I worked in the toy aisle at Wal-Mart for almost five years. I noticed a few trends. I would regularly see very little children - like, children below the age of 4 or so - looking for dolls that looked like them. Like most stores we generally had two kinds of dolls, white dolls and generic brown doll, and children of color would want the generic brown doll. I noticed when children of color reached a little older, like, 6 or so, they did not want the brown skinned dolls anymore. Some would vocally protest the brown skin dolls. They wanted the Good dolls.
This is what was happening - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkpUyB2xgTM
If you watch the video you’ll see very young children being asked “which doll is nice, which doll is smart, which doll is good, which doll is kind?” and the children regularly pointing toward the white dolls, and calling the black dolls bad, selfish, ugly, cruel and dumb.
This is a product of socialization - it is not naturally occurring to hate the group that you’re a part of. It’s heartbreaking.
Humans learn by observation. It’s served us well, it’s a really great shorthand for picking up behavior that keeps us alive without having to learn exactly why, but it’s also flawed, because when we see bigotry day in and day out, it becomes part of our programming. We don’t question it.
What happens here is that we have all learned that the Good Group is white. We’ve learned this from the people around us, and we’ve learned it from the media.
If you are part of the Good Group, there’s no further need for contemplation, any more than you need to contemplate about food processing if you don’t have any allergies. Your needs are being met. The end.
Now the conflict of skin color is not identical to sexism but it is somewhat similar, and it has similar affects on females.
If you continually see, over and over and over again, men doing these great things, and women not even present for it, your stupid human programming is going to kick in and those are going to be the set rules. Good Group, Bad Group. Or - in my case, COOL Group, Bad Group. The need to see someone who looks like you doing the things you want to do is SO huge. It’s SO necessary to have positive self worth.
Did you ever watch Monsters University? Did you see the part where the two headed monster saw a three headed monster working on the scare floor? and the two headed monster realized there was a place for them, if they worked hard enough for it? Like - imagine never seeing yourself in media. Imagine only seeing you as a sidekick or a hot reward. Maybe you would be like me - I was like, “That’s NOT me. I’m more like [the White Guy]!”
Like, it was possible for me to identify with male characters, but in order to do that, every single day I enjoyed that media, I would have to set aside the female part of myself. I honestly didn’t realize how damaging it was until recently. Or how easy it had become for me to dislike it, to think less of being female. I wanted to be cool, and cool was completely synonymous with being male. This is what I was taught, so it’s what I learned, and I would do my best to be that, by golly by gosh.
In order to pretend to be someone I wanted to be - fun and kind and goofy - I had to pretend to be a guy. In order to be the kind of hero I wanted to be, I was Flash or I was Robin - Wonder Woman wasn’t fun, she wasn’t goofy. Batgirl was never really part of the adventures, Crystal Kane just sat up in Sky Vault and ran a computer, I wanted to be part of the adventure! I was Ace McCloud! I was Michelangelo, not boring April! Stupid, stick in the mud girls aren’t part of the adventures! Or if they are - imagine a child pretending to be one of those super sexual heroines? Just…? Why is that what they’re limited to?
I realize I’ve rambled a lot here, but this is about representation, and representation is important, and I hope if I haven’t lost you that I’ve managed to convince you that we really mean what we’re saying, it’s not just random complaining, people really do mean it and it really does impact people. If you hold video games in any regard you have to realize they’re impacting people as well.
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