How Sexist Is Your Favorite Video Game?

The various faces of Juliet Starling, the protagonist of Lollipop Chainsaw.<a href="http://theclassicgamer.com/lollipop-chainsaw-review/">TheClassicGamer.com</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Hollywood movies, television, and video games are meant to entertain and transport us outside of our narrow realities, but what if our favorite escapes are perpetuating damaging stereotypes? In her video series, Feminist Frequency—which has garnered her some extreme hateful backlash—pop-culture critic Anita Sarkeesian tackles unflattering portrayals of women in media. You may recognize some of the following tropes. Quotes are from Sarkeesian.

1. The Damsel in Distress

A female character who is “placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and must then be rescued by a male character.” Examples: Zelda in The Legend of Zelda, Princess Peach in Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach, Krystal in Star Fox Adventures for Gamecube.

2. The Ms. Male Character

“The female version of an already established or default male character,” usually identified by long eyelashes, lipstick, hair ribbons, heels, or the color pink. Examples: Ms. Pac-Man, Amy Rose from Sonic the Hedgehog, Minnie Mouse, Peb and Pab from Bubble Bobble, and the pink boulder from Giant Boulder of Death.

3. Women in Refrigerators

A female character’s rape, murder, or victimization is the impetus “to move the male character’s story arc forward.” Examples: The Green Lantern, whose protagonist finds his girlfriend’s body in a fridge; the Max Payne games, wherein Max seeks revenge for his murdered wife and child; and Braveheart, whose Scottish protagonist (Mel Gibson) launches a revolution after the king executes his wife.

4. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

A bubbly, childlike muse who exists to help the troubled male protagonist escape “doom and gloom”. Examples: Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer, Natalie Portman in Garden State.

5. The Evil Demon Seductress

“A supernatural creature, usually a demon, robot, alien, or vampire, most often disguised as a sexy human female.” Examples: Isabel Lucas in Transformers 3, Laura Harris in The Faculty, Natasha Henstridge in Species, Poison Ivy in the Batman series, the fembots in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

6. The Straw Feminist

“A deliberately created, exaggerated characterization of a feminist that is used to undermine and ridicule the feminist movement.” Examples: The villains in the last season of Veronica Mars, Marcy Darcy in Married with Children, Phil and Lil’s mother in The Rugrats, Femme Fatale in The Powerpuff Girls.

7. The Mystical Pregnancy

A female character is impregnated by supernatural reproductive technology. Examples: Skully in The X-files, Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, Deanna Troy from Star Trek, the Next Generation (who is impregnated by a ball of space energy).

8. Women as Decoration

“Female bodies exploited to infuse gritty or racy texture into game-worlds…These virtual women are often programmed as minimally interactive sex objects to be used and abused by the player.” Examples: Popular franchises like Hitman, Need for Speed, Assassin’s Creed, and Grand Theft Auto.

8. Women as Reward

Wherein the successful game player is rewarded for accomplishments with “unlockable hyper-sexualized costumes for female characters” or racy “cinematics and/or hidden items or artwork.” Examples: Especially prevalent in combat-heavy series’ like Dead or Alive, Tekken, and Soul Calibur.

9. The Fighting Fuck Toy

This “hyper-sexualized, hyper-violent female character presents the illusion of female empowerment but is designed as a sexual fantasy.” Examples: Tomb Raider‘s Lara Croft, Juliet Starling from Lollipop Chainsaw, and the title character in the game Bayonetta.

Click here to read our chat with Sarkeesian.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate