Gendered Toys and Video Games

This video talks about some familiar stuff for me, especially near the end when she talks about video games. When I was younger, I had a couple of friends who would play computer games with me, but by junior high my girl friends were not into games anymore, so it was always something I did by myself. When I went to university, I found a group of guy-friends who played a lot, so I finally found others with the same interests... but not other girls. And video games are very much designed for boys. Most of the characters are boys, and when there are girls, they are highly sexualized. I wanted to play with girl characters and stubbornly worked my way through Street Fighter playing with Chun Li, the token girl. In some ways, I don't understand the gaming industry. They are missing out on 50% of the population when they don't put female characters in their games and don't put girls in their ads. Next time you're watching tv, watch for video game ads. Then count how many girls you see on the screen. Zero. And there are video games for girls, but like in the video, they are usually stupid games about fashion or makeup that would bore me to death. I know I'm not that weird. Girls would love to play some of those other cool games. Here are a couple more videos made by the same person on the topic of women in games:





Too many dicks! Not enough chicks!