07-14-2010, 09:23 PM
I had planned to start this with âThe gaming industry tells us that the female gamer is a scarce individualâ and then go on from there, but I couldnât do it. It wouldnât be true. âTells usâ would imply that a male gamer is speaking to other male gamers about the female demographic. No, I canât assume that position and pretend I fit in with that group, no matter how much I think I do (at least in spirit).
The next logical, antithetical headline seemed to be âInsights on the elusive girl gamerâ and yet I still couldnât go that route. That would be jumping right into a subject that I couldnât adequately outline, and that even the most hard-core girl gamer could identify, thanks to a fundamental flaw. How can you offer insights into something that no one can really define? Sure, you could say itâs as simple as âthereâs a girl, and she likes gamesâ but there are so many questions left unanswered, like does she fit the other typical gamer stereotypes? How did she get into a market that is largely male? What sort of games makes a girl gamer? The questions seem endless and unanswerable.
So thatâs where I plan to start.
What is a girl gamer, exactly?
Like any self-respecting denizen of the internet, I thought Iâd better check Google first. That seems like a stupid thing to do, but if enough people have asked this same question, there was at least some hope that an answer was out there, somewhere. Of course one of the first links available was a Wikipedia entry, and this was pleasing. We know that even though wikiâs arenât necessarily reliable sources of information, at the very least theyâre a collection of what everyone else thinks. So, maybe, I could get a good idea of what everyone else thought a girl gamer was.
The very first thing I noticed about this article was that it was marked for deletion.
Seriously?
I understand that Wikipedia has standards for their articles and everything, but âgirl gamerâ, deleted? Hopefully the discussion page had a little more insight into why this was going to happen. It was a short but thick mess of arguments, ranging from pleas to keep the article, hopes to combine it with other ones, and the cry to abolish it altogether. All these opinions aside, there were some really good points brought up about gender and gaming. Why would you need an article about girl gamers specifically, when there werenât also articles about girl doctors, girl firefighters, and girl scientists?
Discussions about gaming and gender seemed really heated here but I was still a little dissatisfied. If the gaming industry, and other gamers themselves, had devoted enough energy and attention to the demographic and the term, clearly they were worth defining and keeping around. The entryâs claim that a âgirl gamer describes a female who regularly engages in the playing of video games, role-playing games, or other gamesâ didnât hold up to my experiences. It was time to turn to Google again and keep searching.
The next link I checked out brought me to âGirl Gamerâ, which claimed to be âan online community and webzine for female gamersâ. This looked pretty promising, and I took a little time to browse around. The forum community seemed about the same as any other, discussing games and strategies, tips and tricks. Here was some insight into what a girl gamer was, and I was reminded of the questions the Wikipedia article posed. Why slap gender on something that seems to be pretty much the same without it? If the site didnât have âGirlâ in the title, it would have been exactly the same as most other gaming related sites. Still, as I browsed around, I noticed something odd.
Firstly, there was a lot of pink. I say a lot and you might not really agree, but still. Thatâs a lot of pink. It was everywhere. Links were pink, the heading was pink... hey, it works with the grey theme, but Iâm starting to see some more of that gender segregation. I get that weâre chicks and that we want to maybe have some discussions with other chicks about games and gaming related things, but... why add the pink? What about being a girl and a gamer made pink the best choice? I could easily be applying my own stereotypes about color to this, but something told me it maybe wasnât the femaleâs idea of the girly stereotype that they were clinging to.
Something was hiding behind all that pink.
Donât get me wrong; Iâm not trying to bash the site at all. In fact Iâm really very proud that a place like that exists and sticks to its gaming guns despite the color choices. Iâm even more proud that there are many of them and that a large number of them seem respectable and intelligent. But something was still up that had me thinking. The site had taught me that girl gamers were, in fact, girls that liked to engage in gaming of various types, but there was still something else missing to the definition, something that I couldnât quite get my finger on.
