Girls vs Boys

Just recently I decided to play the Sims game, which I hadn’t played in years and years, with one of my guy mates. I found myself thinking about the game in relation to Bertozzi's argument in his article 'you play like a girl'. It was very interesting to see how I developed my character to be an attractive girl while he made his in to some fictitious super human, the gendered characteristics which had been embedded through our culture, that as a girl you want to be pretty and thin an attractive and for men to be tough and macho, were being reproduced through the Sims game. Within the game gendered characteristics and stereotypes are reproduced constantly, for example just the body language and manner of the Sims show the stereotype of how a man or women should act. Some of the things within the Sims cannot be helped and I think games shouldn’t be too badly scrutinized for reproducing stereotypes but some suggestions of Bertozzis could be taken into consideration. Like his suggestion to have characters which don’t stereotypically resemble a female or male, so then people aren’t restricted to the cultural categories. I also found myself doing things within the Sims in which I subconsciously did which reflected the stereotypical girly things to do for example learn to cook and take the fashion job. I was kind of stunned because I never really thought that much about how I had learnt 'how' to be a girl. However it is clear that toys were a big part in how I learnt this behaviour. I never had a play station or played computer games that often because I was not interested in fighting and battling I was happier playing Barbie’s, which Berrtozzi points out is because it is common for girls to want to play in a way which emotionally expresses themselves. I couldn’t believe how true this was as I only became interested in computers and got a play station when the Sims came out and that is an emotionally expressive game. Its so interesting how studying gender in relation to videogames and other new media can tell us so much about we learn and maintain gender roles and characteristics. Furthermore I have always and still to this day feel inadequate when playing a video game against a boy and I think Bertozzis idea to try and normalize cross gender play in institutions such as schools is a really good one. So then maybe boys and girls will feel equal and just as adequate when competing against each other virtually and non virtually.