Personally, I've never been an old woman - not in real life or on screen - though I hope to be one someday. For me, at least, it's much easier to relate to life on the other end of the spectrum, to the world of little girls.
In the West, playable little girl characters are almost non-existent - especially in games with clear protagonists. Full-grown women get to battle flesh-eating dogs, wield semi-automatic weapons and work on their wicked tans while playing beach volleyball. Little girls, meanwhile, are nowhere to be seen.
Where have they gone? Are the little girls of the videogame world too busy hosting stuffed animal tea parties to make their presence known? "Excuse me, Mrs. Murphy, but I heard about this bitchin' new game. Couldn't little Susie please come out and play?"
Goodbye Pragmatics, Hello Barbie
Inevitably, someone is bound to make the argument that having little girls in videogames just wouldn't make sense. Duh, an 8-year-old couldn't lift a machine gun. A middle- schooler wouldn't have enlisted in an international Earth army assembled to fend off alien forces. And a child in a race car ... It's just not pragmatic.
But what is? Videogames may strive for graphical realism, but that's usually where the true-to-life card calls it quits. Most of the things you do in-game couldn't be done in real life, period. Pigtails and a set of training wheels aren't going to change that.
Besides, the let's-get-practical line of thinking shouldn't just apply to little girls, but to little boys, as well. Yet, little boys in videogames are a dime a dozen. Or, if not quite so cheap, many have been elevated to cultural symbols. Young Link alone overshadows the entire history of female children in games. He's identified with and adored by gamers across the world.
So, why have little girls been so consistently overlooked in the search for new and unique characters - a search that has brought us everything from amorphous, gushy sacs to assassins with the ability to bleed through walls? Enter another likely argument: Because little girls just aren't any serious game's target audience. But honestly, are spandex-clad women the audience for Perfect Dark? Are hedgehogs super-psyched over Sonic on the Wii? And more importantly, will they be able to hold the new controller with such tiny hands?
Obviously, as complex and multifaceted human beings, we don't need mirror images of ourselves to identify with the characters we play.
Even so-called "girl games," which are designed specifically with young girls in mind, rarely feature children. Instead, their protagonists are Barbie, a tight-sweater-clad Nancy or the Bratz, those cool girls on the block who all seem to have had their noses surgically removed. Much like the women of adult-oriented games, girl-game characters are sexualized through dress and physical design. They prove that the issues surrounding the depiction of grown-up women extend far beyond the grown-up world.
A Non-Sexual Creature?
What a little girl could provide, what might just be revolutionary, is a wholly non-sexualized female character - a character free of the moral complications that plague her older counterparts, an answer to the dilemma of how to represent femininity without reducing it to eye candy. Thanks to her age, this girl would be entirely outside the realm of sex.
