However, there is another issue of gender inequality to discuss in the game. The sexualization of female characters.
Again, this review is not intended to ruin Hearthstone for anyone, or to make anyone feel guilty for playing it. In fact, the goal is to provide awareness of these gender issues, so that we can all enjoy the game with a greater understanding.
Also, as discussed in Part I, it’s also important to consider the representation of men in the game. Men are not subject to the same type of gender issues as women, but the gender issues regarding male characters are often connected to the gender issues for female characters. So, for example, as discussed in Part I, women are severely underrepresented, but the flipside of that is that men are overrepresented as violent and aggressive characters. We could discuss which of these issues is worse, but really the important thing is that we have to critically analyze ALL gender stereotypes beneath the surface of games, or risk internalizing these stereotypes.
Sexualization
The reason it becomes an issue is the unequal way sexualization is applied to women versus men. This is what people misunderstand about the feminist argument against sexualization, and it’s an easy thing to miss out on when discussions center around individual characters. People misunderstand the feminist argument as saying that sexualization is inherently wrong and no character should ever be sexualized. This is false--the issue is that the higher numbers of sexualized female characters is connected to a strong, pervasive cultural association between women and sexual attractiveness.
The strong association leads to female characters that are nonsensical and hard to relate to. Warrior females end up wearing “bikini armor,” even in winter environments. Characters that are supposed to be hardened warriors have a disconcerting focus on attractive hair and clothing. The immersion is broken and for female audiences, these details can feel alienating, as many of us are not sexually attracted to women, and are instead looking for heroes we can relate to.
The problem doesn’t just end with games. When the association between women and sexual attractiveness is so strong, people can start to really believe that a woman’s value depends on how attractive she is. On the flip side, we start to see images of sexualized men as being effeminate or gay.
The issue of sexualization is really one of inequality, so games wanting to feature sexual characters should focus on diversity and equal representation. If the game wants to offer a sexualized female character, it should also offer female characters representing other qualities. And it should do the same for men.
Because sexualization is an issue of inequality, we have to compare male and female representation to really see if it’s present in a game. So that is why for this part of the review I tried to objectively assess the sexualization of male and female characters. As you will see, this was not necessarily that easy.
Scoring sexualization of characters
Bare thighs
Bare midriff
Skin-tight clothing
Cleavage/side boob
Bare chest
Muscles
Are muscles really a characteristic of sexualization? They can be, but not always. Muscles are a key part of the idealized masculine image, and so they are an important part of what our culture considers an "attractive" or "masculine" man. It makes sense, then, that they often show up in sexualized depictions of men.
But muscles can sometimes be more a sign of strength than sexual attractiveness. A man displaying his muscles in some situations is seen more as showing off fighting abilities than showing off sexual desirability. The characters in Hearthstone reflect this, since the ugly, brutish monster characters often had exaggerated muscles, while the male characters that actually seemed like they were supposed to be handsome tended to have more realistic muscles.
Nevertheless, in order to err on the side of caution, I included ALL significant muscles as an equal category with the rest of the categories. Furthermore, while I noted every example of female characters having highlighted muscles, I did not include this as a category for female characters, because muscles are not generally associated with female attractiveness. Again, I did this to err on the side of caution. So the result of this is that I had more categories for sexualization of males than I did for females.
The Naked Ogre Problem
The Naked Ogre Problem is another sign of gender roles in video game characters. Ugly, naked monsters were overwhelmingly male. This is due to a combination of the lack of sexualization of male bodies (male skin and body parts can be completely on display without anyone associating them with sexuality) and the fact that the male gender role is associated with aggression. As discussed in Part I, the association of males with aggression makes them to the go-to gender for violent, scary monsters. Furthermore, the Naked Ogre Problem is also likely a sign of the male default--without a specific reason for the Naked Ogres to be female, the artists just default to depicting males.
I wasn’t really sure what to do about the Naked Ogre Problem in terms of the sexualization scores. The characters often had bare thighs, chests, and midriffs, which made them all rank pretty high in sexualization. So I made another category for “Ugly.” This was a very non-objective category. For this category, I added only characters that were obviously supposed to be grotesque. Still, I didn’t feel 100% comfortable with this as a solution to the Naked Ogre Problem. If anyone has any ideas for a better way to exclude Naked Ogre-like characters from the sexualization scores, definitely let me know!
Results
Taking a closer look, here was the breakdown in types of sexualization:
Females
bare thighs 30 16.39%
skin-tight clothing 31 16.94%
bare midriff 55 30.05%
Males
muscles 250 36.44%
bare thighs 62 9.04%
skin-tight clothing 31 4.52%
bare midriff 98 14.29%
As you can see, close to one half of female characters had cleavage. (42.08%) Males’ highest category was muscles. (36.44%) In other words, female characters were depicted with cleavage more often than male characters were depicted with noticeable muscle.
Again, muscles and cleavage are not exactly the same thing. Muscles connote strength and power, which fit in with the theme of the game. Cleavage connotes nothing except sexualization. Arguably, muscles should not really be included as being the same as something like cleavage.
Finally, to address the “Naked Ogre” problem, I tried removing all the cards I tagged as “ugly.” The results show a slightly larger sexualization difference between male and female cards, but not as much as I expected. Again, the “ugly” tag was pretty subjective, so I’m not sure that this really solved the problem. But it’s an interesting problem to think about nonetheless.
Race
However, there is a major lack of racial diversity in these games. I counted 166 white characters, only one Asian character (human, obviously, not Pandaren. The fact that Asian cultures are represented through pandas is a whole other issue), and two black characters. In World of Warcraft, humanoid races could have any skin color, so it’s disappointing to see so little racial diversity in Hearthstone.
White 166 11.19%
Asian 1 0.07%
Black 2 0.13%
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