Princesses, Privilege and Power

I've come up with a new theory. 

This is hardly surprising, because I seem to come up with a new theory every week. I spend some time beaming at how brilliant I am, then discover that whatever idea I just had was already tested to death. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a little late to join the social psychologist game.

And, giving credit where it's due, this new theory was largely inspired by Marc Gold's competence-deviance hypothesis. It's a fascinating hypothesis that states, in brief, that the more competent society views you as, the more deviant you society will let you be. And someday I will test the shit out of this hypothesis until it breaks. 

This might seem like a leap, but my shiny new theory basically states: It's not what you have, it's what you don't have.

If you want to ask how that connection was made--don't.

I've noticed this in my own life, growing up. Disney princesses get a whole lotta flack these days, basically for sitting around and waiting for their prince to come. I recently read Cinderalla Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontline of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein. Though there are some things you need to take with a grain of salt a wedge of lime, and a shot of tequila, the crux of the book is this: it's become too common for said "girlie-girl culture" to be shoved down the throats of girls. This is why I am no longer permitted to go into the toy section at Target. I am a very angry woman as it is, and when I see anything labeled "Pinkalicious", I feel the need to start hurting things. Then I go look at Nerf guns and feel a little better--again, competence-deviance! 

Fun fact: Roy Disney believed that Disney characters should never enter the same fictional universe as one another. Whenever you see any merchandise with more than one princess on it, they will never be looking each other in the eyes. I bet you've never noticed this before, but now you will, and I'll just tell your right now: it's fucking eerie.

Another thing of note: how often do you see the princesses* like Pocahontas or Mulan on these backpacks, lunchboxes, coloring books, bedspreads, or school supplies? Not very often, if at all. 

Tiana from The Princess and the Frog was a pretty valiant effort to give the princess some backbone, and she did stand on her own pretty well. To be perfectly honest, though, I found her kind of boring. It's the new princesses I love: Rapunzel and Merida. Merida is actually the first female protagonist in any Pixar movie, ever. 

Dear Pixar,

I really enjoyed Brave and loved Merida's character, but WHY THE HELL DID IT TAKE THIS LONG?!

Love,
Kaye

Toy Story came out in 1995. It's about damn time.


I suppose I shouldn't be complaining too much. Growing up, I was right on the cusp of princesses going from useless girls in poofy dresses to girls who actually get out and do shit--like save the guy.

I was raised on a diet of Disney movies, musicals, and books about girls and their horses. This goes right back to my theory, because while I got plenty of this: 

"Wait here for some guy to save me? Screw that,
 I'm going to law school  in August and
 I'm suing my step-mother for slavery and harassment."

I also got plenty of this: 

Fuck you, prescribed gender roles!

I'd also like to take this time to give a shout-out to my mom, who was the one who really got me to notice things like these growing up. Thanks, Mom. Without you, I may not be perusing a doctorate is social psych, or have a place to stay when I'm utterly penniless after paying loans. And another huge shout-out to my wonderful professor (who I've mentioned here once before) for really introducing me to all this stuff. You both have helped me figure out my life in ways that I'll never be able to fully express.

Excuse me, there's something unmanly in my eye. 

Kaye's Train of Thought

But what does this have to do with games? That's why we're here, right? Vid'ja games? There is ample room for Disney Princess complaints in other places. So while my train of thought does meander around quite a bit, I promise you, I do have a point:

It's not what you have, it's what you don't have.

This could apply to pretty much anything--education, role models, radio stations (I used to live where the only stations were country or Jesus, and after awhile I forgot why I hated Taylor Swift. Musical Stockholm Syndrome)--and games.

Awhile ago one of my friends asked me a question: Why do some games allow you to choose your character's gender, but some don't?

My first thought was immediately, "the storyline!" One of my favorite games, Tales of Symphonia, is pretty much all about the story; battles and game mechanics are secondary. In that game, you can't choose the main character's sex, or even change his name. It seems pretty restrictive in that sense. But it's still a damn good game, so don't judge it based on that.

It seemed sort of obvious, but then I remembered some of my favorite games, like Dragon Age. It has a wonderfully strong plotline (if a little generic at times), and you can customize everything about your character--their looks, voice, personality. So it can't be just the storyline. In fact, most of the games I've reviewed in this podcast have next to no storyline, and no customization of characters. I think of Legendary in particular. The main character's identity has so little to do with the rest of the game, does it even matter?

Yay, shameless self-promotion!

I get it--character customization doesn't work for every game. Maybe I've just been spoiled by BioWare. Maybe I should just be grateful for Lara Croft and Samus and be done with it.

If this isn't what epiphanies look like,
then I don't want to be right.

Or maybe I should wonder why we don't have more kick-ass female characters, or why we can't make our own. And then I had an epiphany: 

Kaye: I love my Shepard! She's such a bad ass!

Sam: Don't you mean HE'S such a bad ass?

