As with all forms of popular media, video games have the potential to influence how children perceive themselves and others. Most video games are designed by males, for males. The result, according to the advocacy organization Children Now, is that almost half of the top-selling console video games contain negative messages about females.
In its 2000 study Girls and Gaming: Gender and Video Game Marketing, Children Now examined 27 popular games and found that many promoted "unrealistic body images and stereotypical female characteristics, such as provocative sexuality, high-pitched voices and fainting." These kinds of portrayals send unhealthy messages to both boys and girls.
Often female characters are there only to provide sexual titillation. Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Vollyball features voluptuous bikini-clad volleyball players cavorting in a tropical setting.
Women in Mature-rated games are often portrayed as sex-trade workers—prostitutes and strippers. The developers of the extreme biking game BMX XXX, were forced to add clothing to their topless female riders when major retailers refused to carry the product, but the game still offers video clips of real women stripping.
Of serious concern is the way many games combine violence with sexual content. In the ultra-violent Duke Nukem 3D game, for example, the male "shooter" uses X-rated pornography posters for target practice and is awarded bonus points for shooting naked, bound prostitutes and strippers who plead "Kill me."
In Grand Theft Auto 3, one of the world's top-selling games, players are street thugs who can beat prostitutes to death with baseball bats after having sex with them.
Some games on the market feature strong female characters such as Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. But they don't offer a healthy alternative because they are simply highly sexualized females who engage in the kind of violent, aggressive actions usually associated with male characters.
For information on promoting non-sexist games see the Special Issues for Girls section.
