It's Not "Just A Game"

An ongoing series.  Parts One, Two, and the guest post on this topic

Perhaps you have seen the shitstorm (and honestly, some good ol’ internet fun)  that has arisen over Sony’s new fanfuckingtastic game, Fat Princess.  Apparently voicing an opinion about the insensitivity and cruelty of a game is an engraved invitation to come storm onto Melissa’s blog and call her a “fat lesbo bitch”, to use the nicer ones.  I openly admit here to being a gamer, not as avid as The Guy, but I am, but these fuckwits* are making the rest of the gamer community look particularly shameful.

Part of the hubbub seems to be that Fat Princess is just a game, and we stupid fat feminists should take a chill pill and relax, b/c it is just supposed to be funny.  You see?  Being fat is funny!  It works for Jack Black, and it worked for Chris Farley, so it must be true!  

Now, I am going to put aside the argument of how it is far more acceptable to a fattie in Hollywood if you are a man.  You can read about that at Shakesville, Feministing, or Shapely Prose I am sure, and see how bloggers are talking about that double standard all the time.  You just can’t be fat in Hollywood if you are a woman.  In fact, you can’t be fat at all in Hollywood w/o it being central to who you are.

What I want to focus on is fat shaming.  While you might think this that Fat Princess is “just a game”, and not intentionally harmful, I am going to tell you that you are wrong.  Painfully, cluelessly and horribly wrong.  Any time we use a trait of a person to poke fun at them we are dehumanizing them a little.  We are tearing them down and telling them that they are less than human b/c of something about which they have no control.

And before you get into any “but you can control being fat, just eat less and exercise more”, I am going to tell you to Google “fat acceptance” and read up a little b/f you comment here, b/c being a fat shamer or a concern troll will get you banned, no second chances thanks for playing banned.

Now, why it’s not “just a game”.

We are led to believe that it is funny, first of all, to force a girl to do something against her will.  She is being force fed.  Now, while that might not seem to most horrific thing to ever occur, let’s change it to being forced to have sex w/ the “hordes” for fun.  Or to being forced to do anything that is outside of her free will, shredding her autonomy.  This is about the way that we see women, as objects needing to be rescued and to be forced to do things for the amusement of others.  We have the stereotypical helpless little princess who needs to wait to be rescued in a game that seems to be aimed at young people.  Way to send a fucking message, Sony.  Next, b/c it is amusing and might thwart the plans of those we don’t like we are going to damage her somehow, and make her less desirable to rescue (sound familiar).  Geez!  It’s so fucking funny!  I can’t believe that I find this game offensive!

Now, let’s think about those young kids who think that being fat must always make them the butt of jokes.  We take kids who are overweight for various reasons, be it genetics, disability, economic reasons, any other reason and show them that something about them is funny and to be laughed at by the rest of the “acceptable” world.  In a society that is already showing us that the only acceptable body to have is an impossibly beautiful and impossibly thin one we are othering them and showing them that they are not worthy of our love and respect.  If we can’t see bones then you are carrying too much extra baggage.  Now we are showing that they are something to be made fun of in video game format.  No wonder kids are barfing up lunches and starving themselves, or making themselves otherwise sick…to stop being the butt of your joke.

It’s not just a game b/c it makes light of serious real life things.  And before you go into the “but I am smart, I can tell the difference b/t reality and a game”, let me tell you, I am a fucking gamer too, and as Cola over at Shakesville put it in the comments, because we are gamers we need to hold it to a higher standard.

You know what? I’m not fat and I find the game offensive. I’ve also been playing games my whole life, and I love the medium. Love it. I hold it to a higher standard, though, because I also live in the real world, where these things have a real impact that I have to bear witness to. There’s a relationship between sexism and fat hating in our media and sexism and fat hating in the real world. 

 

It’s not just a game. It’s not just a movie. That’s not just a t-shirt. Just look at what people do with that shit! Look at these comments! Do these people look like they grew up in a perfect world where sexist depictions of women have not led to sexism? We don’t live in a vacuum. This shit comes from somewhere. 

 

And if you actually loved games, you’d demand better from them, too. Blind adulation to an art form isn’t a mark of virtue, it’s a mark of cowardice and stunted emotional and mental growth. Adults play video games, too. Isn’t that the defense of GTA from Jack Thompson?! They’re not for kids?! Well, stop acting like children!

We as gamers need to demand a higher standard from the producers of games we love.  We also need to be able to realize as we are enjoying a game that has questionable content that we are making a farce out of something that is real to real people.  Perhaps I am a little too close to the topic of fat shaming, and maybe it hurts me more than it should, b/c unlike people better than me I haven’t come to grips and learned to love my fat body, but that in no way invalidates my argument.

We as gamers know that the gaming world is far from friendly to women.  Even games that are “meant for girls” are so horribly offensive in content that I have to wonder WTP?  I can easily see that every little gamer girl out there wants to play Barbie fashion or take care of a virtual kitten.  The gaming industry is downright hostile to women, whether it is making slut jokes about Jade Raymond or killing hookers to get your money back or just confining them to gender boxes we are not blind to the onslaught of misogyny slung at us.  We have seen it all before and it is neither new nor interesting.  What is new is this fresh level of hate, that it is no longer just good enough to objectify the stereotypically beautiful women, but now we must make damned sure that everyone knows that anyone outside of that norm is an undesirable shit pile unworthy of affection.  Now they must also show the fatties as the burden they are on the rest of the world, and tie it up in a pretty bow of “it teaches teamwork”.

If you are not masturbation fodder then you are unworthy of respect.  If you are different from what society and marketing tells you you should be then you are unworthy.  If you don’t think that’s funny* then you must be a “fat lesbo bitch” (as if that is some kind of insult…man I am getting bored w/ the trolls these days).

This is why it is not “just a game”.  It is othering to real people, and it shows us that it is OK to just take a shit all over something that we don’t see as society approved beauty.

This game could have been done in quite a few other ways that didn’t have to have such a potentially harmful backlash.  But why do something tastefully when it can be funny?

*FTR, I traded in my sense of humor for my feminist/womanist card a long fucking time ago.