The other night I was flipping through the pages of my roommates magazine. It was some kind of video game magazine that I didn’t recognize, but on the cover there was the illustration of the 30 characters in video games that defined a generation. I noted that on the cover, there was a girl with the typical video game physique. Huge butt, huge boobs, tiny waist. I call it, The Barbie. Essentially, such a overly exaggerated female form that it is anatomically incorrect. What I found ironic though, was that the male characters, with the exception of a few, were very plausible physically.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think that the healthy, natural human body, male and female, is attractive, fantastic, awe-worthy and meant to be celebrated, Its inspiring to flip through the pages of fitness magazines and look at the bodies of these people and slowly watch my body become comparable.
Paul mentioned to me that if I wanted to see either female video game characters that were more realistic, or male characters that were more idealized, then more women need to start designing video games. While it is true that there are very few women in the world of designing graphics, I was unsure of just what kind of man a woman would create.
I think that women think of the male form as less idealized, less unrealistic. I think that men still actively seek out a woman to be the ideal of bodily perfection, essentially being honest and recognizing a genetic advantage, whereas some women are looking for something else. Like, well, money. Why? Well that’s based on survival as well. Back when ancient humans were trying to survive, there was two types of advantages that men held, one being physical strength, the other being, I guess you’d call it, goods. As an ancient woman, you’d want to look for a strong man that could protect you and your children from things like, uh, mammoths and saber toothed cats? And also the physically strong man would pass on good, healthy, genes.
However, as an ancient human woman, you would also want to look for someone that could help you survive through the winter with food, firewood, and furs, and throughout history, strength and physical valor became less and less important, as trade became more of a method of the way to measure a man’s worth.
Today, we deny our survival instincts more and more. We deny that we are like our ancestors and think that we are somehow above this. As a result, women look less and less for a man with either of these qualities, and settle for men that are out of shape, poor and ambition-less, and oftentimes, not even nice to them! Ive seen men do the same, but they at least still create the ideal in the place that they can escape to, video games. What kind of characters would women create? Would they create realistic looking men that act weak, pitifully and meanly? Or would they create “the ideal”. And more importantly, what is this obsession with the ideal in fiction, and yet the settling for the least ideal in reality doing to out culture? Do women settle more and more for the more average man because of the fictional average men that real average men create to idealize themselves on TV and in video games? (just think of any sitcom to illustrate my point) Or do women’s sensitive natures make them more accepting to well, losers? What is this doing to out society, and what will future generations be like if we, as women, keep settling for men that are below average? I ask you, women of America; who would you create???
