The Effects Of Video Games On Women 's Experience Of Self Objectification

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The issue of sexism in video games have been going on for a long time. Similarly, Fox talks about how “Research has indicated that many video games and virtual worlds are populated by hypersexualized and unrealistic representation of women.” This shows how women have been sexualized in media which represent women as self-objectified. Jess explain in his research that, “as a result of hypersexualization of women in videogames it would lead to increase in rape myth acceptance.” In one of jess experiment he focus on the effects of avatar features on women’s experience of self-objectification. He finds out that college women who are exposed to over sexualized avatar in videogames experienced higher level of self-objectification than those who are exposed to non-sexualized avatar. In addition, Jess explains how “self-objectification mediated the relationship between controlling a sexualizes avatar and subsequent level of RMA.”
Video game industry have been representing female character as sexually objectified or shown as a victim who is in desperate need of help through male protagonist, this portrayal has negative effect on the mind of our generation and the gender roles they identify with.
Dill explain in his article Effects of exposure to sex-stereotyped video game characters on tolerance of sexual harassment that female video games characters are continuously shown as gorgeous, busty, scantily clad sex objects. This has been confirmed by many video game players that women have been portrayed as a sex object. Dill further explain how women in video games are under-represented and games rarely depict female heroes. This shows that female characters have rarely been shown in video games, and if so those female characters didn’t refl...

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...or and the way they dress up. From this it concludes that the media and online gaming can create and reinforce gendered behaviors. Those video games affect the child identity and their perception of others.

In conclusion, the video games that contain sexual themes becomes more graphically portrayed. And the video games that use Damsel and Distress plot reduce women to a state of victimhood. The way female characters’ dress in the videogame reinforced gender-role stereotypes. As most of those games show female character wearing revealing clothes, which reduce their identity to mere sex objects. However, developer put emphasis on the masculinity and physical power in male character. They way those games portray female and male character it reinforces gender-role stereotype. This can negatively affect the identity and the perception of the person playing those games,

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