Since exactly forever, women in video games have had a certain reputation for being overtly sexualised. With exaggerated long legs, impossibly sized breasts, and jiggle physics being prioritised as key features in some games, it’s not hard to see how a lot of gamers have grown exasperated and bored of the copy/paste look a fair amount of women in gaming share. As the gender divide in gaming is rapidly equalising, even demonstrating a predominantly female market in some territories, the imminent need for revised representation of women has never before been so important. And I’m all for it! So what is it we need to focus on, or even eliminate in the name of equal and fair representation?
Spoiler alert: it’s not sex.
As an outspoken feminist in gaming, one of the most common questions I’m asked is how I feel about Bayonetta as a character. If you don’t know Bayonetta, she is an incredibly intelligent, incredibly powerful and incredibly sexy protagonist of her own self titled series – her clothes are made of her own hair, and her games are heavily criticised for their over-the-top sexual overtones. The question has become almost a test run answer to quickly assess the reliability of a person’s views. If you ask most people, the reason Bayonetta became so controversial is almost entirely down to Anita Sarkeesian’s “Choose your own patriarchal porno fantasy” assessment of the game*. While the goal of the Feminist Frequency series is admirable and certainly one that deserves more thoughtful discussion, this criticism more than most fell horribly on the wrong side of gamers for, not only its blatant misinformation, but sole focus on Bayonetta’s overt sexuality.
Unfortunately, critiques such as this one are not uncommon. Time and again I see incredibly strong female characters criticised for their character design or undisguised sexually charged behaviour. This is not an inherently poor choice of criticism, in fact there are many portrayals of women in gaming (and many other forms of media) where sexualisation is a valid criticism. The differences between these instances are absolutely key to understanding why sexualisation/fetishisation can be a terrible force in media.
Women are people. I know that may come as a shock to some, but it’s true. By that, I mean that women are multifaceted; some women are complex, some are simple. Some women embrace their sexuality (personally or professionally), while other women choose keep it private, and there are some women who don’t feel any form of sexuality at all. And all of those different kinds of women, are real women. When you criticise a female character purely on the basis that you feel their design is too deliberately provocative, or their behaviour is too overtly sexual, what you’re saying is that there are distinct parameters within which a woman must fit to adhere to your strict concept of a ‘good woman’. This is not a sound, strong nor valid criticism. The value of any character, not just women, should be assessed by how well designed and written they are as a whole. If you pick individual traits of anyone and assess them in isolation, the criticism you form lacks context and depth in itself. Any evaluation is obligated to take in a full account of who that character is, rather than simply selecting one personality trait you personally find distasteful and purposefully reducing that character to its most simple form.
Having said that, it’s also important to note when sexualisation does become a problem. There are many instances in which the sexual energy of a character is their primary and exclusive trait. That is to say that the character may have no depth, personality or purpose beyond the titillation they offer another character or player. To complement this, there are times in which characters that are not sexualised in their respective games are often treated like unimportant assets in their marketing campaigns and artwork. Notable examples of this include Chell (Portal) being entirely omitted from her own box art, or Elizabeth (Bioshock Infinite) being relegated to the back cover of her game, while her male counterpart takes centre stage. Both of these customs are incredibly damaging to equality in gaming. While a certain amount of poorly fleshed out characters are to be expected within any narrative, and artistic freedom will of course at times lead to the decision to exclude certain characters from art, a standard has been set in many respects by how common it has become for these particular stereotypes to be applied to women in gaming.
This trend of sex-seeking criticism must expand it’s point of view before any real progress can be made. It is incredibly easy to dismiss a comprehensive criticism of overly sexualised women in gaming as unimportant, when in order to illustrate it, poor attempts at misguided character assassination are offered over genuine, transparent analysis.
*”Feminist Frequency: Bayonetta And Advertising” was removed from Youtube a short time ago. To my knowledge no clean mirrors exist, to watch Fem Freq’s assessment with annotations click here.
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