Feminists Reaction to Tomb Raider

Yes the title is correct and yes I am a dude.  But I did find the feminists reaction to the Tomb Raider game very interesting.  The quote I liked best was “Some feminists view Lara the female Frankenstein monster as a disturbing trend in computer gaming culture.”  So feminists are comparing Lara Croft to Frankenstein??  As a male I find that quite strange because I would consider Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) the exact opposite of Frankenstein.  But I forget to take into account how this character looks to females and feminist groups.  “She embodies an impure history quite distant from the networked, non-individualistic and non-competitive, community oriented values being promoted by some cyberfeminists on the Internet.”  Wow that seems like a harsh statement at women but is it true?  I think when it comes to video games, yes it is true.  But I’m hoping thats not how feminists feel about the real world.  The article keeps mentioning how this game can be the first step for women to play video games.  For two reasons; one being that the main character is a woman, which is rare enough; two being that with the ability to patch games (edit some of its content), women can edit games to have new gender configurations.  The main character seems to always be a man which may cause women to automatically associate video games with men.  As we can see with the patch of Nude Raider, people know how to edit the content of the game.  I feel like women should come up with a patch that reduces the size of Lara Crafts “curves” to make a statement that females shouldn’t be a “fetish object of the male gaze.”

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