Growing up, I was a Black girl, but I often felt like I didn’t quite fit into society’s expectations associated with that label. My interests in cartoons, books, and video games set me apart from what others expected. However, these forms of media provided me with both comfort and a means to explore and understand my identity, mainly since my parents rarely talked about my cultural background beyond the skin color I inherited. It wasn’t until middle school that I learned about my mother’s Trinidadian heritage, and I discovered my father’s Panamanian heritage only at the end of high school.
Media helped me understand many things my parents wouldn’t discuss. However, I couldn’t blame them; they were two immigrants who came to the United States at a young age and had to figure everything out on their own. While the media played a significant role in my upbringing, it was largely dominated by an overwhelming presence of whiteness. The TV shows and movies I watched primarily featured white characters. The books available in my school library typically focused on white protagonists or animals. The video games for sale often lacked representation of anyone who looked like me.
Representation of Black girls like me was mostly absent in the media.
Media representation extends far beyond race and gender. It also includes ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, and mental health conditions. The media influences societal self-perception and perceptions of others, prompting discussions about representation across various platforms. There is an increasing demand for authentic and inclusive representation, especially in the video game industry, where discussions have arisen about portraying and integrating diverse characters and narratives into gaming experiences.
For instance, one key example of these discussions in video games is the representation of Black female protagonists. Discussing the representation of Black female protagonists in video games is vital in today’s gaming communities because Black female gamers are an overlooked demographic that deserves recognition and representation in the industry. Their voices and experiences must be acknowledged and celebrated, as they contribute to the gaming landscape that doesn’t adequately represent them.
Representation fosters a sense of belonging by allowing Black female gamers to see themselves authentically reflected in the games they play, which validates their identities and affirms their presence within the gaming world.
This sense of belonging helps counter the longstanding stigma that video games are exclusively for White cisgender males. This stereotype often marginalizes and excludes Black women from feeling accepted in gaming environments. By highlighting Black female protagonists, the gaming industry can better recognize the contributions and experiences of Black female gamers while challenging damaging stereotypes.
To comprehend the importance of Black female protagonists in video games, let’s delve into Black women’s demographics in the American gaming spaces. While there are limited specific statistics available on Black female gamers, the Entertainment Software Association (2024) reports that there are 190.6 million video game players in the United States, with 46% identifying as female. Furthermore, 12% of American gamers are Black or African American. These statistics show approximately 10.5 million Black female gamers, representing about 5.5% of the total gaming population in the United States. In comparison, the general Black female population in the United States is about 23,530,579, making up roughly 6.92% of the total US population (United States Census Bureau, 2024).
Black women are not well represented in gaming compared to their numbers in the general population. This lack of representation raises questions about inclusion in the gaming industry.
Black female gamers face barriers, such as not having relatable characters, targeted marketing that overlooks them, and stories that do not reflect their experiences. This situation indicates that gaming spaces may not be welcoming or inclusive for Black women, which could discourage them from taking part in a medium that should be for everyone.
The experiences of Black female gamers in gaming spaces are greatly shaped by the complexities of their intersecting identities as both Black individuals and women. This intersection of race and gender creates a distinct lived reality, requiring them to navigate environments where they are frequently underrepresented and marginalized. As Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), an American civil rights advocate and a scholar of critical race theory, explained, intersectionality highlights how overlapping identities can lead to either discrimination or privilege, illustrating the multifaceted experiences of Black female gamers.
In gaming spaces, this intersectionality is evident through hostile interactions, such as racial and gender harassment, and the psychological impact of stereotype threat (Richard & Gray, 2018). TreaAndrea M. Russworm, PhD, professor of interactive media and games division at the University of Southern California, noted that “[a] history of white supremacy runs deep in the gaming industry, both past and present…[and] doesn’t value or even acknowledge Black women players” (Starks, 2023). The continued marginalization of Black female gamers results in their existence and contributions being overlooked.
Black female gamers frequently face negative experiences due to barriers tied to both their race and gender, a phenomenon often described as racialized misogyny. These challenges can create a profound sense of isolation, reminiscent of the exclusion many marginalized gamers feel in the gaming community (Richard & Gray, 2018). Isolation can negatively impact an individual’s mental health by fostering feelings of loneliness, which in turn increases the risk of anxiety and depression (Mann et al., 2022). Loneliness can lead to mental and physical health problems, like increased stress, higher inflammation, and negative thoughts. Over time, these issues can make loneliness feel even worse.