It all comes down to one thing that has shaped not just the game industry, but pretty much life as we know it. 

Privilege.

I'm sure it's a word that most people are familiar with. "Driving is a privilege, not a right." How many times have you heard that one? Or maybe that's just me. Geez, you kill a van just one time...

The basic definition of privilege is something special that you have but not everyone else does. Going with the above example, I have the privilege of driving: I'm old enough, I have a license, and my sight is good enough that I'm not dangerous to others on the road. Because of these things, I am allowed to drive a car while not everyone else can. 

But if you're looking at privilege from a social perspective, then there are a couple things you need to understand about it. First, privilege is not earned. It is something that you happen to be--some trait about you that you did not choose for yourself and largely have no control over.

It comes in all forms, and often in the shape of the most basic things about you. For example, I have White privilege, cisgender privilege, able-bodied privilege, and heterosexual privilege. I didn't decide one day to be White, or to have my sex match my gender (yes, there is a difference between the two, but that's a post for another day). People of my race are represented in the media I view, I never have to be confused about which restroom to use. I don't have to worry if the restaurant I'm going to has a wheelchair ramp, and no one will ever tell me that I'm going to hell for being with the person I love.

I'm a very lucky girl.

Which brings me to our second point about privilege: You are largely unconscious of your privilege.

Awhile back, one of my friends commented about ethnic diversity in video games. This blog focuses on gender, sure, but it still all falls under the category of social commentary. When I first read this, I was pretty excited, and then I nearly shit a brick. Why hadn't I thought of this? For all I go on about gender equality in games, I'd hardly given a thought to race. It wasn't an issue to me. But it was to Jasmine.

Here's the difference: I am White. Jasmine is not. Even if I don't necessarily like the way that women are portrayed, at least White characters get fair representation throughout, well, pretty much everything in American media, while characters of many other races do not. 

To once again quote David Gaider: 

"You can write it off as 'political correctness' if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of the catering as an imbalance."

David Gaider, please write all the games forever. 

There are whole "checklists" of privilege, and I've included them in my sidebar links on the right. Yes, I tend to focus on male privilege, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many small advantages that we all have that we are largely unaware of. You enjoy something that others do not, because of something you did not choose.  (Warning: this list is guaranteed to make you feel horribly guilty, but check out a few anyway. There's a lot you're missing that you don't even know about.)

And I'd like to add one to The Male Privilege Checklist: If I am unable to choose my video game character's sex, it is likely the protagonist will be a male anyway.

Be aware of your own privileges. Be aware of the privileges that others have, or don't have.

And once we understand these things, we can start to change them. 

*For those nit-picky people, I use the word "princess" as a general term for any Disney female lead, even if they're not technically royal.

I think a fun thing to do might be to take a drink every time I use the word "privilege" in this entry, but then you might die, so don't do it after all. 

Throwing science at the walls: Portal 2

Portal 2
Year: 2011
Developer/Publisher: Valve
Systems: PC, Mac, PS3, Xbox 360

I don't think anyone could have predicted Portal's success. It started as just an extra in The Orange Box, but caught on like wildfire, and it's not difficult to see why.  Not only does Portal have some of the most fun, physics-defying puzzles I've ever played, it also features wonderful dark humor and is astoundingly quotable. In fact, the only real complaints I've ever heard about Portal were that it was too short.

Later on, the fans would complain about the other fans, because after after you've heard people shouting "The cake is a lie!" for three days straight, it becomes less funny.

The only logical step for the developers was to pull a Disney and make a second one. Unlike Disney sequels, however, this was actually better than the original. Okay, I'm probably going to get some flack for saying that, but consider this: they took what was good, and improved upon it. There were times when I actually caught myself laughing out loud. The second game haa a more tangible storyline, which only serves to make Aperture Science even creepier than it already is. What I find really interesting is that though there are several more characters in the second game (read: more than two), it still manages to capture Chell's isolation so completely.

Think of the first few minutes of gameplay. You are woken up by an overhead voice, learn some basic controls, and are sent back to sleep. When you next wake up, you are alone, you have no idea how much time has passed, everything in the Enrichment Center seems to be broken or overgrown...and there is not another living soul in sight. Only robots. When you finally do hear another human voice, it's a decades-old recording.

Maybe it's just me, but the more I think about it, the scarier I find it. It doesn't help that Cave Johnson is so out of his mind he puts Tesla to shame as a mad scientist. (I might get shit about that one, too, but Tesla never made a quantum space hole that could be used as a shower curtain.)

"If you're allergic to peanuts, you may want to tell somebody now, because this next test may turn your blood into peanut water for a few minutes. On the bright side, if we can make this happen they're going to have to invent a new kind of Nobel Prize to give us, so hang in there." - Cave Johnson

Aside from the new story, there's a ton of new stuff to play with. Sure, laughing in the face of physics while you fling yourself from test chamber to test chamber is plenty of fun, but then things like the light bridges and gels are introduced--the sort of things that make you run faster, jump higher and hit harder. There's an all-new, ridiculously awesome co-op mode to puzzle your way through that lets you take control of not one, not two, but four portals! It's so much fun, you won't mind how frustrating it can get.

