One day I noticed that my friend was playing a game as a boy character and asked why she wasn’t a girl. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side. Here’s an excerpt:įor a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. When I noticed this gender disparity I immediately remembered seeing a compelling article some time back by a twelve-year-old girl named Madeline Messer, who dug into this question more thoroughly.
For further discussion of the locked skins, see my addendum to the end of this post. Note: I am only looking at the ten free skins, not the locked skins. You could argue that this is just one game, or that the ratio isn’t that far off, or that I’m taking games too seriously. It’s when you click on the skin packs that things get dicey.ĭo you see the problem? Of the ten free skins offered, only three (bandit, barmaid, and baroness) present as female while the other seven present as male. But as you notice at the bottom of the above image, the app also offers two skin packs for you to choose from. You can choose Steve or Alex (as my readers pointed out on a previous post, while Steve presents as male, Alex’s presentation is more ambiguous), or you can upload a custom skin if you have the know-how.