Many Black female gamers reported feeling isolated in gaming spaces due to not only a lack of representation and inclusivity but also the prevalence of racism and online harassment, particularly from men (Starks, 2023). Many female gamers, especially Black female gamers, have faced harassment from males who make racist, vulgar, or sexist comments on platforms like Twitch and YouTube. A 2023 report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on hate and harassment in gaming reveals that the harassment rate for women is 8%, while for Black gamers, it stands at 50%. This report does not include specific research on the experiences of Black female gamers. However, the available data suggests that the unreported harassment rate they face could be even higher, potentially ranging from 55% to 70%.
Princess Zelda (The Legend of Zelda)
When analyzing mainstream AAA games and established franchises, it becomes clear that Black female characters are present in the gaming world, though they are rarely the main protagonists. A look at video game history reveals that female video game characters were often depicted in ways that reinforced traditional gender roles. For example, characters like Pauline in Donkey Kong and Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda were depicted as damsels in distress, needing rescue from male protagonists (Bashir, 2022). In the 1990s, the introduction of strong female video game protagonists, such as Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, marked a significant shift. However, while many people credit Lara Croft as the first female protagonist in video games, the true pioneer was Billie Sue, a farmer girl from the 1982 game Wabbit for the Atari 2600, which a Vietnamese woman created.
Wabbit’s Billie Sue character
Regarding Black characters, most of their earliest portrayals were as athletes in sports title video games, reinforcing the “Black Athlete Trope.” The first playable Black video game character was widely recognized as the athlete in Atari’s Basketball, which was released in 1979 and depicted in color (Edwards, 2009). However, there is ongoing debate about whether the character in Sega’s Heavyweight Champ, released in 1976, could also be considered the first Black playable video game character, due to the game’s ambiguous black-and-white graphics (Norwood, 2021). Historically, Black characters in video games were often reduced to merely being selectable options in fighting games or serving as secondary characters that supported their white counterparts, who were typically the main protagonists. It wasn’t until 1987 that the first Black male video game protagonist appeared in the lesser-known PC game Mandroid (NowThis Nerd, 2018).
Black female protagonist D’Arci Stern in Urban Chaos
The gaming world didn’t see its first Black female protagonist until 1999 with D’Arci Stern in Urban Chaos (DirecTV, 2022). Since then, a report from DiamondLobby shows that only 8.3% of the main characters in video games are women from non-white ethnic backgrounds (Lin, 2023). This statistic highlights the ongoing challenges of achieving diversity and inclusion in gaming. Black female protagonists are rare, even many years after D’Arci’s introduction. Several recent examples of Black female protagonists in gaming include Nilin Cartier-Wells from Remember Me, Clementine from Telltale’s The Walking Dead, and Alfre “Frey” Holland from Forspoken. However, despite these characters, the gaming industry still struggles to create authentic and well-developed Black female protagonists.
Frey Holland, protagonist of Forspoken
From the perspective of a Black woman in gaming, it is essential to address issues such as colorism, harmful stereotypes, and the portrayal of trauma concerning Black female protagonists to improve their representation, especially since there are about 10 million Black female gamers whose experiences are largely overlooked in current gaming representation (Entertainment Software Association, 2024). Improving representation is not about just ticking a diversity checkbox. It calls for an industry to reflect its diverse audience authentically. Elevating these voices not only combats harmful stereotypes but also enriches the gaming landscape with multifaceted characters who can inspire a broader range of players.
There needs to be greater visibility for dark-skinned Black women, rather than focusing solely on lighter-skinned or racially ambiguous Black women in lead roles. Black women should not be reduced to one-dimensional tropes such as the “Strong Black Woman” or “Sassy Black Woman.” Their narratives should not concentrate exclusively on trauma, pain, or oppression. Instead, Black female characters deserve to celebrate the joy, complexity, and positive experiences that come with their identities.
In conclusion, media representation impacts societal perceptions and individual self-identity. Representation matters, especially for the little black girl I once was who rarely saw herself reflected in the media she consumed growing up. She would often feel out of place, especially with the presence of whiteness in her interest in cartoons, books, and video games. She never really got to see herself as the hero of the story. That little black girl even felt alone and invisible.
