I’m Not A Barbie Girl In A Barbie World

One moment while I go hurl.

Okay, back. That feels better.

About ten years ago, in a newspaper column I wrote back then, I was sharply critical of “pinkware” games. In particular, I condemned the fact that while games for boys that encouraged exploration, planning, leadership, or even just good motor skills, games for girls focused almost entirely on looking pretty or navigating familiar real-life social situations. (“Rockett’s New School” got singled out for heavy-duty skewering) The game developers were encouraging boys to strive to become more than they were, and girls to become less — merely walking, talking dolls whose worth was measured by their ability to match current trends in fashion, about as trivial and superficial value as you can get.

Now we’re seeing it go online. And I am disgusted.

I’m a child of the 60′s. Yeah, there are female gamers that old. Deal. I remember the struggles for things as simple as being allowed to wear pants to school instead of skirts. I remember being told, as a young child, that “girls couldn’t be” all the things I wanted to be when I grew up — an astronaut, a truck driver, a mechanic. I remember in junior high, fighting in vain to be allowed to take shop instead of home ec. It was all about having dreams — about the right to dream — about being able to do anything you were capable of doing, about being anything you were capable of being.

And now girls have a choice between games which portray female avatars as hypersexualized bimbos and whose marketing clearly says “no gurlz allowed in klubhouse” and games which limit girls’ activities to shopping and dressing up — in short, games where the goal is to become a fashion doll. Playthings to make girls into playthings.

Where is the spaceport? Where is the racetrack? Where is the mountain trail? Where is anything, in short, but the most superficial, trivial “life” anyone could imagine.

They hype their protective mechanisms — all sorts of ways to keep those girls from hearing any bad words. But what is going to protect the girls from the game itself? What is going to protect them from the game’s core concept, that all the things that my generation and those before us fought to achieve are meaningless, and girls should aspire to be nothing more than shallow, trivial playthings?

I think I need to go PvP some.

Isn’t it a bit retro to blame men for the fact that some girls like girly things?

Where do I blame men? For all I know, the developers of Barbie World are 100% female. I never said a word about who was at fault. I just criticized the product, and the mindset it enforces.

Xanthippe, I’m pretty sure “matriarchal” wasn’t the word you were looking for, as I also didn’t mention anything about who is, or should be, in charge. And “limiting”? How is it limiting to say that girls should have the same opportunities to dream of being something more than they are that boys do, instead of being directed to a very narrow, restricted role?

The real limiting here is in the way Barbie World so strongly limits the scope of what it presents, with all the authority of an adult-sanctioned commercial product, a model of what a girl’s world should be. That world has no place for anything except clothes (renamed “fashions”) and prettiness. The girls can’t go bike riding (let alone mountain biking), or build things, or race little go-karts a la Nexon’s wildly popular (12 million users, 700k concurrent users) Kart Rider. There’s no “Barbie the Airline Pilot” here, or even “Barbie the Stewardess”. It presents the idealized girl’s life as going to the mall, dressing up, and sitting in rooms talking. THAT is limiting.

I was never a girly girl, despite my parents’ best efforts to make me one. But I never saw myself as a tomboy, either. I just wanted to do fun things. Catching frogs was fun, wearing the “right” clothes was boring. I recognize that some people see it the other way around, and I suppose it saves a lot of wear and tear on the frogs. But, in the long run, the “girly” lifestyle can lead to someone who is less of a person — just an animated plaything — and not a full contributor to society. A person, male or female, needs dreams beyond looking visually appealing to other people. Beau Brummel died destitute. Human beings need purpose other than being decorative accessories. That’s where the limitation comes in — telling girls “this is what you are” instead of “you can aspire to anything.”

We wouldn’t give our children toys that cripple their bodies, so why give them toys that cripple their minds?

At the end of your previous post you said you thought you would go PvP some. That’s when I lost all interest in your opinions on raising kids.

Just how, exactly, does my liking for competing against other players instead of against a highly predictable computer program relate to the validity of my opinions on raising kids? Or do you only accept opinions from women who fit your stereotypes, and it’s a common stereotype that female gamers don’t like PvP? Sorry to bust up your stereotypes there, JuJutsu, but I do prefer competing against real opponents, with all their variety and intelligence and unpredictability, instead of computer programs. My reference to PvP was meant as “I need to go do something stereotypically ‘un-girly’” after seeing and discussing all that pinkness … what did you read into it?

I didn’t get my PvP, though. Got interrupted and had to log before my battleground slot came up.

Ah, yes, the $60 doll-shaped MP3 player. The game is “free” all right, but for what it really costs, you could buy WoW and a few months of playing time. Okay, Puzzle Pirates if you prefer. Or a whole lot of goodies in Kart Rider. And I’m sure that there will be further upgrades available … “but Mommy, all my friends have Barbie Puppies, I need the $60 plastic poodle!”

TANSTAAFL. Or TANSTAAFG, in this case.

Xanthippe, I am attempting to have a civilized discussion here. Your insults make that difficult. This is a subject worthy of discussion, and it seems to me that you want to turn these comments from such a discussion into a mud-throwing contest.

If I ever give Jack Thompson a call, I’ll probably be arrested for what I say to him.

I refuse to follow the politically correct school of thought that says all possible decisions, all possible actions, all possible lifestyles, are equally worthwhile. Call me old-fashioned, but I see differences in social worth between the choices, and the outcomes of those choices, we make in life. I see what Scott, our fine host, does for a living as a much higher calling than, say, what Jack Thompson does. Political correctness has made a mockery of equality. All people are entitled to equal rights, but that does not mean that all the things people do are of equal value. Devoting your life to finding a cure for cancer and devoting your life to bumming quarters off random passers-by are not equal in my eyes, and only someone blinded by political correctness could say that they are. And, yes, I believe that a life as an animated decoration is on the less positive end of the scale.

Shouldn’t we?

No matter what the folks at Terra Nova think, there is no dividing line. Some multiplayer environments are more worldy. Some are more gamey (and some players are very gamy, but that’s a matter for another day). But it’s just as valid a topic of discussion when it’s about Barbie Online as it is about Second Life.

I prefer the Game vs. Toy breakdown myself. I think that’s more informative, and more useful in the long run, than Game vs. World.