Killing Time at the DMV; Can Certain Praise Turn into Harm?

The other day I had to go spend the afternoon at the Secretary of State (or as you may know it, the Department of Motor Vehicles). I know it’s an old and overused joke to talk about how much time you can spend in this god forsaken place, but the reason the joke is successful is because of the truth behind it. Luckily I wasn’t doing anything crazy, just renewing my license, but I had to wait in excess of an hour just to be seen by the person who gives you a number so that you can wait again for a representative to get to your claim. Needless to say I had some time to kill! I’ve recently discovered that I enjoy Instagram quite a bit; there’s very little personal information on there, people who enjoy your photos can follow you without you feeling obligated to follow them… it has a good flow.

I found myself killing time by looking through the pictures of people that follow me, but I in turn do not follow. These are usually company sites or really just anyone I don’t know. I post a lot of pictures of the video games I play or the nerdy things I buy so I am followed by a few other “nerdy” Instagram accounts. One in particular got my brain turning while I was waiting in line. The Instagram account is for a company that makes 8bit clothing items, such as sunglasses or t-shirts and posts a lot of pictures of classic game trivia questions, video game memes, and other fun stuff but every now and then they post things like this:

blackmilk

 

And to be honest, I don’t know how they make me feel. I have a hard time not feeling a little bit offended because of the way the girl is portrayed in the image. The verbiage is meant to praise girls who game and really (I think) to celebrate that there are girls who do game out there. BUT, the pictures paired with the “encouraging words” make me feel uncomfortable. I think the biggest reason why is because the images exploit stereotypical ideas of what a “hot” woman should be, or even what a good girlfriend should be. Plus the images remind me of Kotaku’s Fake Gamer of the Week feature.

For example this:

girlgamer

I’m all for the empowerment of women and celebrating the female gamers, but this seems harmful. I mean yes, it is extremely awesome that there are women out there who game and who aren’t afraid to flaunt it, but these feel more like objectification than anything else.  Am I getting too sensitive? I’m curious to find out what our readers think!

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