Now as a Black woman and still a gamer, I recognize how vital authentic and multifaceted gaming representation is for Black female gamers. Representation is a powerful affirmation of their identities.
When Black female gamers see characters who they can resonate with—characters that go beyond harmful stereotypes, colorism, or narratives solely centered on trauma—it combats their feelings of isolation by reinforcing that their presence and perspective matter in the gaming community. It cultivates a sense of belonging in an industry where they have been historically underrepresented or misrepresented. Addressing the representation of Black female protagonists in gaming is not just a matter of diversity. It is about creating inclusive narratives that acknowledge Black female gamers. By doing so, the gaming industry can provide the representation that many Black female gamers, like my younger self, desperately need to see.
Ashlee Lawson-Kilpatrick
References:
Anti-Defamation League. (2023). Hate is No Game: Hate and Harassment in Online Games 2023.
Bashir, D. (2022, May 18). World’s First Female Video Game Protagonist Was Created by a Vietnamese Programmer. Retrieved from IGN Southeast Asia: https://sea.ign.com/wabbit/185503/news/worlds-first-female-video-game-protagonist-was-created-by-a-vietnamese-programmer
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167. Retrieved from https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf
DirecTV. (2022, February 28). The Evolution of Black Female Video Game Characters. Retrieved from DirecTV: https://www.directv.com/insider/black-history-month-the-evolution-of-black-women-in-video-games/#:~:text=It’s%20a%20somewhat%20distressing%20fact,deserved%20time%20in%20the%20spotlight.
Edwards, B. (2009, January 19). The First Black Video Game Character. Retrieved from Vintage Computing and Gaming: https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/536/the-first-black-video-game-character
Entertainment Software Association. (2024). 2024 Essential Facts About the U.S. Video Game Industry. Retrieved from Entertainment Software Association: https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Essential-Facts-2024-FINAL.pdf
Google. (2023, February). Google Global Insights Diversity Equity & Inclusion Report Feb 2023. Retrieved from https://games.withgoogle.com/: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/gamer_research_on_dei.pdf
Lin, B. (2023, February 22). Diversity in Gaming Report: An Analysis of Diversity in Video Game Characters. Retrieved from DiamondLobby: https://diamondlobby.com/geeky-stuff/diversity-in-gaming/#:~:text=Gender%20Diversity%20in%20Video%20Games,females%20of%20non%2Dwhite%20ethnicities.
Mann, F., Wang, J., Pearce, E., Ma, R., Schlief, M., Lloyd-Evans, B., . . . Johnson, S. (2022, May 18). Loneliness and the onset of new mental health problems in the general population. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 57(11), pp. 2161-2178. doi:doi: 10.1007/s00127-022-02261-7
Nadal, K. (2021, December 27). Why Representation Matters and Why It’s Still Not Enough. Retrieved from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychology-the-people/202112/why-representation-matters-and-why-it-s-still-not-enough
Norwood, R. (2021, February 26). Coding Blackness: A History of Black Video Game Characters. Retrieved from WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/black-character-history-video-games/
NowThis Nerd. (2018, February 8). The History of Black Video Game Characters | NowThis Nerd. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-xEABBIk_8&t=185s
Richard, G. T., & Gray, K. L. (2018, January). Gendered Play, Racialized Reality: Black Cyberfeminism, Inclusive Communities of Practice and the Intersections of Learning, Socialization and Resilience in Online Gaming. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 39(1), pp. 112-148. doi:10.5250/fronjwomestud.39.1.0112
Starks, S. L. (2023, August 22). Black Girl Gamers Band Together Against 2023’s Final Boss: Loneliness. Retrieved from allure: https://www.allure.com/story/black-girl-gaming-groups-loneliness?utm_source=chatgpt.com
United States Census Bureau. (2024). QuickFacts: United States. Retrieved from United States Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI225223#RHI225223
You’ve undoubtedly seen a storyline similar to this one on TV: A woman becomes obsessed with so-and-so. Have you ever paused to wonder how this trope plays into the inaccurate depiction of those with mental illnesses?
Although many celebrities have come forward about their battles with mental illness, depictions of characters with these disorders in movies and TV have little to do with reality. Instead, those with such disorders, particularly women, are still portrayed as emotionless and evil. This stereotype does a grave disservice to everyone in entertainment as well as to mental health awareness.
