Madonna/Whore
How to Avoid Turning Female Gamers Off
When entertaining myself, especially when I was younger, I was always kind of quietly resigned to pretending that I was a boy. This came up everywhere: movies, TV shows, even the Goosebumps style Choose Your Own Adventure books forced you to be a boy. The biggest heartbreak came when I would tear open a new video game, pop it into my console, and sit down to play to realize that there was only a male to play as again. I usually got past it very quickly though, and had many adventures as Mario, Link, Rex Nebula, Carl Johnson, Solid Snake, Rayman, Donkey Kong, James Bond, Kirby, the clowns in Math Circus (don’t judge), and so many others. If a game offered the choice to play a woman or a female protagonist, it would hold a special place in my heart. Joanna Dark and I had some good times, and I will insist to this day that Peach blows everyone else in Super Mario Brothers 2 out of the water.
Today, there seem to be many more female protagonists that I identify with and play as. Some of them are from games that I simply missed when they first came out and now enjoy immensely. But the vast majority of them are new and exciting characters. Even when a game doesn’t have a sole female protagonist, it has a female character as a strong supporting cast member, or you have the option to go ahead and make your own character from scratch. (I insist that Shepard Is female to this day, even though Mark Vanderloo is gazing at me sinisterly from the Mass Effect 2 box as I type.)
I’m starting to notice some troubling patterns with the ladies I encounter in video games: they fall along the lines of the virgin/whore dichotomy.
The Jill Valentine of the first Resident Evil game is certainly a talented woman. She’s achieved the impossible, becoming part of the Delta Force at the age of 23 (just apply some video game logic to massage the incredulity you might be feeling) and surviving multiple zombie apocalypses. When my brother brought home the Resident Evil 1 remake for Gamecube, I played through her storyline. Chris’s macho Boy Scout attitude and stupid vest certainly didn’t appeal to me. I appreciated Jill’s sensible t-shirt, cool confidence, and the fact that she was the Master of Unlocking certainly didn’t hurt at all. The most she gives Chris is just falling asleep on his shoulder in the escape helicopter, though, and she seemed to be missing a certain something.
Suddenly in Resident Evil 3 she’s wearing a miniskirt and tube top for her last escape out of the doomed Raccoon City. It’s not as if Jill was out clubbing when the zombie apocalypse hit – she was well aware and prepared when she did up her knee length leather heeled boots, her miniskirt, and her tube top. In the Umbrella Chronicles’ depiction of Resident Evil 3, she grabs a zombie between her legs and writhes around calling for help. I was embarrassed for her and embarrassed to be playing this game.
Fighting games provide even better examples of the virgin/whore contrast. Look at Xianghua or Talim from Soul Calibur – tiny, petite young girls with high voices, innocent giggles and noble goals. Xianghua pursues a path of true love and sacrifices much to help Kilik. Talim, the last priestess of her village, works to help stop an evil force despite not being personally affected by it herself. Now compare them to Ivy, who wears dominatrix-style leathers that barely cover her. She laughs throatily and cracks a whip. She’s literally corrupted from birth, and is deeply flawed. She exudes sex. Her legs grow longer and her hips and shoulders narrow with every game – of course, her breasts just keep on getting larger. At this point, Ivy is an alarming caricature of a thirteen year old boy’s wildest fantasies. Of course, no one expects subtlety from the increasingly convoluted Soul Calibur series, but it serves this example well.
Women like Faith or Samus Aran or Zelda are ‘virgins’ – they are loved by their fan bases and defended to the death. When Samus wears her Zero Suit too often, or shows too much skin, people grouse in comments and forums about how that just isn’t right.
Women like Ivy or Ada Wong are whores – no one expects too much realism. Ada runs around in a evening dress cut to the thigh and high heels and no one bats an eye. Ivy’s body is becoming such a massive joke that I’m a little afraid to play Soul Calibur 4 when company is around in case I have to explain that no, I don’t have some crazy fetish. This is expected, and when someone complains or grouses, a chorus of arguments greets their concerns: “Use video game logic!” “It makes sense because women can use their tits to distract the enemy!” “I’d rather stare at a hot female ass than a guy’s ass!” and so on.
Of course, this begs the question of why this matters. What is relevant about this dichotomy happening to apply to gaming?
The answer is obvious:
Just like when I was a child playing a game, this shallow trope being found across the board makes me a little less into the game. I don’t want to play it as much. I love Mass Effect dearly, but I was a little bit ashamed for Bioware when my Shepard’s conversation with Miranda devolved into long, loving shots on Miranda’s genetically modified ass. Sex doesn’t sell across the board, and people can be turned off by childish characters meant to appeal to hormonal teenage boys. If I wanted to see naked ladies, I would use the Internet – when I play video games, I like fun gameplay, good graphics, and interesting writing.
Which brings me to the next point – writing shallow women characters that can be neatly placed in one of two boxes is boring. It’s repetitive, uninteresting, and it honestly speaks poorly for gaming as a whole. Gamers like to clamber about how gaming is art and speak about experiences that really touched them, communities they’ve formed, games that blew them away, and so on. I love gaming in the same way, but there have been so many times a character appears out of nowhere and her design or dialogue makes me roll my eyes. My immersion is broken instantly.
Aren’t we better than that? Isn’t the hobby nearest and dearest to our heart better than that?
Of course, on a positive note, as time goes by the caliber of high quality female characters has gotten better and more varied. I continue to love games with the same energy and enthusiasm I had as a child, except now I have the opportunity to play as someone who reflects me a little better in my games. Hopefully the progress continues, and the end result will be an end to the virgin/whore dichotomy in games.
Categories: Gaming
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