So, yeah, the sequel is great--one of those rare games that eclipses its predecessor by coming up with pretty much stronger everything: more story, more characters, more moments that keep me awake at night. Because, holy hell, GLaDOS.
I just want to say that video games tend not to scare me very much when I'm not playing them. I generally feel pretty well protected by the fourth wall. Even one of the most disturbing bosses I've fought doesn't really bother me, unless I'm dumb enough to play the dwarf bit in DA:O while alone at night. And when I started playing Portal 2, I knew that GLaDOS was going to be in the game. There's no way she could not be. 

I say this how you can understand how utterly terrified I am of this character. Below, find an accurate description of my reaction when she awakes:

And I may as well just come out and say it: GLaDOS was the only video game character I've ever had a nightmare about. 

...Don't judge me!

So what makes her so damn terrifying? 

"Didn't we have some fun though? Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said 'Goodbye' and you were like 'no way' and then I was all, 'We pretended we were going to murder you'? That was great!"

I do not like that woman.

I've come up with a few broad categories that explain just what makes her so scary. First of all, it's pretty obvious that GLaDOS has not familiarized herself with the Laws of Robotics. Oh, and the fact that she's Robot God.

First of all, GLaDOS is omniscient. 

She knows everything that is happening in the facility. You can destroy cameras and find hiding spots where she can't see you, but she is always aware of your movements. The only time that you are really free from her gaze is when you defy her, breaking out of the testing chambers in the first game or preparing to face her down in the second. It's not impossible to escape from her, no, but it is pretty damn hard, and you'll need to be quick, smart, and aware of everything to do it.

Secondly, she is omnipotent.

GLaDOS is life and death at Aperture Science. When you finally escape from her in the second game, it's only because she lets you.  She often controls what resources you have available in the various test chambers and even determines your actions during gameplay. Like killing the beloved Companion Cube. (It's a box with a heart with it. It was sad when you had to burn it. Now can we please, as a fandom, move on?) She could kill you at any moment and simply chooses not to, because, well...

GLaDOS is cruel.

She tries to murder you and she killed everyone in the Enrichment Center (on the worst Take Your Daughter to Work Day ever) with a deadly neurotoxin for, as far as I can tell--shits'n'giggles. That's the technical term. And then there's all the emotional manipulation she subjected to who knows how many test subjects before Chell, culminating in the death of the Companion Cube. And that's just the first game. In the second game, things get worse before they get better. Then they get better, and then worse all over again. Because what's worse than a psychotic computer who, essentially, runs the world? A vengeful psychotic computer who is really fucking pissed at you. 

Another thing of note: It seems like GLaDOS is the femme fatale of the game. Yes, that's kind of a weird characterization to attribute to a giant robot. But the minute she loses her morality core, her voice becomes smooth, less robotic, and definitely going into the realm of seductive. Oh, and then there's things like this:

There's a joke about hard drives somewhere in here.

Yes, that's GLaDOS being compared to a bound and gagged woman hanging upside down from the ceiling. The thing is, it's not just some crazy fan thing: GLaDOS's appearance was based on Botecelli's The Birth of Venus. Huh.

That awkward moment when you remember that your mom reads your blog, and you just posted a picture like that on it.

So, there you have it: the single most terrifying video game character I've ever had the joy of  playing with. 

Even a good villain, though, is nothing without a protagonist to cheer for, and that brings us to Chell.

There's a certain amount of caution you have to take when analyzing silent protagonists. If you want to do it well, you have to make sure that you're not attributing your own traits to them. (This is one of the reasons why I believe the Twilight series is so popular--Bella is such a vapid character that it's very easy to put yourself in her shoes.) Even without speaking, though, you can at least glean a little bit about Chell. 

First of all, Chell is crazy smart. It might take me twenty tries to complete a level, but in-universe, Chell only has one chance to figure out the puzzle without getting shot, vaporized, incinerated, drowned in muck, or lasered to death. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't last very long if I were a test subject at Aperture. Hell, I don't deal with 3D well enough in real life, even without a computer trying to murder me. There are some other small, blink-and-you'll-miss-it hints about Chell's intelligence, too: when you walk past the old potato battery science projects, you can see her name and the largest one there. 

Along the same lines of Chell being scary smart, she's also resourceful. I'd like to think that people can be clever when their lives are on the line, but I think most of us would panic if we were trapped inside an aging laboratory with nothing to help us escape but a potato battery and a device that's hardly a weapon. It's not a lot to work with, really--so being able to use your enemy's tactics against them is freaking genius. 

