of nouveau feminism.
The writer, who is a woman, writes about many of these female chauvenist pigs including some of the girls from "Girls Gone Wild" as well as the (female) producer. At various points in the book, female chauvenist pigs assert that they've accepted patriarchy as the de facto sociopolitical organization in America and feel that instead of rebelling agasint this (wrong) paradigm, they should instead exploit it. So they go to strip clubs, because that's what men do. They read Playboy, because that's what men do. They watch degrading porn. They do things that make many of the women I know recoil in horror.
This is really off-topic, but it was so interesting I had to mention it. There's a chapter on a lesbian subculture which transcends the usual labels of "butch" and "femme". Certain women call themselves "bois", some have mastectomies to look male, but they are not transgendered. Instead, their relationships to other lesbians is designed to closely resemble the insensitive and often abusive nature of some male-female relationships. The writer even noted that one of these bois failed to show up for a scheduled interview saying that she "didn't have time for a skirt like [her]."
Anyway, just because women participate in and support a patriarchal system, it does not make them feminists. And this is what I think of women who don't object, and even celebrate, media images of characters like Lara Croft.
As a man, I consider myself a feminist insofar as I believe that our society is better when we recognize women as complete equals. So I find these images offensive as well. Can someone tell me what material benefit putting unrealistically proportioned half-naked women in a game provides?
I think that our society presents women as whores and sex objects because sex is both intensely attractive and also taboo. But what concerns me is that both young boys and young girls will internalize these images -- they're everywhere, you know. Over time, these young people will often begin to believe that this is the way that women should look and behave. And in large part, the prevalence of media images like these lead many young women to mutilate themselves so that they may look like the images they've accepted as ideal.
So when you say "what's the harm", I say, "a great deal." And while video games are but a drop in the bucket, but they still matter.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
Samas Aran is one of the toughest (if not THE toughest) female character in the video game world, yet she is rarely mentioned in these discussions about the portrayal of females in gaming. From my experience, it seems like women don't accept Samus as a female protagonist. She doesn't have any lines, she's in her battle suit all the time which minimizes her appearance as a female, and there's never any kind of relationship developed with other characters (romantic or otherwise). As such, Samus is considered a "male" character by women, and doesn't make the kind of connection that you'd expect a hard core ass kicking female protagonist to make with famle gamers. Apparently, female characters do have to be a little bit girly in order to sell them to women.
Since when did it become taboo to have sexual feelings?
I enjoy a very close, intimate relationship with my wife. She's very sexy to me, and she finds me sexy as well. And, we're both very comfortable with that.
But, we're both human! When we're in public, it's not uncommon for one of us to notice another member of the opposite sex. We frequently mention it privately to the other, as "Wow, he's hot!" or "Damn, she's got a nice butt!".
See, it's ok. We're all born with the urge to reproduce, and we all find other people attractive, and there's no wrong in that. It would only be wrong if I were to ACT on it with somebody other than my partner - get a phone number, go on a date, whatever.
On the Sci-fi channel, it's typical to see an intelligent, forceful guy as captain, a few, strong, sexy females (in leather!) and a few nerdly guys running around, with a scantily clad warrior, armed with a 6 foot sword.
It's interesting. It's a little exotic. It has a little of something for everyone. And, it's mildly erotic.
People like money. People like travelling. People like sex. Why is it ok to have shows and/or video games with money, or travelling, but not portray a little sexiness? I don't want to stare up poontang, wondering where the cervix is, but, as mouse said, "to deny our basic urges is to deny what makes us human!".
And before you mention "think of the children!", I say this as a father of 5, 3 of whom are teens...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
most women gamers are "confident enough not to feel threatened" by sexist imagery, merely finding it annoying and disappointing
Yeah, because most male heros in video games are bald guys with beer guts. Not to sound sexist but let's face facts here, women constantly cry "sexism sexism" but how many women go to films staring the likes of Brad Pitt or Richard Gere? Wouldn't it be nice to see, say, Danny Devito in a romantic role?
before anyone goes crying troll; it's just a joke, well, kind of. the moral of the story is that the "sexist imagery" plays both ways and we all know it.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Was, is or will ever be anyone like Duke Nukem in real life? nope.
What about Doom's marine? nope.
How about Gordon Freeman? not one in a million.
What about CJ in GTA? no way...
And there are many more examples.
Male stereotypes in video games are just as strong as females. It is just us males that like to see big bouncy breasts while we play video games...but male heroes have extremely wide breasts, great physical and mental strength, they are literally superheroes. It is just stereotypes all over the place...but a video game is a fantasy land...if we can't have stereotypes in our fantasy, where can we have them?
My experience with the over sexualization of female characters can be summed up in a little anecdote.
