Gamer girls

I love this topic! I'd been waiting for it since the beginning of the paper. Just so I could write this post and rant a bit. hahah. Just kidding. Kind of.

During tutorial the tutorial on wednesday, we watched this video and we discussed the general idea that the media representation of girl gamers is either really hot and really 'pro' at games OR really nerdy, geeky, unattractive.




While watching it, at first I just thought it was amusing but as the video went on, I actually began to feel more and more annoyed.
And in the description box of this video on youtube it says "This music video parody proves Geek and Gamer Girls really do exist."
I really think that it doesn't accurately summarise this highly sexualised video!
Yes, girls who play games do exist, girls who are incredibly good at games also exist. Girls who like comics and starwars exist. But most of them aren't exactly running around naked, or dressed skimply wearing a full face of makeup.
I understand what they are trying to say is that not all girl gamers are unattractive but I think they might have overdone it a little bit.
These are self respecting women who are apparently competent gamers! DO they really need to empower themselves in this way? They're essentially playing up to this fantasy that some men seem to have about the "perfect" woman. Which essentially is a hot geeky gamer girl.

When I was younger, I used to think that it was cool to be a girl who played games. When you mentioned it to guys their eyes sort of light up. Because gamer girls are apparently  so "rare". I don't know why but I even find the phrase "gamer girls" kind of derrogratoy as if girls who play games are immediately placed in some sort of strange category by men. I've really been put off playing games online in the past year because everytime I tried to play a game of Starcraft 2, some guy would be hitting on me or asking me all these weird questions... EVEN the guys in my own team when we played 4v4! argh! And you can't even just beat them to show them that you can't be messed with because they never really took you seriously from the beginning. It's so frustrating that guys have this fixed image of 'gamer girls' in their heads. I guess that's why this video annoyed me so much. It will only fuel and help that image fixate in people's heads.

I know quite a lot of girls who regularly go to netcafes with guys and play various games, from rpgs to first person shooters and not one of them has felt the need to advertise this. They see themselves as no different from the guys who play games and just enjoy this particular activity as they would any other hobby. Isn't this how it should be? Why must women set out to prove anything in regards to playing games? Shouldn't it just be viewed as people playing games instead of "girls playing games" and "guys playing games" ?

Funnily enough, after the lecture on games and gender, a couple of my female friends came over to my house and we spent the afternoon playing playstation games and discussing portal.
And no, we were not in short shorts and tank tops.

_