Gamer Girls

From: Alexander

I remember when I was a child and the first video game I played. It was ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ for the Sega Genesis. I remember inviting friends over and sometimes their younger siblings came along, and I also remember how I’d take turns playing with my friends and their little brothers, but when their little sisters wanted to play their older brothers would tell them to go back to their dolls. Of course, I didn’t think anything of this other than an older sibling bullying the younger one, something I used to partake in myself with my little brother. In hindsight, I realize we had no issue taking turns with our little brothers unless they were bad at the game so it annoyed us but found issue that a girl wanted to play video games ‘meant for boys’.

“The more boys play with boys and girls with girls, the more gender typed their play activities become.” (Rudman 2015) This line from “The Two Cultures of Childhood” really resonated with me. For my generation and the generations to come, toys are used less and less to be replaced with videogames and I have a question, how did videogames take the place of action figures and is now a boy activity? Was it just a coincidence or was it the commercials where it only showed boys playing videogames, or was it because most videogames have a male protagonist who saves the world? Isn't it odd that gamer is assumed to be male, so people feel the need to say gamer girl? The picture provided is of my mom playing a game called ‘Ark’ and she plays it frequently. I do not know if I found it unusual that someone who was older was playing videogames or that it was a girl, probably a mixture of both. I realized though when my little sister was playing videogames frequently and that she was calling herself a gamer girl, that gaming was truly a boy activity.

In the picture I showed my mom playing a videogame on her pc which she even upgraded for a smoother experience. I asked her to wear a blue sweatshirt to show that blue is not just a boy color. She also does not have her hair done or any makeup, and I also wanted to show the clutter behind the monitor to clash with the gender norms. Women are meant to be prim and proper, to place cleanliness as a top priority, and yet in the picture she is casual, and the desk is a mess.

Rudman, Laurie A., et al. "The Two Cultures of Childhood." The Social Psychology of Gender: How Power and Intimacy Shape Gender Relations. The Guilford Press, 2015, 59-63.