Video Games And Its Effects On Female Characters

Women within the western culture reflect the hypersexualization of those images within the context of a global market in which the mainstream of sexual objects of women has increasingly been accepted as the norm. In the book Women in Popular Culture: Representation and Meaning, Marian Meyers’ states, hypersexualization is the representation of women as highly sexual objects (p. 6). Hypersexualization among women in the media has affected the way society represents women by portraying them as fragile, passive, vulnerable, less intelligent, and powerless figures, compared to men. This paper will focus on the way women are stereotypically portrayed and will emphasize the pornogrification of women as sexual objects in advertising; and bad effect in reality. Hence, women in the media are represented as hypersexual objects that differ from women in reality. However, people in the society are strongly advocating abolishing the society phenomena that promotes hypersexualization of women. There is scholarly evidence to support the thesis in addition to class discussions on Wesleyan College and Charles University will stand as sources, which includes: the women in popular culture by Marian Meyers, Philosophy

To what extent are video game addiction and violent and misogynistic representations problems for the gaming industry?

The findings concluded that female representation in popular games of the time were strongly based on stereotype. Of the few games that contained women, a small fraction were leads while others were found to be standing behind males, as well as being depicted wearing stereotypically feminine colours, princess dresses, or very revealing clothing. Women were commonly portrayed as victims, “Damsels in distress” (Dietz 1998), or evil obstacles to protagonists. Violence and aggression in general and towards others were also noted in the research. A significant portion of this were classified as violence towards female characters. The research suggests that these implications of gender roles and violence could be detrimental towards girls and boys, as they may accept what they see

Halloween. A joyous time filled with free candy, scary movies, funky costumes and… sexy cats? Do women really like the idea of going out in skimpy skirts with exposed bellies in the cold Fall winds or is there an underlying cultural standard at play? If you look at any forms of media outlets today, you will most likely come across a theme of hypersexualization of women. Whether it is advertisements, movies, celebrities, or even the lovely holiday that is Halloween, female objectification is so common that we as a society has started to see it as the cultural norm. Not only are women constantly being objectified, hypersexualization of women in media contribute to the psychological oppression of women because it emphasizes the importance of appearances of women, reinforces society’s unachievable beauty standards, and promotes a male-dominated view of how women should look and behave.

Although modern media has made great strides in terms of female representation, we still have a long way to go. While women show up more often in movies, literature, and the like, their portrayals are steeped in the stereotyped idea that “sex sells”. As a result, the female characters, whatever their capabilities or likability, are undermined by the ridiculous standards given to them.

Previous evidence has shown that video games portray females as sexual objects, but video game magazines have never been a major part of this documentation. The article “Sexy, Dangerous-and Ignored: An In-Depth Review of the Representation of Women in Select Video Game Magazines” by Howard D. Fisher provides charts, stats, lists, and theories as evidence from video game magazines to make a claim of truth that digital women are treated as irrelevant sidekicks or pinup girls which leads to disrespect towards real women. Theoretical Analysis is a form of evidence used by Fisher to support the idea of men absorbing false perceptions of women. The theory used is Hegemonic Masculinity, it’s described as “a theoretical perspective that explains how

Because females, and even younger females have started to become very sexualized in the media, these images can start to mold at a young age what a female “should” be like. “Sexualization occurs when women and girls are most valued for their sexual appeal, are sexually objectified, or have sexuality inappropriately forced on them” (American Psychological Association, qtd. in Stone et al. 1604). When media portrays these types of images depicting women to be a certain way, it can cause many issues, such as lower body and self esteem, and even depression (Stone et al. 1605). A study is conducted to see how children perceive sexualized girls, and what traits they should possess, such as being popular or being smart (Stone et al. 1606). Ellen

Comic books have taken on a “cultural boom” within the past few years. Many famous comic books have been transformed into movies, thus making the comic book industry more viewed. Even with new viewers the comic book industry is slowly dying. Monika Bartyzel contributes this failure to sexism within the comic book industry. In her article, “How Sexism is Destroying the Comic Book Industry” Bartyzel writes and argues points on why the comic book industry is sexist from obvious rape culture in it’s writing or the way women are perceived. She also points out how un-diverse the comic book industry is. Bartyzel backs up her points from quotes from various comic book writers and shows ways how the comic book industry could be improved by eliminating the sexism.

As a point of comparison, let’s consider Broken Age, a game that has a split narrative between Vella, a young girl, and Shay, a young boy, both living in different sorts of dystopias. Unlike BioShock, I consider Broken Age to be a feminist dystopian video game because Vella is a main character, possesses meaningful subjectivity, and can save herself.

All people of all colors, ages and gender are represented in a similar way within the games, or do anyone stands out in all this? Someone is under-represented? How important to be represented in the media?

It only takes a second to attach a strong feeling or idea to a character in a movie, advertisement, or video game. Many characterization used are based on the assumed stereotypes, and are usually one-dimensional characters. Typically, these characterizations usually come from inherited family values, education, and the media. While stereotypes existed long before mass media, the media machine certainly helped to accelerate the cultural growth of all kinds of stereotypes. It is beyond this paper to answer why magazines employ these gender stereotypes, instead this research is designed to analyze

On all platforms of media, women and even young girls are oversexualized; thus leading to men viewing women as no more than breasts, vaginas, legs, or any other body part they prefer. Even in current television shows, movies, comic books, and advertisements, women are still depicted as sexual objects, which can damage a woman’s confidence. The oversexualization of women 's bodies can degrade a young woman’s confidence, and when girls try to boost confidence by dressing or acting like the women they see in the media, they are reprimanded for it. Girls cannot be blamed for their sexualization; they are just emulating what they see in the media.

We just happen to show a little more skin when we get to the ladies.” although still a big issue today this was a major concern for the parents buying comics for their children they did not want to buy something for there kids that was showing women with well developed assets who were wearing skin tight clothing or showing as much skin as they posible could without having the female character just be completely nude. “Another source of much indignation is how many female characters, when they are not getting mangled or raped, are used as little more than eye candy for the male masses – sex symbols whose personalities are as flat as their cup sizes are disproportionately huge, whose roles are as thin as the fabric of their poorly designed, anatomy-hugging

The portrayal of men and women in video games, as in other media, is a subject of research in gender studies. This topics is discuss in terms of sexism in video gaming. Especially, women are underrepresented or use as objectification in mainstream games. Women in video games are generally, as a rule of thumb, killed, raped, abused or rescued by the male heroes. This is extremely sad to see because the role of women in society is changing compare to ten years ago. Women has been proven themselves to be stronger and tough in different fields such as sports, politics, education but the representation hasn’t change.

This source simply explained how did female body function in video games work. Male and female are not fairly equal at all because “through which women and girls look to determine their own worth and men and boys may use to form expectations of females” represents female characters’ own worth have to depend on male expectations which is inequality due to sexual differences. Video games created male and female characters with different body image so players can start to judge the game just by looking at fake characters body and clothing. It is really easy to tell that sexy female characters are wearing less clothes and look pretty so they can be use to attract male gamers’ attention. Male characters could determine their own worth by using having abilities or nice personality, but female characters have to look good and wait for male players to judge are they good or not. Inequality issues happening in video games toward female characters have been discovered but players and game designers need to make a change or do something big about it. Scenes in video games directly reflect real problems hiding in society nowadays. In the source above it says “The images of the female form portrayed by the media are used as source of comparison” so this could turn to a problem. Players who have played video games are getting used to see beautiful female characters in video games, so they might start to think only fake female characters are good and rest of the real female are ugly.