Firstly it's not simple, it's mind bendingly complex, it has simple pricipled foundations but that's about as close as it gets.
It's called scopophelia, the love of looking at and/or being looked at, and the mass media imprints this into our culture from the word go. Women are taught to enjoy being looked at, I looked at the evolution of advertising and movie posters in particular for this, have a looksee if you'd like. Also, while engaging in any media, keep it in mind. The experience is nothing short of realizing that you are in the Matrix (I hate those films but it makes a good analogy here) when you study the media you start to see it all work, all the little pieces.
The female gender are programmed to be this way, as the males are programmed to love to observe.
Addressing tiff, the model of medium is the message is old and really quite nonsense (I'm not having a go at you just making the point) it doesn't take into account the socio-cultural institutions that surround how that media is accessed and absorbed. As with virtualgirl, males are going to have one interpretation of her cosplay, but a young woman will have a completely different one, due to the differing social schema we have been programmed with.
Then we get to the paradox, what causes it? We make the media and the media make us, that is why studying it is difficult. In my final essay I suggested a new method that embraces this paradox and absorbs as many fields of study as possible (did well on that one too) as ultimately what we are studying is the infinitely recursive space between two things. What sends the message and what recieves.
In thinking on this, we should take into account the fact that women have only been allowed to vote for about 70 odd years depending on when your country smartened up (some still haven't). This means that our species habit of rigid gender definitions is going through an upheaval (an a necessary one, I might add) that has never been seen before.
I mean think about it, women exist, games exist and yet we are surprised when the two merge. People probably had this debate around the womens suffrage movement. Think about it WHY is this a discussion. What, a woman who plays games wants to look good, don't you? This is an example of projection from male gamers who had a social stigma on themselves, they were outcasts, suddenly something that is not an outcast, it fits the social schema of good, comes along and ruins their one place to be successful on their terms. Now theur ugly again, so if they are, and she isn't, she's a phony.
If I could get a little further in life by photagraphing myself buck naked with a wiimote hanging from my member I would. What would differentiate me from all the other toned handsome male gamers who do the same is that I can back it up with words.
As has virtualgirl and as do all the other genuinely smart pretty nerd girls around.
Again, another point about how people interact with media in relation to tiffs point on it being all surface. It isn't for me and it isn't for many others. I look for the depth past what the mass media present because I know it is there. In time, we will KNOW as a day-to-day matter of fact that the depth is there with female gamers and the shema of "look but don't see" that marketing and public relations want to feed us will die off here.
I could write for hours on this but I've skirted enough of what I needed to say so I'll end on this. I've said it about many things as it is true about many things (like the games as art bit), it just takes time. It's evolution, can't rush it.
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I have written a whole blog (elsewhere) about the mainstream commercialization of geek culture and, as with all marketing, it seeks to rape all that is honest from us and replace it with surface.
The upside in our fight against this is that geeks simply tend to be a little cleverer than most, sure we'll see morons who have never played Mario in 1-up shirts cause it's cool. But the cool thing about cool is that it has a really short shelf life.
We won't have to share our space with posers for long, and we won't care cause geeks weren't cool when I was born and I didn't give a shit then, so I won't give a shit when it goes back to being plain old geeky. This will speed up the end of this really pointless debate on girl gamers, as there won't be the need to artificially sexualize it, the honest sexuality will remain, but that is a good thing. Honest expression is never bad.
It's funny how some people I know went from "Ewwww, geeks" to "oh yeah, I used to play videogames all the time!", when talking to them during GH parties.
To address the cosplay. I have had some bad body dismorphia in my life (not, "get rid of this foot" bad but bad still) and my physical role models as I grew up were videogame characters and super heroes.
I did a very martial form of Tae Kwon Do for 6 years, why? Cause of Kim Kap Whan. I'm currently doing a harsh and practical form of Aikido and the beautiful but ridiculously impractical capoeira. Why? Cause I want to do flips, leaps and spins. Why? Cause I wanna dress up as Ryu and do a hurricane kick and a shoryuken (god I wish I could add hadoken to that list).
