UPDATE: ANIMAL talked to Boob Jam creator Jenn Frank about the Boob Jam project, errors in her BBC profile, why video games are fun and the “male gaze” argument is boring. Read it here.
Earlier this year, Vanillaware released a gamed called “Dragon’s Crown” featuring a sorceress character with credibility-straining breasts. Kotaku suggested that the game was “designed by a 14-year-old boy.” Of course, there have been anatomically exaggerated, hyper-sexualized depictions of women in video games for decades, but this may have been the catalyst for Boob Jam.
Boob Jam is a 48-hour coding event that will take place in the US in September where designers will create video games that show the “unsexy reality” of having breasts (e.g. having a mammogram). The idea behind Boob Jam is to “change the aesthetic away from women being nothing but boobs and sexual objects to thinking of them as active subjects,” said Dr Helen W Kennedy, who studies game culture. It hopes to “demystify” and desexualize breasts, or, at the very least, encourage discourse.
“I do not think I am going to dismantle society and civilization,” said Boob Jam creator Jenn Frank, “but I would like to shift the conversation along a bit.”
Gaming culture feminists like Frank hope to catalyze mature discussion and take back the dialogue around women in video games, but one wonders if video games about breasts, even in “unsexy” situations, will be properly understood and appreciated by those who aren’t already sympathetic to Frank’s message. Will video games centered around a woman’s breasts serve to make her be seen as a more active subject? Can the misogynistic members of nerd culture handle playing games about frustrating bra shopping? Is drawing attention to breasts in video games going to draw attention away from breasts in video games?
