Maxim Has A Weird ‘Gamer Girl’ Fetish


This week, Maxim launched a contest to find its very own Maxim Gamer Girl. Like a pig hunting truffles in the wild, Maxim will scour the streets of America for the perfect “video game vixen”. Wear your “hottest outfit”, the magazine commands. “First come, first serve.”

Clearly the magazine doesn’t realise that this is 2012.

Now on one hand, picking on Maxim for objectifying women might be like picking on a dog for licking its own feces. It’s just what they do.

On the other hand, this is more than just objectification. By turning the idea of Gamer Girl into a sexual fantasy alongside the likes of common dreams like Sexy School Girl or The Girl Next Door, Maxim is fetishising the 42 per cent of gamers who happen to be women. Girls who play video games are no longer human beings who enjoy a certain form of entertainment. Now they’re caricatures.

Can you imagine a full-page spread on “Girls Who Read Books?” Would Maxim readers get off to “Filmgoing Vixens”?

I have absolutely no problem with girls showing their skin in Maxim. It’s empowering for many models and enjoyable for many readers. But this idea that Gamer Girl should be a category of its own, that the girls who enjoy video games should be placed on some pedestal and treated like a precious unicorn to be captured and worshiped by men everywhere, is absolutely sickening.

Fortunately, there’s sanity in some of the comments on the casting call article. Though a few girls are excited at the opportunity to model for Maxim, most of the commenters are acerbic and hilarious.

“Does it matter that I’ll still be pre-op at that time?” one gamer writes.

“If you fit the ‘video game vixen mold’, as defined by Maxim, you’re likely a Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volley Ball character,” another says.

The most disgusting part of this whole thing? High-profile gaming publisher EA supports this.

Casting Call: Maxim Gamer Girl [Maxim via EA]

Photo: (C) Bryan Sikora / Stockfresh.


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