For decades, the media has been providing a false representation of women within its content. The way in which this is demonstrated is through the use of the male gaze. The male gaze refers to the way in which the media portrays women in a way that appeals to a heterosexual male’s perspective, specifically through the objectification of women (Mulvey,2009). This poor and incorrect depiction of women is particularly apparent in the gaming industry.
The gaming industry has always been a male-dominated industry, with a large majority of the games being created by men and catered towards men, with boys aged 14 playing video games up to five times more than girls at the same age (Leonhardt and Overå,2021). Consequently, in order to keep audiences engaged with the games and increase sales of the games, video game companies create games that feature elements that appeal towards a stereotypical heterosexual male audience, and the main way in which this is done is through the execution of female characters within the games.
One example of the way in which the representation of women has been tainted is within the gaming franchise Tomb Raider, in particular in terms of the depiction of the character Lara Croft. Lara Croft is an archaeologist whose role in the game is to explore ancient tombs and ruins in order to find treasure. However, although Lara is an intelligent and competent archaeologist, she has been created in order to appeal to the male audience who play the game. This is predominantly through the way in which the character is presented as overly sexual by wearing minimal clothing throughout the game. As a result of this, it appeals towards a heterosexual male audience, “embodying male sexual fantasies”(Mikula,2004), as it supports the idea of an idealistic woman, i.e. slim build, revealing clothing, big breasts, etc, thus supporting society’s pre-existing patriarchal ideas of gender.
This is problematic as due to boys being exposed to video games from such a young age, it is vital that the games provide a realistic and diverse representation of women in order to subvert the deep-rooted obsession with the female body. This means that these young boys would, therefore, develop an accurate representation of women within the real world and ensure that they are able to form healthy relationships with women without this constant comparison to the media’s representation.
Not only is this representation and objectification of women having negative consequences for the boys playing games like Tomb Raider, but can also create issues for any women who may be playing, in particular younger girls. The persistent objectification, therefore, contributes to, if not creates, psychological issues as the media is constantly projecting this ‘idealised’ woman with a ‘perfect’ body, therefore inflicting a degree of insecurity and encouraging this idea of ‘self-objectification’ on the women who may not align with society’s beauty standard (Rieken, 2022).
References:
Leonhardt, M., Overå, S (2021) ‘Are There Differences in Video Gaming and Use of Social Media among Boys and Girls?—A Mixed Methods Approach’ International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (18)
Mikula, M., 2004. Lara Croft: Between a feminist icon and male fantasy. Femme Fatalities. Representations of Strong Women in the Media, pp.57-70
Mulvey, L., 2009. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In: D. M. K. Meenakshi Gigi Durham, ed. Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. s.l.:John Wiley & Sons, pp. 342-352.
Rieken, S (2022) The Male Gaze and Its Effects on Women. Available at: https://www.thewomens.network/blog/the-male-gaze-and-its-effects-on-women Accessed 1st December
Images:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-gaming-console-on-wooden-surface-275033/
The post discusses the “male gaze” in the gaming industry and its impact on female representation, particularly in the case of Lara Croft. It highlights the connection between the historically male-dominated environment and the portrayal of female characters, causing psychological harm for female players. The post calls for change in media representation, particularly in gaming, to address unrealistic beauty standards and self-objectification. It suggests examples of games that have created more nuanced, empowered female characters and diverse representations.