As I went back to Google and tried an image search this time, it hit me. It was sex appeal. The one difference between gamers and girl gamers, the one thing that wasnât really just a basic gender differentiation (such as girl doctor or girl lawyer), the one thing hiding behind the pink was sex appeal. When I looked through the images that popped up in my image search, I realized that girls who were interested in games as well were sexualized more than gamers âin generalâ. No one made sexy motivational posters of a guy gamer wearing various console game parts as undies. No one had made provocative clothing with witty slogans or gaming-related themes for male gamers (unless you consider your basic t-shirt to be enticing and naughty).
Iâd struck gold. The missing piece to the ultimate definition of a gamer girl had fallen into place, and I finally understood. Yes, it was true that the heft of the definition was, in fact, a girl who enjoyed and regularly participated in games of many kinds. But sex, or the apparent association that girls who game are equated with sex in some form, was the paper onto which the phrase âgirl gamerâ was stuck.
To the male gamer, the dominant percentage of the gaming demographic, it was sexy to see girls interested in games too, or at the very least to see them wearing game-themed clothes (or almost wearing them). When someone said âgirl gamerâ, they were instantly able to call into mind the image that, for them, made a female gamer sexy and appealing. If someone had just asked them about the sex appeal of a gamer, many would probably not respond the same way that they would if you asked them about a girl gamer. The terms, and thus their definitions, were not the same.
The concept was similar on the âGirl Gamingâ site, although not to the same extent. By adding the pink and using the term âGirlâ in their title, the site differentiated itself from the âregularâ gamer and allowed an image to be instantly brought to mind. Whereas the title of âgamerâ was so anonymous and large that anyone could easily and seamlessly fit into it, âgirl gamerâ allowed for a special distinction that separated them from the rest of the community. The color choice and the many traditional gender roles it often helped enforce were just another quick and easy way to remind viewers that girl gamers were indeed to be separated from their mundane counterparts.Â
So, there it was. Iâd learned what a girl gamer, by a loose sort of internet definition, really was. It was a term that could be applied to girls who like to play games, as you might expect, but itâs also an image laced with sex appeal to a specific group of people. It can be used as a gender differentiation between a girl or guy who likes to game, but it could also be a reference to a fairly specific sexual market. In an instant, it set one group apart from another while embodying specific qualities with the addition of only one word.
Whether or not both apply to those of us out there who choose to reveal our lady gender to the communities in which we game is up to us.
The next logical, antithetical headline seemed to be âInsights on the elusive girl gamerâ and yet I still couldnât go that route. That would be jumping right into a subject that I couldnât adequately outline, and that even the most hard-core girl gamer could identify, thanks to a fundamental flaw. How can you offer insights into something that no one can really define? Sure, you could say itâs as simple as âthereâs a girl, and she likes gamesâ but there are so many questions left unanswered, like does she fit the other typical gamer stereotypes? How did she get into a market that is largely male? What sort of games makes a girl gamer? The questions seem endless and unanswerable.
So thatâs where I plan to start.
What is a girl gamer, exactly?
Like any self-respecting denizen of the internet, I thought Iâd better check Google first. That seems like a stupid thing to do, but if enough people have asked this same question, there was at least some hope that an answer was out there, somewhere. Of course one of the first links available was a Wikipedia entry, and this was pleasing. We know that even though wikiâs arenât necessarily reliable sources of information, at the very least theyâre a collection of what everyone else thinks. So, maybe, I could get a good idea of what everyone else thought a girl gamer was.
The very first thing I noticed about this article was that it was marked for deletion.
Seriously?
I understand that Wikipedia has standards for their articles and everything, but âgirl gamerâ, deleted? Hopefully the discussion page had a little more insight into why this was going to happen. It was a short but thick mess of arguments, ranging from pleas to keep the article, hopes to combine it with other ones, and the cry to abolish it altogether. All these opinions aside, there were some really good points brought up about gender and gaming. Why would you need an article about girl gamers specifically, when there werenât also articles about girl doctors, girl firefighters, and girl scientists?
Discussions about gaming and gender seemed really heated here but I was still a little dissatisfied. If the gaming industry, and other gamers themselves, had devoted enough energy and attention to the demographic and the term, clearly they were worth defining and keeping around. The entryâs claim that a âgirl gamer describes a female who regularly engages in the playing of video games, role-playing games, or other gamesâ didnât hold up to my experiences. It was time to turn to Google again and keep searching.
