In recent months, there has been a continued conversation around the death of girlhood for adolescent girls and the reclamation of it by young adult women. As I have witnessed these things simultaneously occurring, it has led to me reflecting on my own experiences as an adolescent girl and my experience of girlhood. Several things came to mind, such as instrumental shows like Hannah Montana and sleepovers with bracelet making and the sharing of diary entries. I also could not help thinking of how the internet and, eventually, social media influenced this period of my life as well, with things such as Snapchat, Wattpad, and getting an iPod touch with text and FaceTime pushing me toward more mature and sometimes inappropriate topics. The one place where that line was blurred (and where I spent a large portion of time) was within online gaming sites.
Me in 6th grade
I loved playing any kind of game online in which I could build an avatar and interact with other people using free chat. It started out more innocently, with games like Poptropica, Club Penguin, Pixie Hollow, and Build-a-Bear. However, as those games closed down over time, I turned to mobile games that would help me accomplish similar purposes. I played some games that allowed me to make life choices, but where it was isolated only to me, like how Episode allowed me to make my own choices within a pre-written story and Virtual Families allowed me to build a life within a house from young adulthood to death (similarly to The Sims). I also ventured into games similar to the ones I had been playing before, but much more mature, such as Avakin Life and IMVU. All of these games dealt with much more teen and adult themes, with the avatars being young adult women. The main difference, however, was the game culture.
One big shift was in the presentation of avatars. On games like Pixie Hollow and Build-A-Bear, even though the avatars were not children, they were not sexualized. For both body and clothing options, there was nothing overly sexual about the presentation of one’s avatar. In these mobile games, however, this is very much not the case, with the games putting an emphasis on avatar makeup, skimpier clothes, and even lingerie. For young girls playing these games, this was very much a shift and led to a pressure of appearing “sexy” and an early sexualization that did not align with the earthly, physical form of a middle school girl. This directly led into a culture of relationships and sex within these games that many young girls played into. While playing games like Club Penguin and Pixie Hollow, there was very much an established culture of talking to boys online and getting a “boyfriend” within the game. While very strange, the limitations of the chats allowed for nothing to get too inappropriate, though you are very quickly taught workarounds for certain words (i.e. “kits” to say “kiss,” etc.). To whatever extent you wished, you could have a virtual romantic experience on these games despite many of the players being younger than thirteen (I began playing on these games myself when I was eight or nine years old).
Pixie Hollow and Build-A-Bear avatars, which are nonsexual for adolescent play
With this pre-established culture in mind, in approaching games like IMVU and Avakin Life, young girls are exposed at a young age to a very predatory online space, especially given that there is much more room within the free chat on these apps, as certain curse words are allowed, as well as some more sexual phrases. And this culture is heavily played into by male (presenting) players in these games, as any “attractive” Avatar they come upon they can privately message. As a fourteen year old on these games, I often received some weird, fetishizing (my Avatar was Black like myself), and creepy messages that I was not mature enough to handle. Games like Episode were not much better, with many of the stories involving sex and allowing the characters to be naked with black bars covering the most intimate parts despite most of the players being middle school girls.
IMVU avatars
While these games were obviously being played by myself way earlier than they should have (some of them were meant for 16+ years), it was the standard among other girls my age. I constantly talked to my best friends about Episode and what story I was playing at the time. I connected with friends virtually on games where our avatars didn’t quite look like ourselves. This was viewed as a ritual of teen girlhood, a normalcy, an aging up of sorts. Looking back on it now, though, it was our own death of girlhood, though it happened for me at a much later age than it is happening to girls now (or even then). With social media, this is an even bigger problem than it was before, but thinking back to this experience leads me to wonder if I was like the Sephora girls all along.
Me in 7th grade
Obviously, though the games have protections in place to prevent young girls like me from engaging in those games or conversations, it is easy to slip past the cracks; and more than that, it is expected. Although these games can be great for the imaginations of girls and allowing them to explore things such as style through their avatars and other worlds that don’t exist outside of the virtual space, I wonder if the cons outweigh the pros when, ultimately, these games create harmful environments that sexualize young girls and put them in a space where they can more easily be harassed. Girls are outgrowing adolescence at younger and younger ages now, hence this uprising of the reclamation of girlhood we see today. In bringing awareness to the issues on these sites and apps, we can very quickly see that this loss of innocence of young girls constantly happening at earlier and earlier ages is not fun and games.
-Sarah Beth
New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games 