So: female hero who solves her problems by using her brains instead of brawn. The sexiest thing about her is probably her boots. Because, holy hell, those are some fantastic boots. A nice change for ladies in games. But there's one more reason why I love Chell so much.

You don't notice she's female.

I know how weird that sounds, almost contradictory to the rest of the blog. But there's no one making her prove that she's just as good as the guys. There's no one going, "You're a credit to women! Everyone knows that women have poor spatial relations!" There is never any reference to Chell's sex. 

I find this absolutely wonderful. 

I want to get a couple things out on the table before I go any further. I'm not one of those, "Men and women are equal at everything!" kind of people. On a biological level, men and women are just programmed differently. It's simply a fact of life. Take a stereotype we all know and, well...know: "Girls are better at reading than boys." 

The reason behind this is because testosterone slows the development of the left hemisphere, hence, girls develop reading skills faster. But this is a broad generalization: there are many men whose language skills are better than mine, and there are women whose language skills are worse than mine. Biology shows us what tends to happen, but not what is true of all people.  SCIENCE!

The point that I'm trying to get to (but somehow seemed to have wandered off from) is that, yes, there are differences between men and women that we can't do anything about. Unless you work for Torchwood, or something. But it doesn't need to be a factor in how we treat people. Chell's sex is never mentioned, and hell, most gamers forget they're playing as a woman. Portal 2 is one of the rare games where I feel there really is gender equality: because you forget all about it.

Tl;dr: GLaDOS is fucking terrifying, and it's perfectly reasonable if you have nightmares about her.

Image Credits:
Upside down GLaDOS originally found here: http://www.game-ism.com/2008/04/04/still-alive-shes-free/

A Girl Walks into a Game Store...

If there is anything that's really great about writing a gaming blog, it's the research. Earlier today, I decided to do some research on Dr. Mario, and determined that Mario is the worst doctor ever.

"You kept shoving pills down his throat! He only had a headache!" - VGCats

In fact, once I'm done writting this, I'll probably do more "research" on Portal 2. Look at me still blogging when there's science to do...

Believe it or not, there are more to games than just playing them. There's the industry itself; the geeky subculture; the fanbase ("Alistair looked deeply into Sten's eyes and whispered..."); and game creation. Oh, and marketing. That's important, too.

With all that in mind, I decided to conduct a very unscientific experiment.

I would like to take a moment to apologize to my professors who taught me everything I needed to know about performing a psychology experiment. Please forgive me. I'll do better next time! I'll form hypotheses and everything!

The experiment was very simple. I would walk into a game store, and ask the clerk if she or he could recommend a game for me. Then, I would explain just what kind of game I was looking for: "I'm looking for a game that has a strong female lead who's not, like, oversexualized."

Needless to say, hilarity ensued.

I feel the need to state that I live in a small city, with a population of about 30,000. There are very few locally owned businesses, most of which are restaurants. Almost everything here belongs to a chain or some sort of franchise. In short, there are no independent game stores here, making my options for pseudo-research rather limited.

This town is kind of a downer.

I came up with a quick list of games that met my criterea, which was harder than I expected:

1. Dragon Age
2. Portal/Portal 2
3. Mirror's Edge
4. Metroid

Those were the games I thought I would be recommended to me. They're by no means the only games that have heroines that are more than a pair of boobs on a stick-figure, but I was expecting these because they're not exactly obsucre. Like, say, Radiant Historia.

The first place I stopped was Target, which, to be fair, isn't solely a game store. The one in my area has a pretty decent selection of games, but they only stock new or relatively new releases. It's like the Top 40 Radio Station, but with Mario.

After hearing the clerk discuss games with another customer, I got up my nerve and stepped up to him. After double-checking to make sure he was a gamer, I asked my question.
I have never seen such a look of sheer puzzlement cross anyone's face before. He wrinkled his forehead, furrowed his brows, pursed his lips. Granted, he had probably never been asked about female leads in games before, and likely won't be asked again. He asked me which system it was for, presumably to help him figure out a good answer to the question.

When I told him "any", there were a few more seconds of awkward silence before he finally spoke again. That was obviously not the answer he was hoping to hear.

I sort of feel for this guy, actually. I used to work in a bookstore, and occassionally people would ask for things like "the book with the blue cover". Well, if you don't know the title, author, or genre, we don't either. Please be nice to your local booksellers and ask intelligent questions.

We cruised through the game aisles, and he eventually game up with two suggestion: Final Fantasy XIII-2, because the main character is a girl, and Skyrim, because you can create a female character. I thanked him, explained what I was doing, and then gave him my suggestions.

His reaction? Perhaps not overly pleased, but I wasn't asked to leave the store, either. When I told him my suggestions, he just sort of nodded and said, "Oh, right. Those games. Yeah, I think we have Metroid around somewhere."

Maybe going to Target wasn't fair, but I wanted to stop at a couple places like it. Not everyone goes into game stores, but plenty of people shop at Target. Large stores like this are the "mainstream" of gaming, if you will. What's kept in stock there is a reflection of the most popular games. You're not going to find Ace Attorney there, but you will find everything that the cool kids are playing.

"Let's get out the Bro-box and play some Bro-lo!"-Gorbi and Ginger, the two most non-bro people I know.

A few days later, I marched boldly onward to a GameStop. I was a bit more hopeful about this one. If Target is the Top 40 radio station of video games, GameStop is the radio station that plays just about everything. It's sort of fun to pick through the cheap games and obscure titles that you've never heard of. (Check out Darkened Skye!)

There was one guy working, and I browsed for a minute or two while he helped another customer. I finally approached and asked my question, and I have to say, this guys' reaction was my favorite so far.

"I'm looking for a game with a strong female lead, who's not, like, oversexualized."

He laughed and walked over to the Wii and DS games. After a minute or two of contemplating--while standing right in front of two Metroid games, I might add--he finally said something that I hadn't expected to hear: "Well, there's a few, but I'm trying to think of something that's not little kiddish."
I hadn't even thought about that. I probably should have taken it into consideration, I realized, as I stared at the Tangled and Cooking Mama games. While I'm not about to argue that Cooking Mama is a character that young girls should aspire to be (She cooks! She's a Mama! Sometimes, we even let her out of the house to garden!), I really had to wonder what games young girls really were playing. 

But I digress.


We moved on to the Xbox games after a minute.


GameStop Guy: Final Fantasy...eh...it could really do with a strong female lead.


That reaction really surprised me. I'd assumed that I would get a lot of recommendations for Final Fantasy games, not only because of XIII, but also because they have a giant fanbase. Just because a girl is the lead character doesn't mean that she's a good role model. You know who you are, Cinderella.

Above: armor 

GameStop Guy: Yeah, the problem is that's how a lot of games get marketed.




Me: Yeah, and bikinis will totally protect you from energy swords.




After another minute, I came clean and explained what I was doing, and gave him my (short) list of suggestions. He said that suggesting Portal had never even occurred to him, because all the characters were robots.




Except, you know, the one you play as. But we'll get into that in a later post.


Anyway, I bought a Metroid game (Nintendo, Y U MAKE METROID FIRST PERSON?), thanked him for being a good sport...and it was time to move on to the next store.
For science, of course.


After a very frightening drive, I somehow managed to make it over to another GameStop in one piece. The guy working there was absolutely great. After a couple of minutes nonchalantly browsing shelves, I finally stepped up to the clerk and asked about leading ladies.


After a brief "hmmm", he finally said, "Have you ever played Mass Effect?"


Mass Effect! I had never even thought of Mass Effect. Bad fangirl! Bad!
He continues: "You can have a girl character, and it actually does make a difference which gender you play."  He turned to see what games were behind the desk and listed a few. "Well, I'd say Tomb Raider, but Lara..."


Me: "Yeah, she's somethin' else."

High heel gun shoes are the last thing I would
want to wear when I'm fighting angels.

GameStop Guy: "And there's Bayonetta, but...hey, do you like Final Fantasy games at all?"


I am probably being too harsh on XIII, but dammit, SquareEnix, I want a GAME, not an interactive cut scene.


I really loved this. He didn't take long to answer, and it was easy to tell that he knew what he was talking about. At the mention of Portal, he said that Chel was actually probably the best heroine out right now...too bad you never see her. After that, our conversation quickly spiraled to "Blah blah BioWare blah." 


GameStop Guy #2, never quit you job. 


There was just one last stop that I needed to make before this experiment could be concluded: Best Buy. 


It didn't take me long to find someone to ask, and after a brief pause, he had an answer: Mirror's Edge.


I could have hugged him.


He called another employee over and asked him about games with strong female leads. The second guy responded with Metroid. And that was the moment I realized that I needed to actually go to Best Buy more often.


I was really surprised and delighted. I gave them my short list (now with Mass Effect tacked on at the end), and at the mention of Portal, their reactions were something like, "Oh, why didn't we think of that?"


As any good psychologist (or wannabe researcher) knows, you need to replicate your experiments to ensure that it wasn't just a fluke, and to test your hypotheses using other variables. I'd really like to see what would happen if I had a guy go into game stores and about female characters, or what a woman working at a game store would say. But that's another post.


It's not easy finding a game to fit those two criteria. I love that women are featured as main characters more and more, and I want to see it as a sign that the industry's changing. One study from 1998 found that, of the 33 games used in the study, 41% (13.5 games, if you want to get technical) had no female characters at all.


I can't adequately express how much I love how much this has changed. It's not just that women are present in games now, but also that they're taking an active role--no longer just damsels in distress or femme fatales.


The problem now is what I'm going to title "the Lara Conundrum".  You can make female leads with good characterization, goals, an unwillingness to back down...


But you should also make sure they don't get buried underneath their boobs.


