I stumbled upon an article on The Guardian's tech page about how female video game characters are too sexy for men to fantasize over. My immediate reaction was, "what the HELL did I just read." The article, which made me hate humanity one word at a time, went on to discuss how the real problem with video games is that the women in these games are too sexy and not founded enough. In other words, they look good, but there isn't much going on upstairs. The article was written by a woman who admitted that she had the hots for a Red Dead Redemption character. She claims that the real problem women face in video games is that there are just not enough intelligent women video game characters. This is a severe problem. This is real.
This is definitely NOT a severe problem. As I was reading this article I kept thinking about how it must be a really really slow week at The Guardian because this article was trash. Why would somebody actually want to write about that? The reason why it made me hate humanity more and more with each passing work was that it was a voicing a legitimate concern. Men cant fantasize over their video game characters and we must riot in the streets! But this got me thinking (as most things do nowadays) when did this become an OK thing to admit.
I feel like we have reached a point in society where technology is so widely accepted that there is literally no reason to hide any of your feelings about it. You think that girl in that game is hot? Of course you do why wouldn't you! This reminded me of the conversation we had in class a few weeks ago when Vinsel brought up how going to the comic shop was at one point a guilty pleasure and now its just normal. The video game subculture is so integrated with everyday society that there is absolutely no reason to hide that you think this totally fictional bunch of pixels is hot. If you had to name a time that this happened, when would it be?
Take a look to Tomb Raider Lara croft character. I didn't see any interesting and amazing character in my Game life.
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I think that this phenomenon has been happening for much longer than you think it has. People have been attracted to characters in certain forms of media- books, television, movies- since those forms of media existed. Many character archetypes fall under the "Women want him; men want to be him!" trope, or vice versa. People have been sexualized in the media long before video games ever existed. They're designed to make media consumers feel a certain way.
ReplyDeleteThat's not why the article bothered me, though. It's here by the way, in case anyone wanted to read it- http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/14/video-games-need-fewer-sexy-women-and-more-you-can-actually-fancy
The point it tries to make is a good one- there just aren't enough substantial female characters in video games. Most of them follow specific tropes or are used as plot devices only, never really developing as their male counterparts do. It's a problem that's existed in the industry for a really long time, and there's no light switch that we can flip to fix it overnight.
The problem with this article is the primary reason it presents the issue: men just aren't attracted to sexy, brainless plot devices and they need something more, uh, intellectually stimulating. First of all, that's just wrong. Sex sells, and that's one of the bigger reasons why the companies keep doing this.
But god forbid we make better women characters, with depth and personalities, and varied body types and skin colors and little care for conventional beauty because that's actually how women are in real life! God forbid we want an equal and realistic representation in a medium whose audience is split almost evenly down the middle as far as male/female players go.
This article tells us that the primary reason we should want better-written women in video games is so her boyfriend has more ways to get off when she's not around. That's not right. That's objectification, and it's as bad as the objectification the author herself fights against in her article.
The article could have been, "My boyfriend has noticed a serious deficit in realistic and engaging female characters and, like any normal and decent person would, has expressed interest in encountering more in his adventures as a gamer."
Male support for this kind of thing is great! Because the industry is male-dominated and most of the triple-A games are still geared towards that demographic. Male support for the wrong reasons makes me uncomfortable for all the same reasons the current state of the industry's behavior toward women makes me uncomfortable.