Gender Roles being defined by games?

Scanlon offers many points about defining what boys and girls are. She brings up many games that we don’t really pay much attention on how they influence young girl to focuses on their beauty over their success. For example, one of the games state as The Sweet Valley High board game emphasizes how young girls should be prepared with all the accessories needed to obtain a date but it doesn’t bring up the tools to be successful without a male present. As young girl, i was always encouraged to be successful and obtain a bright future by focusing on my education. I was not bought games such as the ones Jennifer discusses in her article. And when I was bought a game, my parents never really analyzed what the true message was aiming at. A recent experience I had was with the first grade girls was portrayed this exact message. The two girls asked ,” so how pretty do I look today?”. I was surprised at how concerned the young girls were over how important was everything else.  Young girls are encouraged to look pretty by adding accessories of make-up and cute clothes to attract the cute boys. The media, magazines, and even board games that are aimed at a certain gender to fufill their expectations is clearly stated  and reinforced by this type of media.

Another important point the Scanlon states in her works is the fact that girls must do whatever it is to obtain a boyfriend. This example is clearly stated in the game “Meet me at the mall” which I have never heard of. It’s amazing how the games objectives is to “steal a boyfriend” if that’s what it takes to live up to the role of being a girl. This “expectations” in girls states, all you need to focuse on is find the perfect male figure regardless of what measures need to be done. We need to change the way we portray girls by speaking out about what the media and board games are emphasizing our young children. We need to educate our children about what is important which is our education not our looks.