What do superheroines usually look like? Like Barbie, only instead of a pink dress they wear armour. Female characters in games are often portrayed according to harmful beauty standards - women usually have large breasts, a waistline and long hair. It's enough to take a glance at characters such as Lara Croft from "Tomb Raider" or Ciri from "The Witcher" to understand what type of look is involved.

This is slowly changing indeed, women and girls who break the stereotypes are becoming the main characters in games, an example being Ellie from "The Last of Us." However, sexualization in video games is still strong, and this is exactly the problem that the cosmetics brand Dove addresses in its "Real virtual beauty" campaign.

We can see an armour-clad, high-necked, slim superheroine fighting a monster in the Dove ad. It perfectly illustrates all the sexist archetypes of women in games. Even her shoes have tiny heels.

When the filming of the fight scene is over, our heroine goes to the fitting room, where she pulls off her too-tight armour. We can see that in reality she looks completely different. The superheroine throws the tight armour aside and returns to the set to fight monsters in her natural body.

With this ad as part of its "Real virtual beauty" campaign Dove wants to oppose the excessive sexualization of women in video games. The brand's study showed that 60% of girls and 62% of women feel that their characters in games are distorted. Due to this fact, more than 30% of females admit that their self-esteem is lowered by the lack of diversity among avatars.

Therefore, as many as 74% of women want more female characters to appear in games. It's hardly surprising. As Sony's 2021 presentation reported, about 41% of PS4 and PS5 console owners are women. They are also becoming streamers more often.

Unfortunately, people are so accustomed to sexualized women in games that even when there are no such heroines in them, they try to create certain situations. The scandal that erupted around youtuber Vito Minecraft late last year, can serve as an example.

His seemingly children dedicated channel featured such videos as: "5-year-old went inside Bella to save her", "5-year-old peeps at Bella in the shower". As Oli wrote in his text, unfortunately youtubers are sexualizing Minecraft characters increasingly.

Source: marketingprzykawie