Fat Princess
The furor over the game “Fat Princess” has finally hit the mainstream media, and its long past time I wrote about it here. After all, back in those halcyon days when I had spare time, I used to play video games; these days, my husband and one of my best friends work for a video game company. So what’s the story? In a nutshell:
Fat Princess is a capture-the-flag game with a twist: you can thwart capture attempts by locking the once-thin princess in a dungeon and stuffing her full of cake, thereby increasing her girth and making her harder for your enemies to haul back to home base.
So part of the game—an important part, going by the title—is fattening up a princess with cake, so she becomes fatter and harder to lug around. Charming. This Feministe post does a great job outlining the issues with the game, and I highly recommend the entire post.
Look, the humor here is not that hard to understand, especially if you look at the last few decades of gaming. There’s a classic fairy-tale trope in video games going back to Donkey Kong where a male protagonist must rescue the damsel in distress. “Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!” Sound familiar? You don’t need to be a brilliant feminist scholar to realize that this kind of story, with a male hero rescuing a helpless girl, is not only a cliche but a sexist cliche that long predates the invention of Pong…
Fat Princess is a send-up of that tired old cliche. Believe me, there are a lot of ways you could send up that cliche, but of all the possibilities, Titan chose to make the princess FAT. The joke here is also obvious: LOL who would want to rescue a fat chick?
…. Each side has captured the other’s princess; in addition to fortifying, defending, and capturing territory, you can feed your captive food. Because women are helpless in the face of cake, of course, she just eats and eats. And of course, absolutely anyone who eats a lot is going to balloon up into a spherical caricature of a heavy person, right? That’s how fat people get made! And of course she’s so heavy that it takes a whole crowd of soldiers to carry her! Because that’s what fat people are like! The cartoon-logic is impeccable. It’s also very recognizable, from a long history of our culture mocking the fat, blaming fat people for their bodies, perpetuating all sorts of bullshit about fat. It’s so recognizable that it doesn’t really need to be explained to anyone who has a problem with this kind of mockery.
“But the game was written by a woman!” doesn’t really hold water either. (I think we can all name at least one woman who hates fat people, if we think really hard.)
In the grand scheme of things, fat women are certainly not damsels in distress, we aren’t powerless over food, and a video game is not intended to be an accurate depiction of reality. There are plenty of stupid video games out there, so it would be easy to say, just forget it, it’s not important.
But there is also plenty of ammunition against fat people in the world, plenty of people who don’t even bother to question these tropes, and plenty of people who are ready to respond to thoughtful criticism with such bon mots as “lol your fat.” The last thing we need is more fat-hating in our pop culture. Come on, Sony, isn’t the problem here clear?
Sigh. Princess Fiona, at least we’ll always have you.
Posted by mo pie
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This kind of stuff is always going to go on in consumer culture. It’s disgusting… and I think you’re right. It’s just another way to legitimize discriminating against fat people.
Thank goodness I hadn’t heard about it.. and will likely promptly forget about it.
Pop culture and all its messages are disturbingly transparent.
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Why couldn’t we just have stuck with Pong and Space Invaders? (And Ms. Pac-Man. And Asteroid.)
This sucks.
As I already commented, the things that particularly irked me about the yahoo coverage were:
1. The complete lack of explanation of what people were actually upset ABOUT. It read just like “feminists are offended because there’s a fat chick in it, lol”.
2. The extremely vague handwaving of “a girl made it”. Notice that they don’t even give this girl a name? Nor does she show up and comment? Instead, her existence is described by the MAN in CHARGE of the art, who says that some girl designed the look of the characters. Doesn’t say she wrote the game or came up with the concept or anything, just that she designed the LOOK of the Fat Princess, when told to by the people in charge. Like the man speaking.
3. The slap-in-the-face at the end. “We sure showed you, didn’t we!” Which, as I commented, is not the reaction you’d get from a MAINSTREAM source if it were a Christian or Parents or other group complaining about the game.
I didn’t have to think hard at all to come up with one woman who hates “teh fatties.” And really that was enough of my Sanity Watchers points for today.
