Stereotype in Media

Looking back at all those stereotypes that are depicted in animation and gaming,  It really does feel very offensive. When I was a child, I was not fully aware of this matter as I was not really exposed to the culture yet, like African American is depicted as either a tribal man or a people with southern accent, or Chinese people are depicted with a protruding teeth, slanted eyes and a triangular hat. At first, I did not realize it at all because I thought they are just mimicking a person. However, as I grew older, I do realize that all these stereotypes are really weird and even disturbing  and it is a good thing that actually our society realize that and now, we can see the changes being made for a better like how the African American are depicted more realistic like in the series the boondocks, or how Asian are depicted better without all the stereotypical that I mentioned above with the more realistic in marvel all new Hulk, with the main character originated from an Korean American family.

It’s really nice to see how media evolves as people getting more aware over this stuff. How about the gaming? In the surface we didn’t really see a racial difference or stereotypical, but one thing really shown is how over exaggerated the proportion of the game character itself. One of the examples is the evolution character Lara croft in Tomb Raider. If we saw the first rendition of the character, we can see how exaggerated the body proportion is and that raise concern within female gamers community as it grew overtime. That cause the changes in the proportion of Lara Croft over time and for the upcoming Tomb Raider game, we can see how the character design evolved to a more tamed version but still shows how athletic Lara Croft.

It all good until I stumble upon this pictured that are taken from bulimia.com. it is a series of pictures of a game character that are photoshopped that makes each character to have a plus size. To me this action is getting really ridiculous and I don’t think this is a healthy action at all. Basically what they are trying to do is trying ensuring that being a plus size is okay and the game creator should be ashamed by creating a very unattainable figure size to make woman feel bad. First I don’t think that this size is unattainable at all. If we saw all these figures we can see that they are all supposedly an athletic type I feel that by if we are to change the size of the figure, it would make it even more unrealistic for the sake of the game. They are athletic type because the game that are portrayed in this picture are supposedly for an action and adventure genre, if we were to make the woman figure in this game a plus size, would it be ridiculous because it will not fit into the genre at all. 

It is also usually the characters in the game are purposely design to be exaggerated for the sake of the appeal. The exaggerated figure are usually more appealing than a realistic figure. That is why we can see for the male character, sometimes it gets really ridiculously bigger and more masculine because the game creator wants to make it stylize and more appealing. if we look the picture below, we can definetely see how muscular these characters are. i believe that it is intentional to make it really muscular because the game creator wants to make the character more appealing and powerful, and what better ways than to make it more muscular.

same goes for woman,  the proportion of a small waist and big hips are sometimes used for the sake of appeal and changing it just because it is rude is actually a rude things to do. if that was the case, why there is no complaint from the man side about the unattainable size of the male character that are depicted in the game? If we sees the statistic of the average of the male in the US, it is not that different than woman but how come there is no protest against the size of the male character in the game? Is it because it is a normal things for man to workout? if that was the case, would it go the same with woman? Woman can workout as well to attain the size that are similar than one we always find in the game character. That is why in Comic con, we can see some of the people dressed up as the game character really well because they have attain the physiques that is similar than the game character they are trying to portray by working out or do a strict diet. There is no such things as unattainable body size, it is a matter of our will to make it like that and it is with workout. It is not a healthy attitude to blame everything on the society where the problem actually lies within one self.

I admit that I am overweight myself and seeing all those characters from the game really makes me worry about my figure, but that didn’t make me want to blame it on the game creator. As a matter of fact, it inspire me to workout to achieve the figure that I see on the game. trying to be healthy actually help me improve my work efficiency which makes me really happy. it really encourage me to workout even more.

In conclusion, though these awareness  throughout the media has been changed for a better over the time, there are some things that in my opinion that are getting out of hand. The racial awareness made a good progress by depicting character based on their traits and not by history instead of their history. However, The fat shamming that are depicted in this picture to force the game maker to make all female character to look like a plus size is not a  good way to promote healthy lifestyle.  Although the message might be good to be happy with what you have right now, to force one trait for everything else is not a good message.