Too many people have the misconception that video games are a heavily male-dominated field. Plenty of games have men as their protagonist and, typically, these games were intended to target the male audience. However, I know other women, such as myself, who grew up to love video games. I grew up on Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario and Crash Bandicoot (all male protagonists). I played video games with boys all the time (and beat them) and introduced video games to other girls. I'm here to say, video games belong to us girls too.
There have been more and more games with female protagonists. I remember the first that I played was Lara Croft in the 1996 game Tomb Raider. All of the games since then have been fantastic. Recently, however, I realized that Lara Croft had always been overly sexualized. I hadn't thought much of her extreme hourglass figure, generous assets, plump lips, and her "look" when she's sweaty. In fact, I thought it made her more of a woman and erotic. Since this realization, I've had mixed emotions on how women are presented in video games.
I've never understood why women are half naked in RPGs. These women are warriors, rogues, mages and more. If they're on the battlefield, how is it possible that they can afford to show their bellies without getting hit by an arrow? It just doesn't seem practical or logical for a woman who's concerned about fighting. I'm pretty sure when fighting, women are not too concerned with the way they look or how nice their body is. I'd hope they'd be focused on the task at hand by dodging incoming blows and delivering a world of pain to their enemies.
Despite this impracticality, I do see a positive to these fit women. For example, in the game Mass Effect, the player got to choose to play as a male or female. Clearly, I chose to play as the female version of Shepherd (the protagonist). Now, because this game is about space and aliens, it makes sense for the characters to wear suits. The women that were seen wearing suits throughout the game all had seductive figures. I'm sure this lures a lot of men into playing the games, but I didn't find it all too bad. In fact, it's only reasonable to assume that women who risk their lives fighting and that go on these adventures have to be in shape. We train our soldiers, male or female, before going into war. The same concept applies to these warriors in the games. On top of that, in Mass Effect, the players would see multiple scenes of characters working out throughout the game. It's mandatory when you're in space for so long (your body will lose muscle and bone mass) for health reasons but also because it's safe to assume you'd want to continue to get stronger when you're constantly fighting.
Personally, I don't see a lot wrong when the female protagonist in the video games have a body to show off. In fact, I think it shows how healthy you have to be in order to perform these grueling, challenging tasks. I do have an issue, however, when these women are made to flaunt their bodies for the sake of being eye candy to teenage boys and grown men. That's right, I'm talking about the obsession that men had with Cortana in the Halo series. I love celebrating how we now have female Spartans in Halo though!