@GamerGirl: Seriously!
That last line of the Yahoo article turned my stomach. I wouldn’t give a crap even if the entire debacle had been conceived, designed, written and marketed solely by women. Anyone ever read “Female Chauvinist Pigs”? There’s a whole generation of women being brought up emphasizing little else than their appearance, because beautiful women have routinely been “rewarded” for looking the way they do by shallow, rich, men ready to fly them off to St. Tropez on thier private jets. (Sorry, just watched 5 min of “Girls Next Door” last night).
The idea that a woman cannot possibly produce something anti-feminist is laughable, and the way the Yahoo article seemed to subliminally laugh at us crazy fat feminists pissed me off so much. Rrrrr….
Not surprised at the tone of the Yahoo article. Most of their so-called “journalists” could be outwritten by a first grade class at storytelling hour. Yahoo also buys into the fat-hating and fat hysteria big time, so anything that challenges and criticizes fat stereotypes gets their panties in a twist.
I really love how this designer fellow throws out his female co-worker to take the brunt of the feminist attack. I wonder if he was thinking, “REMEMBER THE ALAMO!” in his head during that interview.
Sigh. Just… sigh.
And speaking as one who resembles Princess Fiona (albeit less green, and with more human-looking ears): yes, I hope we always have her.
Princess Zelda pops up in disguise to guide Link throughout the game. Without her, he’d be completely clueless and Ganon would reign supreme.
Se does the work, he gets the credit. But she’s still an incredibly badass princess. I named my dog after her.
I have always thought Princess Fiona was prettier as an ogre than a human.
Maybe before Fat Princess got fat, she was anorexic…now, she’s just gaining weight until she hits her natural set point.
SL, are you being sarcastic? If so, it’s a major failed attempt.
I know it’s a big game for people now to use fat acceptance talking points as troll humor, but most of us can see right through it. And it’s not that funny anyway.
Sarcasm – ur doin it wrong!
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Actually, no…I wasn’t being sarcastic. Though, I still don’t agree with the whole ‘man having to save the woman because she can’t save herself’
Maybe instead of cake, they could give the princess some nice protein, fruits, veggies…and then some hand weights. She can get totally pump-up and buff, like Jillian Michael’s and beat the crap out of her captors. That would be a fun game.
It really upset me that technology that is supposed to be progressive and forward thinking relies on such old, worn out, misogynistic story lines. It takes no imagination to come up with something like this and all it does is contribute to society becoming desensitized to treatment that is truly horrible and disgusting.
What is worse is how complacent people have become to blatantly discriminatory things such as this one.
UGH. You know, it is really starting to get to me that the gaming community and companies that put games out there are acknowledging (begrudgingly) that it’s not a purely male pastime and there are ever-increasing numbers of (gasp!) ladies who love them some video game action just as much as the fellows… and yet they still refuse to lift a finger to pander to this demographic, though they go nuts doing so for men.
For example, from a strictly visual standpoint, I can tell you that even games which are otherwise gender-neutral are made for men and men alone. World of Warcraft is completely fair to both sexes when it comes to power, ability, and the socio-political aspects of the game’s world. But the characters? And their outfits and gear? Holy shit, forget it.
If gaming companies want to design their games so that the players are looking at eye-candy the whole time (because of course that adds to the experience of battling to the death somehow), I fully support their right and desire to do so… just, for goodness sakes, could the people who are attracted to MEN have something to look at too?
Put a piece of armor on a male character in that game, and it covers him from head to toe. Put that SAME piece of armor on a female character, and it looks like a thong bikini. And the character designs themselves… the male characters have rough, unattractive facial features and blocky, un-balanced looking hulk bodies (think a poorly made Ken doll). The females? All but the dwarves and gnomes are thin, svelte, and leggy (yet wielding hammers as big as they are with their stick arms and running with them on spindly legs). The dwarves are stocky but with an hourglass figure. And even the tiny gnome women, who are too squat to have much of a discernible figure, have enormous breasts relative to their size.
