From the “it’s OK to hate women if you are a girl” file . . .
By Francesca. . . 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.
July 29th, 2008 at 10:51 am
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.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:01 am
The only thing I can say is AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!
July 29th, 2008 at 11:34 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.
July 29th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
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.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Ha! Looks like you and I read the same piece of crap this morning.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:07 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.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:44 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.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:50 am
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.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:50 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.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Don’t buy the game. Problem solved.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:36 am
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.