The new issue of The Escapist (entitled Girl Power 2) features this article by John Walker. He professes that the games aren’t sexist, society is, and it’s telling women that gaming is not for them.
There are even studies indicating girls will delve into serious gaming under the right conditions. In 2003, Gareth Schott and Siobhan Thomas of the University of London decided to investigate how young people react to videogaming. They went into high school classrooms with GameBoy Advance SPs in hand and set them in front of 14- and 15-year-old kids. The boys immediately identified them, rushed over and dominated. The girls sat back and let them.
They tried the same experiment in classes with only girls. Without the boys to push them out the way, and once the Schott and Thomas explained the devices weren’t some sort of makeup case (no, really), the girls mostly recognized Mario onscreen, but would predominantly declare, “Oh, I can’t do these things.”
Prompted to continue, Schott and Thomas found that after a few minutes, they couldn’t get the girls to stop playing. This transition led the researchers to conclude that there was some sort of “permission” barrier between girls and gaming.
Could the same “permission barrier” lie between interested women and superhero comics?
(Via 100LittleDolls)
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:19 am
Yeah… the permission barrier being Power Girl’s cleavage.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:27 am
I don’t know, the busty images of the female characters are always pointed to as the reason why women won’t read the caped comics.
If you look at the men in the books you’ll see that their bodies are also the ideal image of male perfection. It’s the same thing.
Why one will point to the breasts and scream foul but ignore the bodies of the male characters I just don’t know.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:45 am
I’m not sure there’s a parallel there, Blake. Are enormous breasts the “ideal image” of female “perfection”?
Without studying too long on it, I think a closer/more accurate parallel might be if the male superheroes were depicted with enormous bulges in their shorts from their oversized penises — and then said bulges were the focus of countless panels and covers.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:47 am
As a woman who loves comics, including mainstream superhero comics (Avengers and the X-Books), I was strongly discouraged from reading them as a child.
I’m not sure, however, if it was because I was female, or because my parents simply didn’t think they were appropriate. On the one hand, my mother did make comments that she didn’t think comics were for little girls. On the other hand, my parents were VERY overboard on making sure that I only consumed “educational” stuff (i.e. no television except for PBS, no teen magazines, no music except for classical). So the no comics rule might simply have been part of that, rather than gender based. And my parents DID give me comic book versions of the classics (i.e. White Fang, House of the Seven Gables, etc).
Post-script: I’m now in my early 30s, make a decent living, and have bought the back issues of all the comics I wanted to read during the 1980s but wasn’t allowed to.
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Superhero comics are a genre, while video games are a medium. Furthermore, the act of reading a comic is fundamentally different from playing a video game.
My brother is actually very interested in the subject of girls’ response to video games. As I understand it, the games which attract young girls tend to emphasize a different style of gameplay (e.g., Animal Crossing) than the more typical violent (including whimsical violence, e.g., Mario) video game. Some game makers have tried to appeal to girls by dressing up these violent games in pink and frilly clothing (so instead of Mario, it’s Princess Peach). This approach is somewhat less successful.
That might be a more apt lesson for the comics industry–why would women start reading a genre which has attracted a predominately male audience for 70 years, just because it’s Black Canary rather than Batman who’s kicking ass? Clearly young girls are interested in a certain type of comic, just as they are interested in a certain type of video game. Why should they be expected to cross over? Maybe the real question is why men–young and middle aged alike–are so attracted to violent power fantasies, whether in comic or game form.
(In the interest of fairness, I should point out that my wife is an avid gamer, and plays both violent and non-violent games with equal passion. But she has no interest in comics.)
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I had a similar discussion with a female friend last night. I gave her the New Super Mario Bros game, and she commented that she was no good at them because she was a girl. I immediately shot back that just because she’s inexperienced doesn’t mean she’s predisposed to a lack of video game skill just because she’s a female.
As for comics, I think this ‘permission barrier’ applies to both sexes, not just females. There are plenty of males out there who wouldn’t touch a comic book because they don’t think they should. It’s ‘nerd stuff’ if you will.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Without studying too long on it, I think a closer/more accurate parallel might be if the male superheroes were depicted with enormous bulges in their shorts from their oversized penises — and then said bulges were the focus of countless panels and covers
Looking at media outside of comics, tho, its more often abdominal muscles, shoulders and the bum that gets emphasized when men are depicted as physically ideal. If the idealization were equal, I think we’d see male superheroes in poses that allow one to flex/stretch the right muscles to emphasize their sleek musculature.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:47 pm
I’m a girl that read comics and loves gaming enough to make a website about my hobbies. But I came from an environment where my mom and my sister are both comic readers, and the boys didn’t get into it until after I introduced them to Manga.
I personally never found that many girls say they can’t play because they are girls, but like David said, generally they are attracted to different types of games (I will disagree about the Princess Peach game comments, because it isn’t a game made for girls, it is a game made for Mario fans).
I easily know more women that love Final Fantasy than men. In the arcades, Dance Dance Revolution seems to attract both male and female players equally. My friend Rheanna can kick everyone’s ass at Guitar Hero. My friend’s mom played Dr. Mario so much, some elements from the game was burnt into her television. And you’ll be surprised how many women actually love Mario, they just aren’t a vocal bunch. The Sims is a HUGE hit with women. Sales for the Barbie Game Boy games are decent enough for them to keep publishing them.
If you look at Japan’s offering for games, there are a lot more life sims, puzzle games, virtual pets, bishonen characters and general cute or weird stuff, and a lot less first person shooters and uncute Madden-type sports games. No wonder I import games from Japan like crazy, and don’t own an X-box.
Overall, North America doesn’t know how to market to women. But I’m not saying the permissions barrier doesn’t exist. Hell, I know a woman that said her daughter thought only men can become President of the United States! And I often have run-ins with male gamers who complain anything that isn’t as macho as Halo is “so gay” and industry people that claim they won’t sell.
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:30 pm
“Why one will point to the breasts and scream foul but ignore the bodies of the male characters I just don’t know.”
A male hero is drawn in an idealized manner and the ideals emphasized are things key to the hero’s active performance. Muscles can come in handy when doing the heroic thing. A female hero is drawn in an idealized manner, but the idealized elements have nothing to do with her capabilities. What heroic function can it serve to have breasts bigger than one’s head, aside from distracting pathetically stupid villains?
I am a woman: I collect comics, including a few superhero titles, and I play non-video roleplaying games. I have a great many female friends (and male) who also love these hobbies. It’s not that we ever felt we needed permission to do “boy” things, it’s that the culture surrounding our interests often feels extremely (and occasionally violently) anti-girl.
A blog I read about women and comics gets trolled by men fantasizing about or threatening sexual violence the blog’s creators and participants. If you mention issues of sexism or racism in comics and games in an online discussion forum, you can expect immediate verbal evisceration. If I pick up a gaming or comics magazine, every image of a woman shown is a sexualized one for the male readers. If there is an article about a woman creator or player, the question isn’t “Is she good at what she does?” but “Is she hot?” If she’s not hot, then her skills are demeaned.
I think that as long as these are the dominant expressed attitudes and they continue to go unquestioned or unchallenged, women and girls will continue to feel unwelcome. And as long as we are unwelcome, our demographic numbers stay low, which in turn is used to justify a lack of change.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Why do we allow the media to bring us down?
March 5th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Ambien cr….
Ambien overnight….