Video Games and Body Image

I've been submerged in Gearbox's Borderlands for weeks now. It's open world, limitless crazy weapons, and the numerous challenges you can achieve to gain XP outside the quests given to you through gameplay makes for endless entertainment, despite the rather lackadaisical plot line. And when the main plot's over, there are four DLCs to play through!

Of course, though I'm having an amazing amount of fun setting baddies on fire as the Siren, Lilith, watching her jump, run, shoot, and get shot for hours on end has made me a little grumpy. She's perfect, of course. She's thin, with abnormally large boobs and a great butt, both of which are featured in the few cut scenes included in the game.  The angles the camera uses when it examines Lilith (often managing to look down her shirt, at her very obvious and desert-world-impractical cleavage) wasn't not the first annoyance to catch my eye. Or ear, as it were. Lilith makes the usual woman-in-video-game noises when jumping, running, and getting shot. What I'm talking about here, of course, are the sounds that pretty much sound like they're coming from a teenager's masturbatory aid. It's a little disgusting, frankly. Enjoy the opening cut scene here.

Let's face it, video games are men's worlds, far more than our own is. They are dominated by male characters, and even more than in other forms of media, the male gaze is the only point of view we ever get. This isn't hard to understand from a capitalist perspective; video games are marketed primarily to the adolescent male. Things are changing in the video game industry. According to consumerelectronics.net, "Females - young and old - have become major influences in the types of games that are played online and offline with smartphones" and now make up 40% of the video game market. Read the article here. I think it's about time game developers re-evaluate their market and rethink how to better appeal to us, the 40%.