The Obligatory Introductory Blog of *insert adjective here* Proportions

Greetings and salutations, fellow classmates (way to use basically the same greeting as in your other introductory post in your other class, Josh). My name is, as you could tell in my brief internal monologue to myself, Josh, AKA Colonel Pork, a nickname some folks call me. I was born and raised in Michigan, but I found my way to rural Georgia for some inconceivable reason, so now I'm living in a small town called Rockmart and attending University of West Georgia. I'm currently a senior majoring in mass communications concentrated in film and media arts with a minor in film studies. If you already couldn't tell, I'm immensely interested in studying film, and I would like to become involved in film as a career path someday. Primarily, I would like to be a film editor, but if I find myself able to direct and write movies as well, it definitely wouldn't hurt to be a triple threat. In fact, my main hobby/activity is making YouTube videos, and I've been doing so since Summer 2008 (although the early stuff I made should be classified as "incoherent drivel" rather than "videos"). Click here and here if you're at all slightly curious. I am also an avid gamer when I have the time.

Speaking of which, video games have a tendency to stand out as being blatantly diverse as far as appealing to very narrow demographics. This is particularly due to the majority of gamers being male, so developers try to make games geared toward the male gender. However, in recent years, gaming culture has expanded to appeal to females as well, according to these statistics from 2011. Regardless, there are many games out there that seem to objectify female characters and/or blatantly transform them into highly sexualized exaggerations of femininity. Many games, such as Tomb Raider, Bayonetta, the Soul Calibur series, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Lollypop Chainsaw and many more, feature female characters that are scantily clad or wearing skin tight spandex, have ridiculously exaggerated "jiggle physics" for "simulating anatomy," and have nonsensically disproportionate bodies to cater to heterosexual males. In this article, a female game designer gives her perspective, making the point that while male and female characters could display the same heroic and personality traits, only females seem to be highly sexualized when it comes to physical traits. She also adds that because it's a male dominated medium, half-nude male characters would have minimal appeal.

Below is a humorous and informative video that examines why women are underrepresented in a culture that has mostly been dominated by men, including a mention of the hypersexualization of female video game characters:

Thank you for reading, and I hope to have a wonderful semester with the rest of you!