It is a bright, sunny March day. My sister and I are wearing windbreakers out in the newly thawed lawn of my grandparents. We are not sitting with dolls, having a picnic, or playing house. We are sitting under the Goomba Tree digging a cavern to the hollow inside where the goombas come from at night. In this way, we planned to travel to Mario World.
If you read a certain slice of research on girl play habits, then girls who play in this kind of fantasy world are either rare or do not exist (Kafai, 2009). However, today I will take you on a journey of gender identity and the development of a girl who likes games, watches games, plays games, studies games, and most recently, makes games.
Until about the age of five, give or take two years as they don't matter except for birthdays and school at that age, I was like "any" other girl. I had multitude of Barbie dolls, played dress-up, drew ponies, colored, held weddings, nurtured baby dolls, and played house. Looking at other girls and the gifts loving family members bestowed upon me, this was the way a girl should be.
What changed my vision of girlhood? What happened between five and seven or eight that inspired me to more fantastic, boyish play (Subrahmanyam et al, 2009; Kafia, 2009)?
One day, my girl cousin bought a Nintendo. With it, was of course, a copy of Super Mario Brothers. Transfixed, I watched her play with my younger sister. They would always fight over who got to be Mario. I sat and stayed out of it, watching how everything worked, unless my uncle came in and demanded they give me a turn. Having already developed an affinity for Luigi (because it was unfair that he never got to go first), I would play him every time. Although I never got past World 1-2, I would always come away thinking, "There's a world in there, and its very interesting."
I decided I would start playing Mario in my backyard, with my sister and anyone else I could con into playing. After all, I wasn't very good at the video game, a problem, motor skills, that I shared with other girls learning to play games(Kafia, 2009). I never wanted to be the Princess, and who knows if I was subliminally aware of her status as one of many female victims in games (Kafia, 2009). I wouldn't play Mario, but though I liked Luigi I wouldn't play him. Much in the same way as I around the same time waffled over playing Peter Pan in Neverland games that also started after Super Mario Bros., I was leery of playing a boy.
Perhaps, it was the right time in my development to begin swinging what I thought were possibilities for a female identity, as there are developmental concerns in many areas such as learning a second language (Subrahmanyam,et al, 2009). At any rate, I did something natural. I made my own Super Character to rescue that goofy Princess from that stinky Koopa myself. Admitedly, this aligns to some of the more telling research about girls. If given many options in a game, a girl often spends more time developing her avatar (Kafia, 2009). This was before avatars, so I just used my imagination.
Her name was Super Sister, after all I was in elementary school. Super Sister was a sister (because I had one and she wanted to play too), could fly, and was powerful. This empowered girl was ludicrously capable of kicking King Koopa, aka Bowser, up to the sun. She would help Mario and Luigi outsmart this weird tyrannical reptile. However, she was still a girl and wore purple. I have loved purple every since. She wore a jumper skirt and hats like the Mario Brothers, just to give a picture of what I thought would be an amazing addition to the game I had trouble playing.
As a child, I was pushing back against the limited female identities offered to me (Kafia, 2009). I didn't want to be saved. I no longer always wanted to be married or raising babies for fun. I wanted to save worlds, save men, and I can't count the number of times I rescued Mario or Luigi from Bowser in my made up games. However, I also wanted to be a girl. I still played dress up and wore gowns, but each of my gowns were part of a character that had their own part to play in saving the world. I even came up with a princess that didn't need saving all of the time, named Gabrielle Loadstool. She was a Japanese girl born in Mexico, which is a cultural mix I still could never explain. I would play her and be a princess that didn't always need rescued, but sometimes did because Super Sister was awesome.
Following this, I made up my own world, with peoples, customs, world rules, and more. It was called Meeperworld and inhabited by cat people. I still have the stuffed animal that inspired that, along with the wands in Super Mario 3. Meeperworld had 20 wands. 19 of them came together to be Super Sister's wand, yes I kept her, who was also the Queen of Meeperworld by invitation. I, by this time, was done with Princesses. I ruled Meeperworld king-less. Sometimes, Luigi could “leave” Mario World and hang out with me though. I have whole stories about it written down.
At the end, my little story is anecdotal, but also goes along the lines that gender is “far more complex than representational bias” (Kafia, 2009). Gender is also “part of a complex evolving identity” (Kafia, 2009). Perhaps the biggest gender limits are caused by societal constraints.
Post Mortem
I have long since passed from girlhood to womanhood. Once, a sociology teacher told me, I was frustrated by my own inability to conform to gender stereotypes typical of other college girls because I was the first born daughter in a family with no sons. I wish I had got the name of the paper, as there might be plausible evidence there. However, I argue, my concept of gender identity and gender roles was shaken by a simple game, and one we all remember. The game was the spark that incited the play that changed the girl into the super hero that saved the world then made one.
As a woman, I am still invested in saving and making worlds. I have been inspired most by my own characters and the growing number of strong, female protagonists with whom I feel a deep rooted connection. There is Claire Redfield, brunette/red headed younger sister of one of the original Resident Evil characters, who works her way independently throughout most of Resident Evil: Code Veronica trying to find her brother, save her self, and save other survivors. There is Alexandra, from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, forced to play the spirits of her past to gain the knowledge and courage to save the present world from impending doom from an ancient evil. Then there is Yuna, Final Fantasy X's startlingly feminine Summoner, who is quietly beautiful with her mousy brown hair. She reserves a deep power and respect for the souls of people, and I doubt anyone, particularly any woman, who saw the first Summoning cut scene in that game was not moved and enchanted by her.
These characters help frame me in what has long been considered a very male dominated world. After much internal fighting with the chosen paths of other females my age, I have embraced the unusual transgression into the territory of a “Woman who Makes Games” that began when I sat watching a little 8-bit Luigi scrolling across the screen to save a princess.
References
Kafai, Y. (2009). Serious games for girls?: considering gender in learning with digital games. In U. Ritterfield, M. Cody & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects (pp221- 235). New York, U.S.A.: Routledge.
Subrahmanyam, K., & Greenfield, P. (2009). Designing serious games for children and adolescents: what developmental psychology can teach us. In U. Ritterfield, M. Cody & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects (pp165-178). New York, U.S.A.: Routledge.
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