Hermiod said:
Meredith said:
bah, it's just a game, playing GTA doesn't make me wanna kill people, Playing Fat Princess doesn't want to make me stuff my SO full of cake.
Unfortunately the kind of people who would use the word "heteronormative" (incorrectly) are also the kind of people who think you're too dumb to tell the difference.
And people like that seem to ignore the fact that by censoring such stuff is akin to removing the freedom of expression which if they didn't have they would not be able to stick their noses up at everyone in the first place and complain about the fat princess video game.
I figured the use of "heteronormative" was probably a shorthand reference to the ubiquity of stories which follow the basic format of active male pursuer and reactive female prize? Melissa McEwan doesn't elaborate on the point, one way or the other, so it's difficult to judge how suitable the word is to her point. It could have done with further elaboration, but then, from what I can see, Shakesville wasn't really claiming to offer a thorough criticism of the game.
For a more clinical criticism of the game,
Holly's post at Feministe is worth a look. I won't quote, cause I think it's worth reading her whole post; it's not terribly long.
As to this being about censorship and removing freedom of expression which allows feminists to "stick their noses up at everyone", speaking purely from my own personal anecdotal experience, the cultural feminists I know aren't demanding that people not be allowed express themselves. Almost always, the call is for dialogue - a plea for people to stop and think about the messages that are constantly saturating the media we consume.
Because spend any time at all trying to fight against unfair representation - be it sexism, racism, sizism, classism, homophobia, or whatever - and you'll find it's the little stuff, the "harmless" stereotypes and the injokes, which make the big stuff so difficult to tackle.
Arrghman said:
Games should not have to be afraid of having characters in them that are not the ideal vision of beauty constructed by our scoiety and that's what the outcry is about... not that she's a princess but that she's an overweight princess. To make your accusation even more unfounded, in the game you can customize your player character to be either male or female.
<later>
I seriously am asking here, because I really don't understand. The game does not encourage making fun of overweight people and it does not use any well known stereotypes of overweight people that I can see. The point of the game is actually to protect the Princess from the other team and to recover her when stolen. How is that derogatory? How is the title, which is an accurate description of the focus of the game, derogatory?
In fairness, I don't think the criticism is just that she's fat. If she were fat, and she was the heroine of the game, or if the fact that she was fat was incidental to her role, I doubt there'd be much criticism. In fact, it'd be praise-worthy.
The skeezy thing about this game is that the princess's weight is pretty much the punchline of the whole thing. She also has no agency in what happens to her - she eats uncontrollably whatever is put in front of her. Food's used against her as a weapon. Her fatness is her defining characteristic, and it makes her a flailing burden who can't move under her own steam.
I'm not an expert on sizism, but simply being conscious while I watch TV and films makes me aware that there's an awful lot of fat hate (against both genders) being tossed around out there. And the easiest way of slipping it through is to say hey, why so serious? It's just a joke. Which is how you end up with the perpetual trope of the fat best friend who has to be the funny one, because nobody'll fancy a fattie.
And personally, I think there's a correlation between that and the awful level of hate for their own bodies with which so many people live. Which makes me think it's worth it to stand up once in awhile and say that actually, this shit's not funny.
But then, I think academia is not only a real job, but a worthy vocation, so what do I know?
ETA: Just found this over on Shakesville, and I think it says some of what I was trying to say only, like, betterer:
There are a few things I find objectionable about Fat Princess, but I'll stick with the obvious: The concept is hostile to fat women. The eponymous Fat Princess is an object of ridicule, and the source of her fatness—being fed endless amounts of food by her captors, which she cannot refuse because she has no agency—reinforces the myth that the singular cause of fatness is overeating. Whole books have been written debunking this myth. Of course there are people for whom compulsive overeating is the source of their fatness, which is as serious a psychological issue as compulsive undereating, despite our cultural failure to regard it thus. Anyone who understands why Anorexic Princess would not be considered an appropriate game should understand my objection to this one.
