The oversexualization of Juliet in the game Lollipop Chainsaw really emphasizes this issue of representation of women in video games. Females are underrepresented in games and even less so represented as main characters. The overall male to female ratio in games, out of 150 sampled, was 85% to 15% compared to the census, which was 51% to 49%, and this did not include the number of playable male characters to playable female characters. “The virtual census: representations of gender, race and age in video games” found that the ratio of male and female characters were greatly disproportionate as compared to the actual ratio of males and females as stated in the 2000 US census. It is also worth noting the disproportioned ratio of males to females in games. Zelda, they often fail to save themselves from their captors. Though some of these females may help the hero out, i.e. For example games like the Super Mario series, the Legend of Zelda series, the Double Dragon series, Time Crisis series, and Dragons Lair all have helpless females that are powerless in saving themselves. Other characters may wear more but are still objects because they are powerless. This emphasizes the body of the character as opposed to their role in the game. For example, Cortana from the ever popular Halo series, characters from the Dead or Alive series, Bayonetta, Soul Caliber, and Morrigan from Darkstalkers all wear practically nothing just enough to not show nudity. There are too many examples of female characters wearing clothing that “does not contain their bodies”. These women are helpless and are not given the ability to help themselves, but to add further insult to injury many of these women, “often tightly fitting or otherwise revealing clothing that fails to contain her impossibly proportioned body” (Dickerson, Christensen, and Kerl-McClain 22). As Dickerman and Sarkeesian suggest females in video games usually are just put in the role of “damsel in distress” as an object that needs to be recovered by the hero. This objectification carries onto video games. Mulvey suggests that classical cinema is filled with female characters which are there just to be looked at creating a fetishistic scopophilia, or the pleasure in looking specifically at the body or parts of the body. The dialogue and portrayal of characters in Lollipop Chainsaw blatantly overemphasize the over sexualized nature of female video game characters and further points out the problem of objectification of females in video games through role reversal. Though we have advanced somewhat in the issue, it has not gone away. However, the continued presence of sexism in the video game industry is disturbing. It is not a surprise that this trend carried over from film to video games. The objectification of female characters is not a new concept.
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