There has been a lot of discourse surrounding the way in which females are portrayed in videogames. Most of this centres around the idea that females are often not portrayed realistically. By this I mean that female characters are often far too good looking and therefore are not an accurate representation of women. Forgive me for being brief but the arguments are; that these representations promote misogynistic attitudes among male gamers as they encourage them to value female characters based on their looks rather than by what they can do in the game. The second argument is that these inaccurate representations create unreal expectations of females that are carried over to the real world causing various amounts of insecurity among female gamers and non-gamers alike.
However the point I would like to make is that there is very little talk among academics about the inaccurate representations of male characters/avatars. Male characters are almost always portrayed as being physically strong and appealing in general. Very few male gamers would measure up to the Herculean avatars that they control. Surely this would cause the same level of insecurity in men that the super-babe female avatars cause in women. However because men are not a minority when it comes to gamers and have been the more dominant gender in society they are not able to be affected this in the same way that females are. Is this fair? Or is this sexist to male gamers?
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Actually, this is a point which is discussed in terms of game studies and analysis, and it came up in one of the tutorials. I think there is less attention paid to it *in the media* which is not quite the same thing, but it's certainly something which might be worth exploring if you're interested in the subject.
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