. . . comes a new video game by Sony, called “Fat Princess.”
The idea is to win a capture-the-flag contest by kidnapping the other team’s princess, imprisoning her in a dungeon, and feeding her cake until she’s so fat that her teammates can’t haul her to safety.
Let’s set aside for now the icky likeness to fat fetishists who find willing females to pump full of calories until their girl “friends” are so heavy they are immobilized.
Let us set aside for a moment the suggestion that fat women get that way by sitting around eating cake.
We will ignore, for the moment, the implication that forcing a woman to get fat is “cute.”
Francesca would like to focus on this intellectually dishonest rebuttal to critics by James Green, the lead art director for the game:
“Does it make it better or worse that the concept artist (who designed the look, characters, everything) is a girl?”
The author of the article I’ve linked to, Ben Silverman, apparently believes it makes it better, since he says the game’s detractors will now be eating crow (ha! fat women stuffing their faces with crow! ha!).
I suppose it didn’t occur to either of them that Meme Roth, too, is a “girl,” and she’s a fatphobic, mean-spirited person who is devoting significant amounts of time to putting down other women and trying to make them feel ashamed and degraded.
Being female does not guarantee wisdom or empathy.
Francesca can only say that, at best, the concept artist in question is, perhaps, a woman who did not think carefully enough about the implications of her work. Francesca hopes that we are talking about someone a bit artificial who doesn’t think things through, and not a woman who really believes that fattening an imprisoned princess for fun is just good times.
Yeah, I read about this and it makes me so crazy. It’s hard enough to be a girl who just happens to enjoy video games and deal with the stupid comments just going into a store to buy a game. But to have another woman who is in the industry in which women in general are woefully underrepresented catering to the lowest common denominator is just maddening.
Comment by AmazonAngelle — July 29, 2008 @ 10:51 am
The only thing I can say is AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!
Comment by Jennie — July 29, 2008 @ 11:01 am
Hey y’all… there’s a Feedback link on the Yahoo page, bottom center. You can send Mr. Silverman a superfantastically firm but polite note explaining that women can be misogynists, too.
Comment by TeleriB — July 29, 2008 @ 11:34 am
Can I just make a point to say that a concept artist just draws the sets and the characters, it doesn’t mean she came up with the idea… and it’s likely she didn’t.
We don’t actually know how the girl feels about the game as she has not spoken out and as angry as we all are at the game it is unfair to bash the girl because of how her company is using her.
Comment by Erin — July 29, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
Ha! Looks like you and I read the same piece of crap this morning.
Comment by Quiconque — July 29, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
*hiss*
I have a book titled “Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman” which talks about the ways that woman can and do treat other women as enemies, even when there’s no reason for it. And this Meme Roth person is clearly one of those women who sees no problem with encouraging people to revile other women to make a dime.
Good grief. This is just . . . sad. AmazonAngelle, I’m glad to see another gamer girl here too – and yes, it’s tough enough getting the stares when you walk into a game store, or show any kind of knowledge about it. We don’t need this on top of it.
Comment by Cassie — July 29, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Anybody who thinks it’s “okay” because a woman designed the characters has obviously never been the heavy-set, geeky or otherwise different one in a room full of stereotypically “beautiful” girls. I’ve found that women are much more ruthless in their treatment of plus size people than most men are.
Comment by Sarah — July 29, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
Not only is it not new to think it’s okay for women to hate women, if you’re a woman working in a corporate environment where lots of money is made by hating women (and there is quite a lot of that in video games) it’s expected of you, if you want to keep working!
Duh. Not only is James Green intellectually dishonest (and clearly intellectually deficient), he thinks women just don’t see this happening all the time, and can’t recognize it for what it is: dumb hatred, and a pretty typical variety of it too.
Comment by ChaChaHeels — July 30, 2008 @ 8:50 am
Hypocrisy is no excuse for misogyny.
The concept artist has little say in the choices of the people who come up with the game. To use one female artist who would probably have lost her job had she refused to draw up what was required for the game as an excuse for the entire game’s existance is not only disingenuous but ludicrous as well.
It’s hard enough for women who play video games to be treated seriously. Imagine how hard it is to be a woman working in the field. Now imagine that you’re being used to ‘prove’ the rightness of continued institutionalized sexism because you did the job required of you, no matter what your feelings about the content.