Mental Illness and Women
Researchers often claim that women experience mental illness at higher rates than men. However, this figure is convoluted by the fact that they also receive treatment for these disorders more often than men. For example, while more women attempt suicide, more men die from it.
Suffice it to say that all genders experience mental illness. However, you can’t ignore the way society interprets these conditions differently based on gender. For example, picture somebody with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If you’re like many, you may envision a male soldier coming home from war. This stereotype is valid in some cases, but not all by any means. Studies actually show that physical and sexual trauma followed by PTSD occurs more often in women than in men.
This statistic should shock no one in a world where 90% of all adult rape victims are women. Repeated sexual and physical trauma often results in mental illness, not murderous rampages. Consider how few sexual assault survivors receive justice in our courts. The records of rapists getting away with their actions should spur an epidemic of revenge slaughter if women were inclined to turn their trauma outward. The majority of the time, however, they suffer in silence.
Depictions of Mentally Ill Women in Film
If you flip to channels like Lifetime, you’ll see countless representations of women with mental illness losing their collective minds, stalking and killing with impunity. We’ve all heard of the “crazy ex-girlfriend” trope. In fact, the Lifetime channel dedicates Wednesdays to Women on the Edge. On the edge of what?
Most of the time, the violent women depicted in these types of films don’t have a definitive diagnosis. Consider the classic Fatal Attraction. We know that Glenn Close’s character boils a bunny, but the movie never tells us what disorder compelled her to commit such a heinous act. It’s as if mental illness all fits into one neat category—it doesn’t matter if you have PTSD or a schizotypal disorder or anxiety. If you’re a woman and you have a mental illness, you’re simply nuts.
[Image Description: Screen grab from Fatal Attraction. Glenn Close’s character is lunging at a man holding a large kitchen knife. She has a look of pain on her face. She’s wearing a white plain dress with long sleeves.] Source: ABC
Contrast this treatment to the way films depict men with mental illness. Has anyone watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest without cheering for Nicholson’s character? Directors often portray men with mental illness as loveable-yet-misunderstood rogues. Such movies focus on their redeeming qualities, a man-versus-society theme. Conversely, when a woman character has a mental illness, she’s the problem—not the culture she’s grown up in.
Changing the Dialogue Around Mental Illness and Women
To truly embrace the reality of mental illness, filmmakers need to quit using it as a convenient plot device. Mental illness doesn’t explain why women, or anyone for that matter, commit heinous acts. Such actions stem from a multitude of factors. Making the simplistic correlation between violence and mental illness leads to a continued problematic stigma about mentally ill individuals. Mental illness can be a contributor to violence in a person, but it’s not the sole factor. A convenient explanation for an unpleasant phenomenon doesn’t make it accurate.
Instead, movies should show the real way mental illness affects women. They should present how they tend to isolate themselves from those they love and withdraw into despair. Films should show—and address—the overwhelming loathing of self, not hatred of others, that often exists as a hallmark way in which disorders manifest among women
Representation matters, and the images that people see in the media form part of our collective consciousness. By depicting the reality of mental illness for women in film, we can hopefully open up a better dialogue about mental health. Ideally, this new dialogue may even inspire people to seek help if they need it, instead of feeling like they have to hide their problems from the world, lest they be labeled and stereotyped.
With GeekGirlCon only five weeks away* we’ve been giving you a sneak peek at some of our amazing content for this year. So far, we’ve shown you a sample of our amazing workshops and panels for literary geeks.
This week, we’re going to be highlighting a couple of panels that cover various aspects of geek culture. Now, we all know that geek culture is a HUGE area covering specific domains of geekdom (such as comics, gaming, TV, and so on), so we have loads of panels covering geek stuff generally, but this list of panel highlights is for all you culture vultures out there. Get excited!
It’s E3 week! The Electronic Entertainment Expo–or E3 for short–is one of the biggest events on the gaming calendar, with developers and publishers showing their latest and greatest upcoming releases. As a huge gaming nerd, I’ve been following it pretty closely, so I’m going to share my thoughts with you.
Obviously there’s a lot of gaming content, and I’m not going have time to go into all of the games that were announced. That said, there have been a couple of common threads:
As games move more to a “games as a service” (rather than single release games), a lot of game titles are trying to reflect that they’ll be around for all posterity, leading to such title names as Halo Unlimited, Doom Eternal, Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, and Super Meat Boy Forever. Because if anything survives the impending apocalypse, it’ll be video games.
