Women in Video Games- Gender or Sex Icons?

        In today's society, the media pushes at just about every controversial angle they possibly can, including sexually representing women. Video games are one of the main culprits of this. Most video games represent their "female" characters as sex icons or pathetic, helpless sluts. For example, in the popular video game Grand Theft Auto, you are allowed to assault women, but pay for sexual favors, however none of them are main characters, simply just added "props".

        Women in video games are also represented as damsels in distress. You are often on a mission to either make money, get to the finish line, or complete a challenge. Most, if not all of these, have the main character saving a female in one or more obstacles of the video game. These women are dressed in revealing and sexually representative clothing and almost never dressed modestly. Even the character, Peach from Mario is the one in need of saving throughout the entire Mario series.

       According to Michele Zorilla in http://radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/thesis/gamerepresentation.html, men are completely over represented in video games compared to females with the ratio being 5.3 males for every one (1) female in games, and on top of that, females are never used as the main characters and often have weaker 'skill levels' versus male characters.

       Another common stereotype of women displayed in video games is their body type. Women are either displayed as extremely muscular, or very sexualized. They are portrayed to have the ideal body type where they wear skimpy and revealing clothing. Their breasts are usually visibly noticeable to the players and they appear to look only as sex icons rather than characters. Male characters are also typically very muscular, also showing the "ideal" body type. Personally, I have never seen an overweight character in a video game.

       Women are similarly represented in other forms of media as well. For example, there are only three movies where the female character saves the male character. There are also only a handful of movies that demonstrate the female character not in need of a male. One movie in particular has raised a huge amount of publicity for this exact reason. The movie, Frozen by Disney, represents the main character, Elsa as being a strong and independent women who does not need a man in her life. Raving reviews have been said about the movie for this particular reason. I myself, have heard mothers say how great of a movie it is to show little girls because it is so different from the typical princess stereotype.