What we have now--for the most part--is a mix of empowerment and objectification. Two things I never thought would go together, and then I started writing this blog.

Objectification: Seeing a person not as a person, but as an object--in such a way that it removes the person's identity.

Sexy, sexy objectification.

While it's usually used in terms of men objectifying women, it can go both ways.

How do we separate the two, or do they go hand-in-hand when it comes to gaming? Is it possible to make a kick-ass female character who still looks good?

I wish I had the answers for this. I wish that when I yell, "I want to be her!" I knew whether it was because that character is strong in her own way--or whether it's because I will never look that good in leather. Hooray for self-objectification! :D

Or maybe it's because I'll never get to ride around on dragons in real life. That's a downer, too.

I hope we're going in the right direction. I hope that we see more Samuses than Ivys, that Lara gets her shit together, and that girl gamers don't feel worse about themselves when they put the controller down.

Before I end, I just want to send a massive THANK YOU to the employees and Target, GameStop, and Best Buy that helped me with this. You guys are awesome, and thanks for not kicking me out of your store.

Up next: Portal 2

Image credits: 

Ivy - http://soulcalibur.neoseeker.com/wiki/Ivy

Bayonetta - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonetta
Link - http://emptyclosets.com/forum/chit-chat/53472-crushes-fictional-characters-4.html

Work Cited

Dietz, T. L. (1998). An examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games: Implications for gender    socialization and aggressive behavior. Sex Roles, 38(5-6), 425-442. 

Sexy, sexy APA style. 

Or it would be, if I could get the indent to work.

The Good, the Bad, and the Sexy

A few years ago, I took a wonderful class with a wonderful professor called "The Psychology of Women".  The class, not the professor. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I signed up for it, but it quickly became one of my favorite classes.  It was one of a handful of classes that made me think, "This is something I could do for the rest of my life." But social psychology isn't exactly a great field for someone with only a B.A.

Instead of tests, we had weekly quizzes. We had discussion days once a week, but my favorite project was when we had to violate gender norms for a day. I ended up cross dressing, and it ended up still being one of the most fun days I've ever had in college, partially because I ended up confusing the hell out of the other people in the coffee shop. 

Instead of a final exam, we had to write a research paper. The topic? "Anything we've talked about in class." The length? "As long as it needs to be." You know, the two things that a class never wants to hear in regards to a paper.

Still, it is nice to be allowed that freedom. In most classes, I would much rather see a list: "Here are five topics. Pick one and turn in four pages of drivel." (No, wait, that was just my English classes.) But writing about anything in a subject I was interested in? With no page limit? It must be my birthday! It was a good day to be a geek.

After much hemming and hawing, I had it narrowed down to two subjects. The first: Role models.

When I was a kid, my hero was Eileen Collins, who, among other things, was the first female commander of a NASA mission. I wanted to be just like her when I was a kid. I had big plans to be the first person to step foot on Mars. I even got to meet her, years later, when I was in high school and had since decided the life of an astronaut was not for me. I was too starstruck to say much of anything...I wish I told her how much I looked up to her.

What I wanted to know was who do young girls look up to today, and how does it impact their ideals? It seems today that most of the role models young girls have to follow are Miley Cyruses and Selena Gomezes. Is that how you would pluralize their names?  You know the type: pop stars, whose values lie in fame.  Many TV shows that feature girls as lead characters also feature catty behavior, backstabbing, and girls just being awful to one another. And it's not just TV shows, either.

"College was Plan B. I was still hoping for Plan A, but Edward was just so stubborn about leaving me human..." - Stephanie Meyer, New Moon

Fuck you, Bella Swan.

Listen to this NPR story about the effects of reality TV shows on girls. Girls in the study discussed here who regularly watched reality TV think that it is more normal to gossip and compete with other girls, and are less likely to trust other girls. Also, one in four girls expects to be famous. I really hope this is the scariest thing that you've read today. There's a lot more to the story than what I've just mentioned, so I really recommend you listen to (or read) it to get a better understanding of this study.

Obviously, this is important stuff. Unfortunately, I could find very little research about this topic at the time.  So, I switched it to my second topic. You guessed it: video games.

"Wait, wait, wait--" I hear you cry. "Aren't video games sort of a step-down from role models?"

Okay, role models are really important. But here's something else to consider: in 2010, 46% of game purchasers were female. No doubt this number has risen since then, especially with the popularity of casual games, such as Words with Friends and Angry Birds.

Girl gamers like myself are on the rise! When I was in high school, I would often walk into game stores and see that I was the only girl in the place. When I go to game stores today, I'm not usually the only girl in there. Men still outnumber us, but we're out there, and we're not afraid to frag your ass.

But what do gamers--both women and men--see when female characters are featured in games?

Let's start with some examples, shall we?

