Capilouto: Media Analysis

Video Games Sexualize the Female Body

Throughout the past two decades, the video game industry has skyrocketed and is now an extremely popular form of entertainment across the world. Whether or not it is Cruis’n USA in an arcade room or Tomb Raider in one’s living room, video games are consuming lives all over the globe. In more recent years, we have seen a drastic surge in home entertainment, bringing these widely popular video games to homes all over the world, allowing 24-hour access to individual’s own private virtual experiences.
Traditional games such as Tetris and Pacman are no longer popular among today’s gamers as they once were. Instead, many of the video games today focus on a storyline with a main character – usually a white male with chiseled features and a “larger than life” persona. In more recent years, we have started to recognize the role of female characters and the ways they are portrayed throughout many trendy games. Today, the use of female characters as lead roles or main characters has become an increasingly popular trend in many video games and “…results show that female characters appeared as often in leading parts as male characters did” (Jansz and Martis). Although women are highly recognized as useful characters in the gaming industry, the difference between the female role and the male role is the fact that females in video games are far more sexualized than men, resulting in the degradation and demeaning of women. In this essay, I will argue that women are heavily sexualized throughout the video game industry by the roles in which they are assigned, the appearance they are made out to represent, and the actions they take as lead characters.
Today, the video game industry is made up of many fictional characters both male and female. The use of women in video games has become an increasingly popular trend, but unfortunately many of the female characters represent a recent development of debasing and shameful character roles. For instance, in the Grand Theft Auto series, the lead role is a male ex-convict living in a city such as New York or Los Angeles. The ex-convict works as a hit man for the local mafia and goes around the city completing various missions for his gang leader until he works his way to the top of his own crime-based family. The character is awarded money for his completed tasks and also receives points which count towards health so he can sustain his current mission and not die and have to start over from the beginning. Like every city in the real world there are slum neighborhoods that attract various amounts of criminal activity. In this game, there is a neighborhood of the virtual city known as the red light district, which contains rival gang members and other characteristics associated with crime. One act of criminal activity in particular that takes place in the game is prostitution. In this area of the city, prostitutes can be seen walking the streets in provocative clothing. If you happen to be in a vehicle driving through the red light district, the prostitutes will approach the vehicle and ask to accompany you. Once the prostitute is in the vehicle, the car begins to shake as if there is some “wild” and “crazy” sex taking place. While this is happening, your points in health begin to rise as if having sex with a female were to make you healthier.
The idea of having a female prostitute as a character in this particular game should be viewed as highly offensive. Not only is prostitution a shameful act that is somewhat admired in this game, but the idea of portraying women as these types of characters is extremely degrading and what is also troublesome is how only females, and not even some males, are given this character role in the game. What is even more concerning is the target audience for video games like Grand Theft Auto. Young males, who are very impressionable and whether they recognize it or not, take what they see in video games and apply it to their own perspective of women.
Another key example of the degradation of women is once again found in the Grand Theft Auto game series. As well as associating women with prostitution, the video game also correlates females with stripping and exotic dancing. The lead male character has the option of attending gentlemen clubs and other bars that provide erotic entertainment. Once the lead character is inside the club, the video screen is full of women dancing on bars and tables wearing nothing but underwear. Again women are portrayed in a negative light by the role in which they are given to represent throughout the game. Also, the lack of male strip clubs throughout the game certainly illustrates that men are much more highly regarded in the video game industry as well as other aspects of home entertainment.
It has not been until recently that have we seen females take lead roles in video games as either the hero or protagonist. This could be a result of more women playing video games and getting further involved with other types of home entertainment. In fact, “recent research suggests that gaming audiences have become more inclusive and that a large percentage of females report playing video games” (Herbst). The idea of a female acting as a lead role or main character throughout a video game is now becoming a very popular trend and should certainly be considered a positive development for women in the home entertainment industry. However, the gaming industry tends to illustrate females in a negative light through the use of their appearance and what it is made out to represent.
Today, the gaming industry uses female characters in a sexual manner so they are able to attract their intended audience. Many of the popular games today represent females in a way where “…women’s bodies are overrepresented and stereotypical, because of the market logic underlying these new media productions, which target a wide audience” (Fantone). A recent example of an “overrepresented” body can be found throughout the widely popular Tomb Raider series starring Laura Croft. The Tomb Raider series is a game starring the beautiful and highly sexualized Laura Croft, a cave climbing, hang gliding, base jumping crime fighter in an Indian Jones esc type of setting. In fact, one could pretty much consider Laura Croft as the female version of the famous Dr. Jones. So if one was wondering what a female version of Indiana Jones looks like, one might be heavily mistaken. No cowboy hat, rugged jacket or dirty blue jeans make up Laura Croft’s attire, instead the viewer has the pleasure of watching a women in a half cut tee shirt that highly emphasizes the size of her breasts, shorts that would barley fit a two year old, and a sexy pair of black knee high boots.
“Although a number of fighting games offer the option of a female character, the hero is traditionally male with females largely cast in a supporting role” (Kennedy). Even when females are made the lead character instead of a supporting role they are still overly sexualized and given unrealistic proportions which in turn give men and young children an image of what they feel women should look like and as a result we see the reoccurring issue of female having a negative body image.
Today, there is a much higher demand for lead female character roles in the video games we play today. The traditional games created by the makers of Nintendo and other entertainment systems are no longer popular among today’s youth and gamers. Instead, the industry is based around unrealistic character roles and a high degree of sexism towards women. The role women play in many of today’s popular games can be viewed as not only offensive but extremely distasteful in regards to the representation of our female gamers.