Cause it'll make me feel good.
But, your reaction to a girl dressed as Lara Croft running with two .45's is going to vary considerably from a guy dressed as Ryu doing a shoryuken through 3 roofing tiles.
Programmed gender schema. Girls might look at my Ryu cosply as the pathetic flaunting of a body that shows I really know nothing about games and just want attention.
When really I love games AND want attention.
It's a shame that like 80% of the people in pretty much any society are influenced by the mass media whether they like it or not. And that to understand the true effects of media, you can't just do a study asking people what they like or something, but you need to understand the workings of the mind in general as well.
I would agree with embracing as many fields as is possible to manage. It would make for a lot better shows on TV for starters, if they are tailored to what we 'all' share as being "good".
On the flipside, imagine the horrors of having highly intelligent media people, with a background in sociology and (neuro)psychology, create audio-visual entertainment tailored to our human being? The exploits and propaganda tactics you could use on our poor non-thinking brains still have a LOT of room to grow. But then again, my teenage dream was to be Secretary of Public Information in China some day ;)
In the end, women are still women first and gamers second. As you say, society changes very slowly. There's no way in hell I'll live long enough to see humans treat each other based on their merits instead of mere "first glance" perceptions. Let alone in mediated communication.
But yeah, I mean, think about how far humans have come in a few hundred years compared to the last ten thousand. It's a growth spurt and, like a gangly teenager, our ideas have grown faster than our instincts. So we are trapped in a brain that stereotypes and feeds biases even when presented with evidence that we shouldn't.
Ah well, give it time.
That's what guys say after they've date raped a girl.
Sure, if you walk down murdering rapist alley in next to nothing, it's stupid and your gonna get assaulted, but the problem is STILL the assault not the assaultee.
And I almost wrote on .tiff's blog that she didn't quite have the McLuhan quote in its proper context (he would have been much more interested in the fact that photographs were used than in the actual content of the photos), but that would have been more of a dick move there than it is here.
I have read very little of McLuhan, beyond citations in other works, and if I have taken it out of context than I can only apologize. But the idea I attacked remains silly, studying media without a good knowledge of the mind, and the things that create that mind, is a self defeating excersise.
The things that make a person are a 50/50 balance of biology and environment, so we can never predict the result. I meant my final comment to mean more than "echo chamber", like a quantum echo chamber, it occurs so fundamentally in our reality that, though we may not feel it, it is the all cause.
The media is so complex now as we have been born into it. So where does the connection start for us. And remember, media is not just TV internet et al, it is anything that communicates something. From clothes to looks to aincient texts and cave paintings. Everything is communication.
I don’t think it’s an issue of living long enough. So much of human social interaction is based on prima facie impressions that I’m inclined to believe that it’s something innate within us — perhaps some sort of mechanism that came about through evolution to help us survive. It’s unbelievably difficult to completely disregard the information we ascertain (or assume) from a first glance — that is, while the adage “don’t judge a book by its cover” is a good moral guideline to give to children, it isn’t necessarily effective or practical in the real world.
The important thing, as I said in my comment on Tiff’s post, is to get past those instantly-formed opinions and actually look at the substance behind the façade to determine its worth. And I’ll close by quoting Professor Pew again: In the end, women are still women first and gamers second. I think that will always be true, but there isn’t necessarily something wrong with that, as long as it doesn’t descend into stereotyping.
Also, Zombie McLuhan FTW!
Like I said about me dressing as Ryu, that's honest, but due to the current situation, could quite easily be read as some lunkhead who's probably never played a game being paid to virally market Street Fighter IV. It'll change soon.
And I almost wrote on .tiff's blog that she didn't quite have the McLuhan quote in its proper context (he would have been much more interested in the fact that photographs were used than in the actual content of the photos), but that would have been more of a dick move there than it is here.