Princess Peach. The literal girl in the tower waiting to be rescued. Apparently possesses teleportation abilities, because she's always in another castle. She finally got her own game in 2006, where she got her special powers from her emotions. Also, if you Google "Princess Peach Game" because you can't remember the title, the first few results are dress-up games.

Cooking Mama. That kind of says it all.  And no, this isn't an actual image from the game, but a VG Cats comic about the game. Ah, sexism. Mama can't fix it.

Mia Fey. From the Ace Attorney games, Mia serves as the main character's mentor. She proves to be just as competent or even more so than the other male characters in the game. Mia is a great character, but I can't fail to notice that her boobs are the size of basketballs. Also, she manages to get killed after the first episode in the game. But she comes back. Sort of.

Lara Croft. What kind of feminist gaming blog would this be if we never mentioned her? This tomb raider brought female game heroes to the spotlight. She is easily one of the most recognizable female game characters in history. She's a total bad ass, and...

Oh, right.

"It was a defining moment for me as I watched her strut seductively across my screen and into the sex symbol status that would turn the gaming world on its head. Fast-forward eight years through the evolution of next-gen hardware, multimillion-dollar budgets, and massive acceptance of games in pop culture. Still, Lara Croft continues to personify an ongoing culture clash over gender, sexuality, empowerment, and objectification." - Zoe Flowers, "Getting the Girl"

We could go through examples of the good, the bad, and the sexy until Cthulhu wakes. It's not difficult to see the problems these characters present. But one nice thing (if there is a nice thing) about these issues is that they're all fairly obvious. Lara Croft? Kicks a ton of ass, but there are two reasons why a lot of gamers like her. But what about the more subtle things? Things that aren't quite in your face as Lara's boobs. 

My God. Sometimes I wish game developers would name their characters something like "Tits McGee". At least then they're being honest with themselves.

There are two last characters that I'd like to introduce you to. 

In the blue corner, weighing in at 90 pounds, we have Yuna. 

And in the red corner, weighing in at 120 pounds (because the skirt adds on a few) we have Lulu.

FIGHT!

I'm know what you're thinking, so I'll clear this up right now. Yes. Square Enix's obsession with belts had gone this far. Her skirt is made out of belts. Her whole skirt. How do you make something like that? How do you even move in that? How do you follow the main hero around for over 100 hours wearing something like that? This skirt confuses and irritates me. But I digress.

Let's start with Yuna. The game is centered around her, after all, even though she doesn't actually reach playable character status until Final Fantasy X-2. While we're on the subject, X-2 happens to be the first Final Fantasy game to feature a woman as a main character. Thanks for that one, Square Enix. And that's not even getting into the Dressphere system. -_-'

Yuna is charged with saving the world, and of the three female leads, as the most important role in the game's story. She's a feminine character: soft spoken, pretty, and supportive of the other characters. In battle, Yuna's relegated to healing the other party members; a background task. When she's used offensively, she summons aeons--magical creatures that you collect like pokémon--to damage enemies for her. She can also whack things with her stick (sorry, staff), but it doesn't do much of anything unless she's grossly overleveled. On the positive side, Yuna's pretty realistic looking. Once you get past the fact that she looks like a strong wind could knock her over.

Lulu's pretty much Yuna's opposite. She tends to be seen as cold-hearted and cynical, but when you get down to it, Lulu's a bitch. She's more competent than Yuna, who needs to be rescued more than once throughout the course of the game. In battle, her magic attacks inflict a ton of damage on enemies. She also can throw stuffed-animal bombs at them, which like her skirt, perplexes me. Her appearance? Yet another pair of giant boobs and a highly accessorized outfit. I honestly believe that her looks are to balance out the un-feminine qualities in her.

Okay, examples are great. And we've all heard that negative portrayals aren't good for us, but they're everywhere: TV, movies, ads...what makes gaming so special? Why are these characters so bad for us, when things like this can be found in every other form of media?

I got one word for you: immersion.

When you watch a TV show, there's always some distance between you and the show. You are a viewer, not a participant. When you play games, you become that character. You control their actions, get involved in the world, and you are the one who makes everything happen. This is even evidenced, in some way, by how we talk about games. When you're talking about how many hookers you killed in Grand Theft Auto, you don't say, "Niko waited until the hookers came out and ran them over, and then Roman called." You say something like, "I made Niko run over all the hookers, and then Roman called." More likely, though, you say something like this: "I ran over all the hookers and then my cousin Roman called. He asked if I wanted to go see beeg American tee-tees." In fact, plenty of games have been criticized for not having a likable enough main character...or a character that players can relate to.

Here's another interesting thing about immersion: the stronger the storyline, the stronger the immersion.

Think about any game you've ever played. When were you most into it? What game stays in your brain, even after you've put down the controller? Most likely, it's one with a good story. Right now I'm playing through Radiant Historia, and it's probably the most epic DS game I've played. It has a great story, and it makes me want to continue playing, because I want to know what happens next.