So many games are coming to Nintendo Switch! Super Smash Bros., Fortnite Battle Royale, Super Mario Party, Overcooked 2, and Fallout Shelter were announced on that platform, for example, and some of those are playable right now. If there’s one thing to take away from E3 so far, it’s to go buy a Switch. I’m surprised at how many non-Nintendo games got announced as being ported over, but the future of gaming is there for when you want to play on the go.
While a lot of the big titles involved shooting things (aliens, zombies, other combatants) in the face, I thought that the offerings from smaller, indie studios offered a bigger range of types of gameplay, such as Ori and the Will of the Wisps, We Happy Few, and Unravel Two. I have to say that I am super excited about Unravel Two; it’s so wholesome that it basically brought me to tears when I watched it at the EA conference.
More generally, there has been recent moves to improve diversity and representation in games and the games industry, and I was also looking out for ways that that was demonstrated at E3. While I felt like there was increased representation in the games that were shown, the overwhelming majority of presenters at the conferences were still white men.
So, I rewatched all the press conferences and tracked some data. Here’s a breakdown of the major press conferences, by demographic:
Note: for the purposes of gathering this data, I included Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Elijah Wood in the Ubisoft presentation, and did not include the two translators for the Nintendo treehouse presentation (both were men).
Of the 77 presenters, there were a total of zero women of color. Everyone also presented as able-bodied.
What this tells me is that–where the presenters are ostensibly representative of a particular game’s leadership–the leaders of the largest game publishers, gaming consoles, and game titles are still overwhelming white and male. Of course, for each title there are only a very limited number of presenters that have to represent the studio, but those are commonly the studio or project leaders. I also don’t believe that any presenter or company was doing this intentionally or maliciously. But (to quote a recent speaker at a disability and gaming bootcamp), if you do not intentionally, deliberately, proactively include, you will unintentionally exclude. I think that’s what happened here. Despite its recent moves for diversity and inclusion, the people who determine the future and direction in which the industry moves are still homogenous.
Having said that, the games themselves seemed to show a openness to including players from underrepresented groups, with much clearer steps towards diversity and inclusion. I’m still trying to stick to my resolution to play games that do not have a grizzled white male protagonist (which makes me relieved that I can pick the gender of my character for the upcoming Assassin’s Creed game), and the offerings announced gave me some pretty decent options for the rest of 2018 and beyond.
For female representation, I felt that there were several games that stepped up to the (very low) bar of having a female protagonist. For example, Gears of War 5’s main character is female, and the Tomb Raider franchise continues having a female playable character. Battlefield V recently stirred up a small controversy for merely putting a woman on the cover of a game about World War II. (Spoiler alert: therewerenumerouswomenwhoparticipatedinthewar.) Wolfenstein Youngblood offered us not one, but two, female protagonists.
I was excited enough when it was announced that in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey that you could finally pick the gender of your assassin and romance anyone in the game, but then The Last of Us 2 one-upped that for even greater LGBT representation:
Ubisoft: you can be a lesbian if you want, top that 😉
Sony: you ARE a lesbian, no questions asked, look at the girls kiss
That said, all of the female characters mentioned here (except for Kassandra in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey) are white women. Apart from games with character creation (such as Fallout 76, Beyond Good and Evil 2, and Anthem), representation for women of color was maddeningly scarce. I mean, there were more attempts at putting a female skin on previously male characters, such as Super Smash Bros offering a female version of pikachu and Cuphead having a playable female drinking vessel(?), than there were actual playable characters that were actually women of color.
So, I can appreciate that the games industry is trying to be more inclusive and there are going to be baby steps–a LOT of them. But even though this handful of games I’ve mentioned here are trying to broaden representation, the real test of what counts as progress for me will be how these games evolve their communities to make them more accommodating and inclusive. Making people of color and women feel represented will likely get new players into fanbases, but the gaming communities and how they are included will be what makes them stay. We’ll have to see how that plays out, but I want to hopeful that we’re moving in the right direction. I want us to live in a world where people can play what they love without judgement. We deserve as much.
If I’m recommending a TV show—or any piece of media for that matter—nine times out of ten I’m talking about a story that’s distinctly women-centric. Stories about women and other underrepresented groups are so incredibly overshadowed in the mainstream that it feels wrong to spend my time and energy celebrating anything else.
