Another Post about Gender.. yay.

This week's lecture and content has dealt with some pretty serious issues. Without trying to sound too hot with rage, I am going to explain just how ridiculous some of the representations of women are. 

Lets take a look at Eddy,

You may know him, he's that break-dancing guy from the Tekken series. (which in himself could have some racial stereotypes, noting the dreads.) Yet is pretty normal. His outfit covers most parts of his body, leaving his arms and a small part of his torso bare, probably for practical reasons, so his clothes won't limit his break-dance fighting moves.

Let's take a look at his woman counterpart, Christie:

Yes. My eyes are automatically drawn to 'there' too. Can someone please tell me how this outfit is fit for fighting condition? It's like they took the leftover piece of fabric from eddy's torso and slapped it onto her chest. Eddy and Christie are almost identical in fighting style, yet Christie is portrayed as a highly sexualised female figure. Not to mention her stance in this photo doesn't look like any fighting move I've seen, but seems to accentuate her upper torso exceptionally. Compared to Eddie, this visual is beyond ridiculous.

Christie is labelled by GameDaily as 2nd on the "Top 25 Hottest games babes", #20 on Heavy.com's "The 20 Hottest Video Game Girls" and on Complex' list she is #12 on "The 50 Hottest women in video games." So what has this got to do with the game!??! It doesn't. She isn't recognized for her fighting role in the game, just for her extreme sexual appeal and  lack of clothing. 

Many men may say that they wouldn't have a problem with having this sort of representation reversed onto them. Well people from 'The Hawkeye Initiative' have done just that, where they have taking common provocative images of female comic book characters and have placed Hawkeye in the poses instead to show how utterly ridiculous and impractical some of these sexist images really are. Here's one to give you a little taste:

I think that these sexualised images have become so normal and ubiquitous, that only in the reversal do we see the problem with the framing of women in video games. (Yes, that example was a comic, but it could so easily be the same for games)

There seems to be a mindset that men dominate the video gaming world, and despite the stats that show proof of an equal involvement from both genders, women continue to be treating as a minority, and are framed in hyper-sexualised ways. There is enough evidence shown in the lecture that video games are considered a masculine thing, being made and advertised specifically to men. This mindset needs to change if women are ever taken seriously in the gaming world. If this happens, then everything else should fall into place.

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And what the hell, I'll post one more:

Happy Studying.