This even happens with games with skeleton plots, but to a lesser extent. Take the Pokémon games. Sure, collecting the gym badges, raising pokémon, and breeding wailords with skitties is all pretty fun. But one of the best parts of the game, and still my favorite, is defeating Team Rocket. Aside from defeating the Elite Four, everything after that felt like an anti-climax. I dare you to find another game where so many kids all cried out the same thing: "Oh my God, Mom, NOT NOW! I'm fighting Giovanni!"

Mothers will never understand the feeling of defeating Team Rocket for the first time.

Other than making us act like crazy people, what does immersion do for us? It makes games more fun, for a start. But we also are more likely to internalize the messages that our games are sending us. 

Messages like don't steal pokémon, or some 10-year-old punk ass kid will come and crush your organized crime ring.

So what does that immersion do to us? Plenty, it turns out.

In 2008, two researchers studied the impact that games have on body image. Both men and women in the study played games that had a high focus on the characters' bodies--a wrestling game and a volleyball game, respectively. The study revealed that body esteem decreased for both men and women.

Body esteem = the emotional way we feel about our bodies.

There was some decrease in how the participants viewed their sexual attractiveness, though this ended up not being statistically significant. If you paid attention in your stats class and actually understand what that means, good. Explain it to me.

But wait! There's more! With your purchase of lowered body esteem, we'll throw in an increased tolerance of sexual harassment and rape myths, absolutely free! WHATADEAL!

What are rape myths?

Well, I'm glad you asked, Melvin. No, they don't have anything to do with Zeus, the original, "hide your kids, hide your wife".

Rape myths are false beliefs that people hold about rape. Some common ones include:

• Rape is sex.
• A victim of rape should "forget about it".
• Rape is only perpetrated by strangers.
• Rape is a relatively rare crime.
• Women "ask for it" from the way they dress or act.

While we're on the subject, let's clear a few of these up.

1. Rape is not an act of sexual gratification, but rather and act of violence or domination.
2. Nearly one-third of rape victims suffer PTSD as a result of their rape. Rape changes your life. It is not something you can "forget about".
3. About 70% of victims know who their attacker is.
4. One out of every 8 women has been the victim of rape.
5. Most rapes are planned. Rapists target women that appear vulnerable. No one "asks" to be raped. Not ever. The rapist is solely responsible for the rape.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

I like this study a lot, so let's go through it, shall we? Participants--both women and men--were shown a series of images of either congressmen and women, or sex-typed game characters. After the images, participants read a true story of a female student being sexually harassed by her male professor. Participants responded to the story by indicating how serious they though the incident was, how much empathy they had for the victim, how much blame they placed on the victim, and what would be a good punishment for the professor.

The researchers found that tolerance for sexual harassment was the highest in the group of men that had viewed the sexy game characters, but women who viewed the sex-typed characters displayed the lowest amount of tolerance for harassment. Exposure to violence in video games had a positive correlation to rape-supportive attitudes and endorsement of rape myths.

Most of us are aware of sexism in video games (and if you weren't before, you sure are now!) but we don't realize just how much it can influence our thoughts.

Why am I still doing this, then? Clearly, video games are evil and make us violent, sexist pigs.

The answer is very simple.

Because I love video games. I love to play them, I love to talk about them, I love to write about them....  Knowing all this doesn't make them any less fun for me. Developers are going to keep making them, and we'll keep playing them. But while we're saving the world, keep an eye out for things that shouldn't be there...and the things that should be.

Next up: Dragon Age: Origins

Image credits:
Princess Peach - http://www.mariowiki.com/File:PeachNormalSPP.png
Cooking Mama - http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=252
Mia Fey - http://aceattorney.wikia.com/wiki/Mia_Fey
Lara Croft 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lara_Croft
Lara Croft 2 - http://www.oddee.com/item_96977.aspx
Yuna - http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Yuna
Lulu - http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Lulu

Works Cited

(Barlett C P Harris R J 2008 impact of body emphasizing video games on body image concerns in men and women)Barlett, C. P., & Harris, R. J. (2008). The impact of body emphasizing video games on body image concerns in men and women. Sex Roles, 57, 419-433.

(Dill K E Brown B P Collins M A 2008 An examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games: Implications for gender socialization and aggressive behavior)Dill, K. E., Brown, B. P., & Collins, M. A. (2008). An examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games: Implications for gender socialization and aggressive behavior. Sex Roles, 38, 425-442.

 (Entertainment Software Association 2010 Essential facts about the computer video game industry)Entertainment Software Association. (2010). Essential facts about the computer video game industry. Retrieved from http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_Essential_Facts_2010.PDF

Martin (2011) (Martin M 201110 Reality tv turning girls into fame monsters?)Martin, M. (2011, October). Reality tv turning girls into fame monsters? Retrieved from National Public Radio Web site: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141508287/reality-tv-turning-young-girls-into-fame-monsters

Citations done in APA format. Fuck yeah.