My husband and I lived with a roommate, and we got Tenchu for the playstation back in the day. At first I liked the game despite the snotty female character because I could actually play an avatar that was my gender. Then our roommate started developing a fascination with the female avatar. He bought several walk through magazines, and got a cheat code to put the female avatar in less clothing. After walking in on him several times while he was trying to angle the character so he could get a good view of her cheat code induced nudity, I just couldn't play the game anymore.
I didn't really mind that the character was a bimbo, or that there was a cheat code to make her nearly naked on her lower half. I was really disturbed by my roommates behavior, and felt if he wanted to spend that much 'quality time' with the game he should get one for his room so no one had to walk in on him. I never could play that game again. Shudder. . .
Nothing hides evidence like a stew. -Gus Pratt
Why are ridiculously perfect portrayals of the male form universally accepted by both sexes when ridiculously perfect portrayals of the female form are not?
"...women represent nature, and man strives to control nature..."
Wrong!
Couldn't the simplest reason be the "right" one. Maybe men (the prime buyers of video games) just like to look at womans boobs!
"showcase women who are intelligent, strong, and powerful."
like laura croft! the girls from dead or alive/tekken/every single video games ever.
The problem with the portayal of female role models in video games and elsewhere isn't that women aren't portrayed as powerful, but that
1. every single powerful character is also attractive. many of them also derive much of their power from sex.
2. they are only so intelligent as is fashionable. they are *never* intelligent in a funny and interesting way. they are never so extremely intelligent that they are driven to introversion.
the problem is that the things that make a woman strong in the popular opinion, are still the things that are likely to net her a man.
in my way of seeing things probably the best female role model ever was Lucca from Chrono Trigger. She was brilliant, funny, and knew how to take charge, although not that great looking. They even had a seen where the beautiful princess said she'd trade everything she had for Lucca's intelligence.
of course, as a guy, I still want the hot ditzy women, but frankly women shouldn't care if they're strong enough.
anyway, listen to me. I'm smarter than you.
Men are judged by what they do. Women are judged by how they look.
That is abundantly untrue.
Hillary Clinton looks pretty good for a woman her age, yet is universally detested by those who disagree with her politics. Mother Theresa had a face like a horse, yet was venerated probably more than any woman of the 20th Century.
Likewise, a lot of men manage to get ahead on their good looks (or are held back by the lack of them.)
If women fixed everything that is perceived as 'wrong' with them, half of us would be falling apart like Michael Jackson from too much plastic surgery!
That is also fundamentally false. Any woman who is not obese to the point of being unhealthy, badly disfigured, or a total slob, can walk into any bar in America and find dozens of men who would want to sleep with them. The standard of beauty at which men are attracted to women is a hell of a lot lower than the standard of beauty which gets you high-paying modelling contracts.
The only way to fix your sentence to make it true would be thus:
"If neurotic and narcisistic women fixed everything that which they perceive as 'wrong' with them, half of us would be falling apart like Michael Jackson from too much plastic surgery!"
If your a perfectly attractive woman who still can't cope with the fact that you don't look like Heidi Klum, that's not the fault of any magazine. Sooner or later you'd see a woman walking down the street who looks like that, and hop on the same downward spiral.
Women don't look at those photos on the front of magazines to fawn over them. We look, to try and figure out how to look like them, as that is the culturally accepted norm, though that norm is hopelessly skewed. Anorexics with implants are hardly a sensible norm to choose.
You obviously know different women than I do. Most of the women I know are positivley rivited by beauty, and not out of some analytical curiousity for their own self-improvement. Many of them like the way clothes hang off Calista Flockhart's shoulders, but would never in a million years want their bodies to actually be that thin.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm glad the masculine form in gaming isn't being questioned. All my male friends look like that.
Frog blast the vent core.
By golly, I want my heroes fat, club-footed, bucktoothed and bedridden.
Anyone other than me reminded of Vonnegut's Handicapper General from Harrison Bergeron?
Consider this quote:
Naomi Wolf is much more blunt. In her book The Beauty Myth, she argues that this very standard of beauty set forth by the media is the primary mechanism of women's oppression by men. She discusses the "suffering caused by trying to meet the demands of the thin ideal"
This would be a great idea, except that laying this all at the feet of men is more than a bit unfair to me. To be sure, the ideal of feminine beauty that is espoused by male oriented media seems extreme -- until you compare it to the images in female oriented media. The male favored image requires surgery, unconscionable quantities of gym time, fasting, and a soupcon of digital touch up. But it's nothing compared to the gaunt images that women pay to consume.