The next link I checked out brought me to âGirl Gamerâ, which claimed to be âan online community and webzine for female gamersâ. This looked pretty promising, and I took a little time to browse around. The forum community seemed about the same as any other, discussing games and strategies, tips and tricks. Here was some insight into what a girl gamer was, and I was reminded of the questions the Wikipedia article posed. Why slap gender on something that seems to be pretty much the same without it? If the site didnât have âGirlâ in the title, it would have been exactly the same as most other gaming related sites. Still, as I browsed around, I noticed something odd.
Firstly, there was a lot of pink. I say a lot and you might not really agree, but still. Thatâs a lot of pink. It was everywhere. Links were pink, the heading was pink... hey, it works with the grey theme, but Iâm starting to see some more of that gender segregation. I get that weâre chicks and that we want to maybe have some discussions with other chicks about games and gaming related things, but... why add the pink? What about being a girl and a gamer made pink the best choice? I could easily be applying my own stereotypes about color to this, but something told me it maybe wasnât the femaleâs idea of the girly stereotype that they were clinging to.
Something was hiding behind all that pink.
Donât get me wrong; Iâm not trying to bash the site at all. In fact Iâm really very proud that a place like that exists and sticks to its gaming guns despite the color choices. Iâm even more proud that there are many of them and that a large number of them seem respectable and intelligent. But something was still up that had me thinking. The site had taught me that girl gamers were, in fact, girls that liked to engage in gaming of various types, but there was still something else missing to the definition, something that I couldnât quite get my finger on.
As I went back to Google and tried an image search this time, it hit me. It was sex appeal. The one difference between gamers and girl gamers, the one thing that wasnât really just a basic gender differentiation (such as girl doctor or girl lawyer), the one thing hiding behind the pink was sex appeal. When I looked through the images that popped up in my image search, I realized that girls who were interested in games as well were sexualized more than gamers âin generalâ. No one made sexy motivational posters of a guy gamer wearing various console game parts as undies. No one had made provocative clothing with witty slogans or gaming-related themes for male gamers (unless you consider your basic t-shirt to be enticing and naughty).
Iâd struck gold. The missing piece to the ultimate definition of a gamer girl had fallen into place, and I finally understood. Yes, it was true that the heft of the definition was, in fact, a girl who enjoyed and regularly participated in games of many kinds. But sex, or the apparent association that girls who game are equated with sex in some form, was the paper onto which the phrase âgirl gamerâ was stuck.
To the male gamer, the dominant percentage of the gaming demographic, it was sexy to see girls interested in games too, or at the very least to see them wearing game-themed clothes (or almost wearing them). When someone said âgirl gamerâ, they were instantly able to call into mind the image that, for them, made a female gamer sexy and appealing. If someone had just asked them about the sex appeal of a gamer, many would probably not respond the same way that they would if you asked them about a girl gamer. The terms, and thus their definitions, were not the same.
The concept was similar on the âGirl Gamingâ site, although not to the same extent. By adding the pink and using the term âGirlâ in their title, the site differentiated itself from the âregularâ gamer and allowed an image to be instantly brought to mind. Whereas the title of âgamerâ was so anonymous and large that anyone could easily and seamlessly fit into it, âgirl gamerâ allowed for a special distinction that separated them from the rest of the community. The color choice and the many traditional gender roles it often helped enforce were just another quick and easy way to remind viewers that girl gamers were indeed to be separated from their mundane counterparts.Â
So, there it was. Iâd learned what a girl gamer, by a loose sort of internet definition, really was. It was a term that could be applied to girls who like to play games, as you might expect, but itâs also an image laced with sex appeal to a specific group of people. It can be used as a gender differentiation between a girl or guy who likes to game, but it could also be a reference to a fairly specific sexual market. In an instant, it set one group apart from another while embodying specific qualities with the addition of only one word.
Whether or not both apply to those of us out there who choose to reveal our lady gender to the communities in which we game is up to us.