However, our media landscape being what it is, I sometimes find myself drawn to books, movies, and shows that aren’t as overtly feminist as I would like. In these cases, I like to think about why, despite its less-than-ideal representation overall, a story still resonates with me. It’s this process of (hopefully legitimate) rationalization that I’ve been going through for the past few years with Mozart in the Jungle.
Let me get the obvious out of the way first: I’m a fan of G. Willow Wilson’s work. Her storytelling finesse, and experiences as being at the intersection of several identities speaks to me. I recently saw her in conversation with KUOW’s Jamala Henderson as part of Humanities Washington’s speaker series, talking about identity, the comics industry, and of course, Ms. Marvel. Part of the flyer for the event introduced Willow (the G is silent) thusly: G. Willow Wilson lies at the epicenter of multiple fault lines of American identity.
Written by Guest Contributor Regina Barber DeGraaff
With all the excitement surrounding the film adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, I wanted to discuss the ideas of diversity that the book explores and how the ideas of what is “different” and “normal” has affected my life as an academic in science.
Not long ago, I was an PhD astrophysicist who had never read A Wrinkle in Time. Madeline L’Engle’s book was beloved by many of my academic colleagues due to the physics references; however, literature that everyone else read in childhood was always a touchy subject for me. I remember being a sophomore in college when several fellow physics majors said to me “You haven’t read The Lord of the Rings? You haven’t even read The Hobbit?!” That summer I spent the entire break reading the Tolkien series in the Shire-esque landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Being a female, Mexican/Chinese American, first-generation college student in physics, I was already wary about my appearance and “class,” so I did anything to belong.
I did not grow up in a house with books for children or adults. My mother was always nervous about her English due to growing up in Taiwan and never wanted to read English books. When I would visit my father during the summer, he tried to encourage my sister and I to read, but he was self conscious about his own reading skills. I remember the crippling dread when teachers would ask me to read out loud. This is probably one of the many reasons I moved towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).
I am my most geeky when I’m thinking about Harry Potter; this is an objective truth about me. And so, when I saw that there was going to be a panel entirely about Harry Potter and critical approaches to considering it, I planned my entire con weekend around attending it.
Robyn began the conversation by proposing that the blood status metaphor—one of the key themes in Harry Potter—is not quite as overt as we all may like to think. While the allusion JK Rowling draws to race in our world via blood status in the Wizarding World is obvious to many PoC readers, it’s not necessarily clear to everyone. This affects how race is discussed throughout the fandom and how readers, especially those of marginalized identities, are able (and allowed) to engage with the story.
What were you doing when you were twelve? For many of us, we might have been pursuing our geeky interests, but the speakers at the Next Gen Geek Girls panel made me (and several other people in the audience) feel completely inadequate!
Introduced by Whitney Winn, the Next Gen Geek Girls at the panel were two twelve-year-olds, Maddie Messer and Rowan Trilling-Hansen. Both of them had deep-seated, wonderfully geeky interests: Rowan loves comics and Maddie –who I had the pleasure of interviewing for the GeekGirlCon blog last year—plays games on her phone.
Both of them made waves in 2015 when they addressed gender disparities in the representation of women in comics and games. Rowan wrote letter to DC for more women in comics and merchandise, and was featured on the Today Show. She said that she had loved comics for her whole life. However, her issue with the representation of female characters began when she got into the DC Chibi collection. Rowan showed the audience the packaging for the Chibis, which lists the ones that are available. Of the twelve characters, only two were women. “I just think it would be really nice if they would add more female characters to the set,” she explained to the panel. “When I was looking at the pamphlet I kept thinking something wasn’t right.”
Over the weekend in downtown Seattle, you may have seen cosplayers dressed as Black Widow by the International Fountain, or you might have noticed your social media feeds were flooded with pictures of Black Widow. You might have seen that the hashtag #WeWantWidow was trending.
That’s because there was a multi-city flash mob to generate buzz and awareness of the lack of Black Widow on Avengers merchandising, as well as to show support for Black Widow to star in her own movie. Starting in Sydney, Australia at 12:00 pm local time, the “Widow Wave” spread across to Canada and the United States. In cities from Tampa to Ottawa, and from New York City to San Diego, hundreds of cosplayers dressed as Black Widow descended on the streets, while even more online supporters showed their support by changing their profile images to ones of Black Widow, and reposting images or tweeting using the hashtag #WeWantWidow.
