"Samus is a Girl"

I was skimming through TV Tropes list of tropes and came across Samus is a Girl (warning: link clicking can lead to sudden loss of time). It's one I knew about already, but I was already thinking about gender issues thanks to a book I was reading that was set in the 50s-70s time period following the career of a woman, which had a lot of focus on how hard it was for her to convince people she was competent and/or should be promoted, simply because she didn't have a Y chromosone. (Yes, this is related to gaming.... read on.)

In relation to the book, what I was thinking was that while things have changed, they haven't really changed that much. Look at a list of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, who are overwhelmingly male. Women may find it easier to get promoted higher up the chain than they used to, but they're still not running a whole lot of big companies.

This is why the assumption is that the competent are male by default (excepting a tiny handful of professions), and that's why "Samus is a Girl" works. That big reveal shouldn't really be all that interesting, but it is... and especially in gaming, where there's still an assumption by many that a female gamer is a rarity, despite polls showing anything from a significant minority (around 20%) to a nearly even split (around 45%), depending on the poller.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I harp a lot on the way female outfits look in gaming... because it's based on gender assumptions.

There's the assumption I talk about most, of course: that the majority of the audience is young and male and will want those skimpy outfits on the characters they'll be playing... which is, BTW, not just insulting to women, considering the number of (usually older) male gamers there are who actually are just as annoyed by lack of choice as us women. (Especially the parents. Especially the parents of little girls.)

There's also a pair of related assumptions which are tied up with the competency one: that the majority of the "hardcore" gamers must be male, because women like socializing more than being goal-oriented... or that the majority of the "competitive" gamers are male simply because women just aren't all that competitive.. The counter-assumption is that female gamers aren't "serious" gamers, and so their concerns really aren't a major consideration when you're making a game. And if you think that's not true, I invite you to take a look at the games out there and do a quick count of how many of them have a tough, female lead who dresses appropriately for the kind of things they'll need to do in the game. And no, Lara Croft does not count as "dressed appropriately" (and her "did they plant watermelons?" breasts don't help that).

Related to the "not serious gamers" issue is the number of gamers—mostly younger ones—who assume most women who play games fall into one of three categories: a) girlfriend of a gamer, b) ugly fat chick looking for male attention, c) someone who mainly plays "casual games". Oh, they'll concede there are a few serious gamers who are female, but they insist it's a rarity. That way, even when you link to a Nielsen poll suggesting that, in fact, a good 40% of WoW players appear to be female, they can dismiss most of them.

So I wonder... is it possible that none of these assumptions (or the remaining stigma of being a "girl gamer") would exist if it weren't for the way that society at large is still so inclined to be male-dominated, nicely demonstrated by the way that the Fortune 500 is mainly run by white guys? If things had genuinely changed that much, would I still be annoyed at even the games I like putting women in their ads into skimpy outfits (or making that all there is available, for that matter)? Or giving them humongous boobs (and using jiggle physics for them)? Or, in single-player games, mainly relegating the women to the support roles?

And just when is "Samus is a Girl" going to be a discredited trope?