Is the artist a sexist, too? Does she believe all fat people get that way by stuffing their faces with cake all day? Did she enjoy doing this piece or did she need an extra long shower every night? We don’t know. She hasn’t spoken out one way or the other.
But her boss…he’s using her as a shield against all hints of woman bashing and fat bashing.
That’s about as low as you can go.
Comment by Twistie — July 30, 2008 @ 10:50 am
Don’t buy the game. Problem solved.
Comment by dcsurfergirl — July 30, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
And when no one buys the game (as I hope), then the powers-that-be will be all smug and say, Well, we tried marketing games for girls, and no one bought what we put out!
Instead of, maybe, realizing that what they put out was garbage.
Hmm. Okay, obviously, I’m all for Don’t buy the game! But I’m also all for sending an email explaining that it’s offensive, and that’s why it isn’t going to sell – not because girls don’t game.
Comment by La BellaDonna — August 4, 2008 @ 11:36 am
“Let us set aside for a moment the suggestion that fat women get that way by sitting around eating cake.”
Where the hell does this game say that? It’s the men that are feeding her she’s not making herself fat! If anything its saying that men are obsessive and ignorant.
Let’s be honest with ourselves you just want an excuse to criticize something to seem sensitive and intelligent. I’m female and have actually played and own the game, all my friends do and it never crossed my or any of my friends minds for one second as being sexist but hell buts that’s probably because we weren’t going out of our way to make a big production out of nothing. Have you played it, no, but who actually needs to try anything to properly form an opinion about it? What all mature people do is complain without even knowing what the hell they’re even complaining about, you just know it’s bad because that’s how deep and insightful and sensitive you are.
You heard it has a fat lady in it and portraying girls as fat is sexist, portraying women is skinny is sexist, if they have boobs that are too big or small it’s sexist, never mind that the character can actually bee really kick ass, if she isn’t designed just right feminists will blog about how the would is so unfair to them because apparently women are sacred institutions that can never ever be made light of or else it’s sexist. Mario is fat and ugly too but I don’t see men blogging about how the world is so unfair to them, maybe it’s because men can take a joke once in a while. Men have unhealthy stereotypes in videogames too but do you care? Games say men gun toting psychos. Games say their violent, they give men an unhealthy body image to live up to, it denies men’s sensitivity.
Male gamers are made fun of constantly for not being society’s image of macho and belittled saying they won’t have girlfriend for not being manly, like solid snake. Games call men sexist and misogynist. They have twice the unhealthy expectation on them as women do in videogames.
I think you’re over analyzing a perfectly innocent fun video-game. Does this game call fat women lazy useless pigs? Does it tell us to stay in the kitchen and cook all day? The issue is just the princess is female and fat ant that’s it. Why is it bad that she’s fat? Is being fat wrong? Hell she’s desirable to all the men in the game despite her being fat. Isn’t that positive?
You’re purposely looking at the game from the most negative light possible, twisting and distorting it into something it’s not just to complain and completely ignoring how positively this princess is portrayed.
The princess is the most important aspect of the game. The point is to protect her from people who would take her away for their own personal gain. She is fought over by the players and protected by both sides. Shoot, if it’s anything it’s a negative stereotype about men. The men in the game are the ones over feeding the princess acting jealous and over protective. They have a female friend who they respect at the same they are feeding her to the point of immobility to keep her safe because of their obsessive nature.
It’s the men surrounding her that are doing all the bloodshed the princess is just an innocent bystander. Maybe Sony is trying to tell men that their being pigs, you ever think of that? Maybe it’s calling men disgusting for being misogynists? Its men that are portrayed negatively anyway, but who cares, lets nit pick at the girl and make a big production out of nothing.
I’m a women’s right’s activist myself and women like you make me sick. Get off your soapbox, lady its girls like you that give women everywhere a bad name. This is why nobody takes feminists seriously anymore because of people like you who complain and make a big production out of nothing when there is actual real actual sexism out in the world to worry about. There are worse attacks on femininity then a fat princess that is protected and fed and pampered by men.
If you want something sexist to complain about read Twilight. That book is completely sexist, the main girls’ boyfriend is abusive to her and she thinks it’s romantic. Its things like Twilight that send women’s rights back at least 100 years not games like this.
The game is great and it’s selling well, have fun being a humorless bleeding heart, people love making friends with people like that….
Comment by Hedi — January 29, 2010 @ 9:59 pm