It’s ridiculous. Console games aren’t any better. Monster Hunter Freedom II has been kidnapping my attention for some time now, and though the male and female characters are equal in attractiveness without their gear, there’s the same problem with clothing them, in which men must cover every bit of skin possible whilst the girls show every bit of skin possible. How it is that I can take down a giant, scaly, fanged beast with absolutely nothing covering my legs, when my boyfriend’s character needs giant jointed shields on his, astounds me with its lack of logic.
To sum it up: if I have to fight half-naked so fellows can stare at my pixellated ass, the least they can do is also fight half-naked, so I can stare at THEIR pixel-asses. SHEESH.
I DO NOT GET WHY THAT IS HARD TO GRASP. I MEAN, IF OBJECTIFICATION IS SUCH A GREAT THING FOR US WIMMINFOLK, WHY ARE MENZ NOT JUMPING RIGHT ON THAT BANDWAGON FOR US? SHOW SOME SKIN, GUYS. SRYSLY.
@SugarLeigh: Because, as you said, the games are geared toward men and no “straight” guy would want to be caught playing a game full of lady oriented eye candy. All his dude friends would call him gay!
@Cute Bruiser– LOL! You’re right, but you know… I mean, between gals and gay/bi dudes, I think we have straight male gamers outnumbered… there’s only one solution… it’s time to start infiltrating the actual development of games at all levels!
I know of a couple of hardcore gamers who would be mad at me for saying something like that, is the sad thing. They secretly think of gaming as some sort of magical boys club where they can hang out and it’s all about straight guys, and they can stay away from people who terrify them, like gays and women and sympathizers of gays and women. They need to wise up, so hard. Seriously, if men want an “all straight dudes, all the time” space, they can either get a damn clubhouse and put a “no girls allowed” sign on it, or do what all the other bigots do and join the KKK. Either way they can stay out of an entertainment form meant for ALL to enjoy, and which I have been since I was little so they can stuff it about how they started on the original NES, because shit, so did everybody.
Not that it ever frustrates me or makes me feel bitter, or anything, or that girl gamers ever get comments if they dare to let it be known they game (cough except all the time cough).
SHOW SOME SKIN, GUYS. SRYSLY.
Try looking for a Japanese game called “Duel Love” where you get to towel the sweaty bodies of teenage boy athletes :)
But are all the guys in “Duel Love” skinny? I want to towel off some REAL men, not some bony athlete. They should have some big cuddly guys!
It’s such a shame, because the art for the fat princess is just adorable. She’s so cute!
It’s a game, not a treatise on the psychology and sociology of obesity.
Being upset at this game is far more offensive than the game itself. If you want to pretend like eating cake doesn’t make one larger, and harder to carry, fine. That is not the point of the game, though, and it is really a shame since it actually is a game of *tolerance*. I suppose you could have a person keep feeding the princesses’ ego, until it bloats out of control and she has a hissy fit about a video game. Hey, wait a minute…
OK, now who really believes that this game will have any kind of an affect on most peoples perceptions of obesity? OK, now who thinks there are any video games that exist that do not rely on stereotypes of some kind? Sheesh. BTW I am not a hater. fill in the blank.
Yea, I think people are reading into this too much. I don’t hate fat people, and I’m a girl so I come from the female gamer perspective. Honestly, I find it refreshing that a game doesn’t feel the need to be full of half-naked VC models for people to want to play it. And maybe you’re looking at it all wrong; maybe the message of the game is, a princess can stuff her face and get as fat as she wants and men will still come in roves to carry her off. :P
Joking aside, you can try to make this into something it’s not, or you can take it for what it is: a silly capture the flag game. It uses established stereotypical settings so it doesn’t need to establish a story, but puts a twist on it to make it more interesting. You can get offended about a lot of things; you can get offended that shadow the hedgehog was black, and they gave him a gun (though personally I’m more offended at how bad the game was), you can get offended at all the boob action in God of War, you can get offended at how all the players in this game are depicted as stupid enough to throw themselves into combat and get maimed and torn to pieces a million times over trying to steal a princess. Or, you can give it a rest and stop looking for something that isn’t there.