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A guide to modern day suffrage for the female gamer

I am not a Bra burning feminist or a nun. My childhood role model was Lara Croft and given the choice between short shorts or jeans the skimpier option will always win with me. For years I have enjoyed titles such as Soul Caliber, Tekken and Street fighter where my chosen character for somewhat unfathomable reasons frequently chooses a bikini as their prime outfit for combat, and it has never phased me. To put it more simply I am a modern kind of girl who is certainly not so fragile that I risk fainting every time a half clothed woman features in a game. Considering all of this it took a while for me to realize why the release of Bayonetta upset me so much, but the fact remains it did and when I get upset I don’t often get upset quietly…

The surprising thing is that when I first heard the character description for for the game I was hopeful, perhaps even excited. A strong female lead character? Created by a female designer? Rave reviews from just about everywhere? Magic witch powers? Guns on her feet? Sadly the end result could not have been further away from what I has imagined. Not only did Bayonetta look like a nine foot tall fetish secretary, her lines were so full of cheap smut that I found it hard to motivate myself to keep playing let alone to relate to the character on any level. Though the rude camera angles were initially quite amusing, after a while I found her creepy spider like limbs and the unusually wide gap between her neck and breast became just kinda creepy, and certainly nothing like any girl I have ever seen. It baffled me to think that Bayonetta had been designed by a woman. If anything to me she looked like she had been created someone who had heard many stories of women, but never actually seen one.

By now you may be thinking ‘Oh no, not another rant about how women in games should keep their clothes on..’ but the strangest thing of all is that titles such as DOA Xtreme volleyball and Bikini Samurai squad (which lets face it are the usual culprits for provoking feminist uproar) did not phase me in the slightest. So why Bayonetta? Why did a character which so many claim empowers women disturb me so much? Was it her skimpy outfits? Dodgy camera angles? Nude finishing moves? Her frighteningly unnatural proportion? Her constant and in places ridiculous use of innuendo? There were many reasons I could have picked to dislike Bayonetta and yet still I was unsure.

Making sense of my exact thoughts has been a lengthy and complicated process so I will spare you all the tedious task of examining my decision making and skip to the end. After briefly examining both Bayonetta’s physical and mental characteristics I concluded that even if I was to come across a woman with her ‘unique’ qualities I would be unlikely to befriend her, let alone aspire to be her. To many this may seem unimportant, after-all its only a game and was never meant to resemble real life, however I see it in a different way. To me gaming is a form of healthy escapism, and though it is good to have exciting fantasy characters if a character is truly impossible to relate to it can become very difficult to truly lose yourself in their world.

This realization though seemingly quite meaningless really got me thinking; and then I figured it out. The true reason for my uncharacteristic feminist uproar. It was not the character herself which had unnerved me, but more the new possibilities integrating a character such as Bayonetta into mainstream gaming may bring. Most titles which have previously portrayed women in such a bizarre and lets face it, overtly sexual way have been relatively under the radar of the average new gamer. To put it more simply sure they exist, but they are not usually top 10 sellers. In contrast to this Bayonetta is undeniably one of the most played with (get the innuendo here) female characters of recent times and if I cannot relate to her can other female gamers? If I was a girl thinking of getting into gaming and this was the game I chose this to play I think that the character would stand a true chance of putting me off gaming for life. So is it possible that other potential girl gamers may feel the same? It was with this that I made another decision. It was time for gaming girls to go out into the world and reclaim our gender. It was time to stand up and fight against creepy women who’s heads are too small and who make me feel queazy. It was time for some real world girl pride.

Finding a theme was easy. If I wanted to gather a large crowd of angry women there was only one way to do it. Suffragette style. Looking back through history I chose three famous forms of Suffragette protest from the late 19th and early 20th century, and set out into the middle of the city to see how the modern day public would react to my thoughts. I decided to start with the most obvious and less dangerous stunt of the day. A good old fashioned Placard protest. Choosing the houses of parliament as the most obvious place people go to protest in London, I set out during the early hours of the morning ready and raring to triumph my new found cause.

All seemed well with my protest. Placard, check. Chant, check. Place of local interest, check. Confused tourists, check. However after a couple of minutes standing on westminster bridge I realized the obvious. The government don’t make games. Even if someone important had passed by (which they didn’t) the odds of them being anything to do with the games industry were quite frankly slim. To be honest it also didn’t seem to be helping my cause that I chose to conduct my protest on the hottest day of the year. I have a sneaky feeling that my Lara croft style hotpants and tank top combo didn’t seem to be helping the public to understand my point, so with my first protest failed it was time for a new plan.

Luckily my back up plan seemed more dramatic, and thus was bound to attract more attention than my failed first attempt. Suffragette Emily Davison made history when she threw herself under the kings horse at the Epsom derby in 1872. Though undeniably dramatic this protest had two obvious problems. The first being that I was not sure if the head of Sega even has a horse, or where to find it. The second being that I wasn’t in the mood for death by trampling that day. It was then that it came to me. I may not be able to throw myself under a real horse, but I knew where there was a plastic horse which could be just as good…

The plastic horse in question was at the Troccadero in Piccadili circus, and after a short trek across town I arrived at the arcade to take my second shot at gaming suffrage. The horse was easy enough to find but it was here that I discovered yet another major flaw in my plan. Not only was there not really enough space to get under the front of the horse, even if I did manage to somehow lie down the virtual jockey ride is not exactly the most popular game in the arcade. In the whole time I was there not a single person was willing to ride the bugger, and this left me once again stuck. My second plan had failed. It was time for my last resort.

My third attempt at gaming suffrage should have been easy. The suffragettes often used hunger strikes as a form of protest and seeing as I had ventured out too early for breakfast I figured I was half way there already.

As you can see this did not go to plan. The lure of the American diner was just too strong and dammit I just like to eat. I had failed as a modern day gaming suffragette, and so I had not choice but to admit defeat and go home in shame.

So ok, perhaps the idea of a gaming themed women’s rights protest may seem a little pointless in this day and age of push up bra’s, plastic surgery and OK magazine but I do in all honesty write with what I feel is a valid point. Unlike Bikini Samurai squad Bayonetta was a game I wanted to play. As a gaming girl I cannot deny that I have found that the choice and quality of playable female characters has become quite uninspiring over the last few years and with characters such as Bayonetta emerging I fear for the future of strong female characters. The fact that the game exists never really bothered me, after all I can just choose not to play it. However if this game sets a president for this type of character being the standard I fear that we may start to lose the essence of what a true strong female character can be and this would be a great shame. I grew up with Lara croft. I mean sure she had busty physique, and the noises she made when she jumped can only be described as questionable, but that is besides the point. In my world Lara ran, jumped and moaned for herself and no-one else, and that I could relate to.

In all honesty I cannot deny that this whole post has been a blunt, biased opinion, condensing a topic worthy of intense study into a set of sweeping and undeniably flawed statements. Still, if you take away one thing from this rant I beg you, take away this. In my mind a great female character should not only have the power to excite men. No, that is the easy bit. A TRULY great female lead also has the power to inspire and grow a new generation of strong, sexy gaming girls. You may disagree, but I am living proof of how a single character can inspire a lifetime of gaming. I grew up with Lara Croft, and I wouldn’t change it. Would you?

Until next time,

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