I played Super Smash Bros as Peach along with several other female characters: Sheik, Zelda, Bayonetta, and more. The game experience, from particular character’s movesets to the overall representation of feminine characters, reflect overall empoweredness with a few crucial shortcomings.
Breaking stereotypes through characters/stories takes 2 things: setting up the qualities that are believed to lead to that stereotype and making the results opposite of the stereotype’s expectation. Peach definitely does the setup, Sheik definitely does the breaking, and Bayonetta is a pretty solid mix of the two.
I first played as Princess Peach, who to me, is the most stereotypically feminine character. She’s a white blond character bedazzled in pinks and hearts, even armed with a parasol. Some of her attacks emanate pink hearts – it feels like you’re fighting with love, which can positively enforce that femininity doesn’t have to change to be powerful, while also negatively feeding into the whole female stereotype.
Overall, Peach is a woman who fights with cleverness. She floats in the air, making a lot of her playstyle focusing on staying out of range and dodging opponents while looking for an opening to hit an aerial. This enforces the positive idea that a character’s femininity does not change their cleverness, but also gives me some feelings that Peach retreats a lot and might reflect negative stereotypes of female weakness.
Peach also fights with a lot of external tools, which further enforces the previous complexities. Other than her parasol which she uses to fly around, Peach can pull out onions/items out of the ground and even a Toad. Peach can actually pull out a frying pan, which is a super obvious negative female stereotype. In stark contrast, however, Peach can pull out a golf club, which deeply conflicts with female stereotypes about women being unwelcome in many sports, golf being a big one. It’s a wealthy sport, though, and definitely enforces Peach’s position as a mannered princess. But maybe the best strategy for breaking stereotypes is taking them and breaking them. Peach definitely takes stereotypes and might subtly break them.
I also played Sheik, who is a more gender-ambiguous presentation of a very feminine Zelda. I think Sheik does wonders for the representation of women in Smash – her creation was less about the Western beauty standard and much more about the ferocity of a warrior. As an incredibly fast, agile, and clever fighter, Sheik is kind of a ninja. We always see men being ninjas. But here is a female ninja who is all about her code. Pretty dope for little kids to see this.
I also played Bayonetta, who I think exhibits a great mix of traditional female set-up with strong destruction of the stereotype. While very much appealing to typical female body standards, Bayonetta oozes more unapologetic confidence as a fighter than the whole Super Smash Bros cast combined. She uses real guns, not fake blasters or items, but shotguns and pistols, and even summons huge fists that are larger than any character in the cast. She takes traditional female qualities and breaks them, with a short hair option to top it all off.
Overall, I noticed there’s not many female characters to choose from in the game, while the Western body ideal is definitely very much alive in video games. But, there’s lots of cool stuff for people to be empowered by. It’s also important for little boys to play as female characters to affirm their own femininity, so that’s what my discussion question reflects.
Discussion q: How can developers positively affirm the femininity in non-female characters to validate players of all genders?