Of course, can say that it's men who run the media companies that produce these images, and you'd be wrong on two counts. The "Cosmo Girl" was the creation of Helen Gurley Brown, after all. But Ms. Brown's sex is not at issue at all. The point is that women and men who run media companies end up doing much the same thing, because they're driven by the same economic forces. The Cosmo Girl wants to have it all. The reason she wants to have it all is because promoting the ideal of having it all pleases the advertisers; it involves not a little buying.
The reason that media female body image is so unrealistic is simple economics. If scarcity enhances value, then the unobtainable must be perceived as infinitely valuable. For the man, the companies inevitably take the general parameters indicating robust healthy child bearing capability and simply nip and tuck it to the edge of impossibility. You meet a woman who looks like that once in a blue moon, and she's definitely not going to be interested in you. Voila! the unobtainable.
For women, the companies produce an image that is starved (never mind this contradicts the male oriented images). A normal woman's homestatic processes will torture her into sumbission long before she reaches this stage. Voia! once more the unobtainable.
It's not the opression of women by men; at least if it is nobody's ever invited me to the meetings where this is arranged. It's not as personal as that. The problem is the antithesis of that. It's completely impersonal. it's economic and thus about systems and performance metrics and quarterly goals, not anything as personally satisfying as domination I'm afraid. And when the putatively immoral male sex is displaced in a position by the putatively superior female sex, there's bound to be very little difference in results. They're just cogs in the machine either way.
I'm not saying that certain main aren't pigs. But that's just the general tyranny of the stupid who've lucked into a little power.
Another aspect of the economics of beauty is age. In traditional societies, age is respected, because it is rare to obtain. In a modern consumer society it's devalued. From an individual's perspective, youth is something that slips away irretrievably but age is something he is very likely to count on a steadily increasing supply of.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't see why games need any more varity than Cosmopolitan, People, or any of the other glossies that have a 98.273% female readership. Impossibly thin, buxom, long legged women are used to sell product to women, not just men. If you want to stop the stereotype in games, look less at the developers and more at the marketing suits at the publishers. It may offend you, but it moves product.
It is not so much that designer cannot imagine what women want, it is more a problem of how to integrate it into a game.
The article is very critical of Holliwood portrayal of the women, but forgets to tell that women flock "en masse" to the latest holliwood chick-flick.
Games are based on interaction and game play. Today, the designers know how to transpose violence, destruction and puzzles into games. No one really knows how to port emotion or make a good game just based on interactions (with the computer, not a MMO like 2nd life).
So, when they want to include some female forms, they will still fit within those parameters. It is easier to include T&A in a given formula than to develop a character and make her conflicted.
Anyway, i'm not sure I agree to any of the logic saying that girls will play when the games will present tham as strong characters and avatars. I mean, i did not play mario because i dreamed to be a plumber or sonic for its hedgehog. Lots of games have aliens characters (Abe's Odyssey) and it is the game mechanics that draw the public, not the "confidant characters", although don't we all dream to be a hero?
This just in:
People like to look at attractive people. People want to be like attractive people. People want to be around attractive people.
This psychoanalysis of popular culture is really grating. If you're shallow enough to define yourself based on pop-culture, you're every bit the female stereotype that you're rebelling against. If you aren't, then why do you care?
Everybody deals with their stereotype, except perhaps those who are actual models of that stereotype. For example, there are about as many Muslims as Jews in the United States (~5m). When was the last time you saw a Muslim on TV just playing a regular role, that didn't have anything specifically to do with them being Muslim? In contrast, Jews are all over the place, in many roles where (gasp!) you're not even made aware that they're Jewish! There are over 1.5m Indians in the United States. A lot of them are second-generation. When was the last time you saw in Indian on TV that spoke unaccented English? I am an Indian (well, Bengali), who speaks without an accent (I've been here since I was five), and M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" cameo was weird even for me!
So what's my point here? Everybody is stereotyped in pop culture. Pop culture is superficial by its very nature! The portrayal of people in popular culture is more or less irrelevent. If women are dissatisfied by their place in the world, only they can change it. Yes, there are still boundaries, and yes, those must be broken down, but the bottleneck to womens' advancement today is in many cases women themselves. Consider, for example, higher education. There is an enormous dearth of women in the "hard sciences" and in engineering. Who can be blamed for this state of affairs? Men? Male students have little control over admissions, and male administrators are falling over themselves trying to increase female enrollment. The opportunities are there, yet a female is still a rare sight on an engineering campus. Why? Simply put: because females aren't interested! Women, it appears, don't want to be engineers or scientists or mathematicians, or even philosophers, or historians, or economists, for that matter. These are the professions in which people are respected for their mind. If women don't enter these professions, despite the opportunities available to them, how can they expect to be respected for their intellectual capabilities?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...