We're all familiar with it. The stereotypical videogame female; thin, busty and disproportionately curvy, working the physics engine to its breaking point with their over sized sextuple D's. Icons such as Lara Croft with her famous 38-22-36 (inch) measurments, Mai Shiranui with her barely-there outfit and constant acrobatics and the Dead or Alive girls who fight wearing floss. We're all too familiar with these displays of bouncing breasts and protuberant posteriors and we often think it's the industry sexualizing women for their horny 12-18 year old male demographic, but, have you ever looked at the other side of the spectrum? You don't think men are sexualized in games? Well, un-cock that eyebrow and stop with the gay jokes and I'll tell you why.
Gears of War. That's not a sentence, really, just a title, but still, Gears of War. What comes to mind when I say Gears of War? Exploding heads? Aliens getting the business end of a chainsaw to the head? Yes. All of the glorious crimson fountains and gore the game offers comes to mind when one hears the title, but along with that one gets the mental image of the Cogs themselves. Marcus Phoenix, most likely. Think about him for a second; what's he like? He's big, muscular, violent and has a voice that would make Dr. Claw sound like a castrated school boy. He's a manly man, he's been 'sexualized'.
Consider why you would consider a female character to be sexualized. Skimpy outfits, constant acrobatics to accentuate her assets and a lot of other nonsense made just to show off her unrealistic perfection. Now, think of any gruff male character. They too don skimpy outfits that show off every inch of their unrealistic physique. They don't appeal to most gamers in a sexual way, since most gamers (thanks to cruel stereotyping and the industry's belief of this.) are young, straight adult males who see these displays of sentient muscle as something normal. We see Kratos running around in nothing but a loin cloth and a smile and we think it's ok, maybe even 'cool'. Get Chun Li in the same outfit, and she's being 'sexualized'.
This brings to light a double-standard in our society. We think of shirtless, muscular men acting like a cross between the worst male stereotypes as something acceptable, yet when we're presented with a scantily clad female we think she's being sexualized. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of shameless sexualization in this industry and in many others, too, but I just think that sometimes we look at just one side of this spectrum. I'm not calling for every videogame character to wear a turtle-neck, I'm just pointing out the double-standard set in videogames.
One could argue that Male vs Female sexualization in videogames doesn't really hold any water, since women in video games are obviously marketed towards men, but if you think about it, gamers are being pandered to with men as well. Think about it, you don't want to play as a regular looking guy, you want to play as the big, muscular, roid-raging guy. Male gamers are being sold the image of 'male perfection' as well as the image of 'female perfection' just different packages.
Comments?
Gears of War. That's not a sentence, really, just a title, but still, Gears of War. What comes to mind when I say Gears of War? Exploding heads? Aliens getting the business end of a chainsaw to the head? Yes. All of the glorious crimson fountains and gore the game offers comes to mind when one hears the title, but along with that one gets the mental image of the Cogs themselves. Marcus Phoenix, most likely. Think about him for a second; what's he like? He's big, muscular, violent and has a voice that would make Dr. Claw sound like a castrated school boy. He's a manly man, he's been 'sexualized'.
Consider why you would consider a female character to be sexualized. Skimpy outfits, constant acrobatics to accentuate her assets and a lot of other nonsense made just to show off her unrealistic perfection. Now, think of any gruff male character. They too don skimpy outfits that show off every inch of their unrealistic physique. They don't appeal to most gamers in a sexual way, since most gamers (thanks to cruel stereotyping and the industry's belief of this.) are young, straight adult males who see these displays of sentient muscle as something normal. We see Kratos running around in nothing but a loin cloth and a smile and we think it's ok, maybe even 'cool'. Get Chun Li in the same outfit, and she's being 'sexualized'.
This brings to light a double-standard in our society. We think of shirtless, muscular men acting like a cross between the worst male stereotypes as something acceptable, yet when we're presented with a scantily clad female we think she's being sexualized. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of shameless sexualization in this industry and in many others, too, but I just think that sometimes we look at just one side of this spectrum. I'm not calling for every videogame character to wear a turtle-neck, I'm just pointing out the double-standard set in videogames.
One could argue that Male vs Female sexualization in videogames doesn't really hold any water, since women in video games are obviously marketed towards men, but if you think about it, gamers are being pandered to with men as well. Think about it, you don't want to play as a regular looking guy, you want to play as the big, muscular, roid-raging guy. Male gamers are being sold the image of 'male perfection' as well as the image of 'female perfection' just different packages.
Comments?
). The characters described in Gears of War, God of War, etc. play off of a power fantasy as opposed to a sexual one. Not to say that power cannot be sexy to a demographic, but that is not the intended purpose of those chiseled features, in my opinion.
