A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games

This is a piece of quantitative research that I found over summer that explores the use of female body imagery in video games, looking at it from an objective statistical perspective.

Written by Nicole Martins& Dmitri C. Williams& Kristen Harrison & Rabindra A. Ratan




Having been written in 2009, I believe this to be a study that can provide relevant evidence to my extended essay.

Highlighted quotes and statistics

Video games are a popular medium and now vie with movies and television for mind share among consumers. In fact, among some populations (e.g adolescents) people spend more time with video games than with television (Sherry et al. 2006)

Using cultivation theory as a framework, the images in these video games were examined to see if they reflected actual bodies found in the U.S female population. This study also investigated whether female video game characters varied by levels of realism, and whether processing power of video games and consoles emphasized or deemphasized certain body proportions of female video game characters. Finally, differences by game rating in the body proportions of female video game characters also were tested.

A variety of sociodemographic and individual differences can produce sharp variations of cultivation patterns. The most common of these is a phenomenom called mainstreaming, whereby heavy television viewers' beliefs tend to share a commonality that lighter viewers' beliefs do not. Mainstreaming effects have been found for expectations of the ideal female bust, waist and hip sizes.

Lara Croft, the popular heroine in Tomb Raider, for example, resembles a "pin-up" with conspicuously thin waist and hips and large breasts.

Consoles and games with less power are likely to feature characters that are cartoonish, or they may compensate in unforseen ways. Games with higher processing power are likely to feature more realistic characters because they have the technological capacity to do so.

Video game realism is an important variable to examine when considering the potential impact of video games on game players.

134 characters, 98 of the characters were coded as white.

For each adult female human characters, the height, head width, chest width, waist width and hip width were measured in inches.

To assess realism, codes were instrcuted to code each character for how much detail and pixelation was present using four categories: little to know detail (1) some detail (2) moderately detailed (3) and very detailed (4). Very few of the characters were coded as minimally detailed (19%) or very detailed (10%). Therefore, response options were collapsed into detailed (n=81 x= 92) and not detailed (n=54, x=92).

We also explored differences by game genre, but did not find any meaningful differences; thus they are not reported.

RESULTS
Research question 1 asked if the body sizes of female video game characters reflected the body sizes of the average American female. Single sample t-tests indicated that the video game characters were significantly different on every dimension as compared to the real world sample. Specifically, video game characters had significantly larger heads...had smaller chests...smaller waists...smaller hips...as compared to the real world sample.
Research question 2 asked whether game characters' proportions would differ by the level of realism. Single sample t-tests revealed that the highly rendered characters were significantly different from the CAESAR sample on every measurement. Once again, highly rendered video game characters had significantly larger heads. On the other hand, highly rendered video game characters had significantly smaller chests... smaller waists...smaller hips.  These results suggest that more realistic female video game characters conformed more to the thin ideal than did the less realistic characters.

The realistic video game characters' chest, waist and hip sizes are significantly smaller, resulting in a figure that conforms to the thin ideal seen in other media.

Female characters in games rated for adults had significantly smaller chests...smaller waists...smaller hips as compared to the CAESAR sample.

Overall, the results show marked differences in the way females are portrayed in video games in terms of differing levels of photorealism and game rating. Although the statistical significance thresholds do not allow strong statements, it appears that female video game characters at the highest level of photorealism and in games rated for children feature thinner female characters.

This study found that females in video games had significantly larger heads, but smaller chest sizes, waists and hips than the average American woman. This finding provides some empirical support for the notion that this medium is presenting female body shapes that conform to the thin ideal observed with other mainstream media (Byrd-Bredbenner 2003; Sypeck et al. 2006)

Highly photorealistic games may be more likely than less photorealistic games to activate body dissatisfaction and a drive for thinness among female gamers, and to support the idealisation of a markedly thin female body among male gamers. Gamers who encounter these characters would view a female who is 5'4" tall, with a 29" bust, 22" waist and 31" hips.

If gamers are not likely to process images that are too realistic, nor process images that are too cartoonish in nature, why study the body imagery in video games at all? The answer can be found in fields where the uncanny valley has already been crossed. In advertising, digital manipulation is subtle enough to fool even educated consumers.

Eventually, the body shapes found in games may have a norming influence akin to manipulated advertising images like magazine characters (Harrison and Cantor 1997; Stice and Shaw 1994) and television characters (Botta 1999; Harrison 2000b) do.

An additional point to make when we think of effects processes is that the audience for games has been largely male (Fact and research: Game player data 2007) The audience, then, has made this medium different from television or magazines and this has two important implications. First, the male audience for this medium implies hat male body-image may be impacted by the male ideal (eg muscular) often shown in popular video games. A

A second implication of a predominately male audience is that attitudes and expectations for how females should look may be most impactful among men, rather than as aspirational, or body dissatisfation-inducing figures for women - although this may certainly occur.

Williams (2006a) has suggested previously that games and gender work as a cycle: games feature more males and so attract more young males to play. Those males grow up and are more likely to become game makers than women, perpetuating the role of males in game creation, and so on. Indeed, a recent survey revealed that 89% of professionals in the video game industry were male (Game developer research, 2007).

Harrison, K. Martins, N. Ratan, R. Williams, D.C. 2009. A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games [online] Available at: http://dmitriwilliams.com/femalebodies.pdf