Nov 03 2008
Growing Up, but not Growing Old
As I grow older, I find I grow more feminine. I like buying clothes a little more. I like the idea of buying a cute new purse. I contemplate wearing makeup. I’ve even learned to like the color pink (still partially to my own horror.) Mind you, this comes from a tomboy who used to play with the boys in the sand and mud, who played with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and threw her Barbies in the closet, and who, of course, thought video games were far superior to playing dress-up or going shopping.
But even though my taste in clothes, colors, and some past times has changed, my love for video games has stayed strong. Why? Well, I’m sure part of it is that video games have been ingrained in my life as far back as I can remember: playing Oregon Trail in black and green on a 3″ portable TV/radio screen. But what I think has been the really compelling force of video games for me, especially as a woman, is the ability to act out fantasies and ideas that are normally closed to me: fighting, racing, mystery solving, etc.
That’s why games about fashion designing and interior decorating hold so little appeal for me: I don’t want to do what I’m supposed to as a woman. I want to be the adventurer, the hero, the one that saves the princess. And in a world that still, achingly, puts down women’s capability of being amazing people, gaming allows us to make that escape. It allows us to dream, to be inspired to go down the roads we’re discouraged from walking. It allows us to say to a man who lays his coat down over a puddle, “No thank you, I rather like the feel of mud beneath my feet.”
Fittingly, that’s also why I find being a girl gamer so amusing. Male gamers of all ages are still very backwards in feeling that girls are less capable than men in most game types (MMOs becoming a greater exception.) So I like rubbing it in their faces sometimes. “Yes, I play games; Yes, I have breasts; No, you can’t touch them” was a signature of mine on GameFAQs for a while, for good reason. The chauvinistic gamers hate, just hate, to be “shown up” by a girl, and those that don’t, are in awe of us.
So while I may be growing up more and more into a woman, I’m not going to grow old. I’m going to keep playing video games, and I’m going to keep that tomboy spirit. It’s still a lot better than playing dress-up.
