Pink Camo

It's not often that I find myself lounging around watching others play video games.  A couple times a week, maybe?  Okay, perhaps that's more than the average bear.  But watching a gaming session in which a woman is playing what is typically considered a "male" game (Halo, Call of Duty, etc.) and dominating her male playing partners?  Almost never.  Anytime I've watched (and occasionally joined in playing) these games, girls are usually invited to play by their boyfriends or brothers as a "stand in," a place holder, an easy kill.  But a worthy adversary who is competent at head shots?  I've only witnessed this once, and perhaps this is why I found it so striking that my sister, the go-to sniper of the day, was running around as a big, burly, plaid-clad, man with a mullet.  When I asked why my sister was playing a man, she told me there weren't any female characters, at which point my feminist reflexes kicked in and, without even thinking, I remarked upon how sexist that was.

My family challenges me, and this is something I both love and hate about them.

The moment the words had escaped my lips, I knew I'd made a mistake.  My father turned to me, eyes bugging out of their sockets, and just shook his head.  At the same moment, my sister and twelve-year old nephew started assaulting me, rapid fire, with questions:  Did I think it was sexist men were born without a uterus?  Did I think it was sexist women were forced to lactate?  Did I think it was sexist women weren't given the privilege of having a penis?  And on and on.  I parried, I dodged, I returned fire saying I was complaining about the design of a video game, not biological reproductive roles.  All fell on deaf ears.  "Women," my nephew asserted, "belonged not on the front lines but at home with their babies" (a comment that won a rebuke from my sister).  Defeated, I quickly retreated to the kitchen (I-R-O-N-Y) where my husband was having a friendly conversation about, none other than, video games with my brother-in-law.  The conversation was soon forgotten, and the evening came to a pleasant end.  But it's been nagging at me ever since.  Why did it bother me so much that (1) women who elected to play the video game (and many like it) are forced to subvert their own gender and take on that of a (hideously attired) man and (2) that my family was incapable of having a rational conversation about it?

A few years back, one of my best friends was getting married and, as etiquette dictates, held a small get-together for her out of town guests.  Being the trendy, well-dressed person I'd always known her to be, I was somewhat surprised when she greeted us at the door wearing camouflage capris and matching ballet slippers (you know, the shoes...not real ballet slippers).  This friend is one of the "girliest" friends I have, and I would have thought she'd walk around naked before being seen in camo, but I didn't say anything. At least, not until we'd gotten together for a drink after the party.  As it turned out, her camo attire was not something she had picked out on her own, not even something she wore altogether willingly, but rather something her husband (who has always been trendy and hip) had bought for her after declaring "she needed to wear more camo."  A wise woman picks her battles, I guess, so my friend acquiesced.

As I thought about the incident with my family over the gendered nature of combat video games, this memory came flashing back to me.  And I must say, I find myself getting a little annoyed.  So, it's okay for women to wear camouflage (nay, even PINK camouflage) if it matches current fashion trends, but depicting women in a video game that mimics a war zone is ridiculous?  More to the point, allowing women to take on a feminine identity in what is typically considered to be a "male" video game is so ridiculous that to even suggest such a design can reasonably be expected to be met with a barrage of criticisms so illogical responding isn't even worth the time or effort.

I know, I know.  It's just a video game.  Why bother wasting the energy getting my pink, camouflage undies in a bunch?  My point exactly.  It's a video game.  Why then is it so ridiculous to ask for a girl to be given the opportunity to play a character who more closely matches her real world identity?  To create a video game in which girls/women don't have to throw off their own femininity to participate.  Is that really so far-fetched that we can't even have a conversation about it?  If we can't even conceive of gender equality in the fictional world of video games, what hope do we have of achieving this equality in the real world, where it really counts?