I learned about the role of women in a much different era. Women were burning bras, demanding for an Equal Rights Amendment, and bossing around gunfighters and Wookies on the big screen. Princess Leia was my first glimpse at what it meant to be a woman (besides my mother and grandmothers). She was tough. She was a leader of a Rebel Alliance. She could spar with Han Solo and still be sexy. In short, when I sat in my pink nightgown munching popcorn at that drive-in theater at four-years-old, I suddenly realized that a woman could be just as much as any man.
And, then I grew up.
Still, science fiction and video games were where I found my best escape. When my brother and I played Pong, we were evenly matched. The line-like avatars displayed no gender–no rippling muscles or jiggling breasts. It was a white dash. It was me. It was him. It could be whatever we wished. I had no concept that video games had been born from military technology. I did not know that the game designers were mostly male. When I played Pong against my older brother, it was no different than when we sat down to play Chess. Beating him was my only goal, and I reveled in each victory.
The summer of 1984 stands apart in my memory. It was my first real taste of video games. As a female, I will always remember two of the most important gaming icons I met that hot, humid summer close to my heart.
My family did not take yearly vacations. For us to go anywhere as a family was a rarity. That summer, though, we ventured to Arlington, Vermont to visit my uncle, aunt, and cousins. It was the first time we had visited them since they moved from Ohio a few years before.
What I remember most about that particular trip was my cousins’ Atari 2600. My cousin Becky was 16-years-old, had sweatshirts that fell off the shoulder, leg warmers, and dark blue eye shadow even Cyndi Lauper would’ve coveted. She was snarky, an individual who spoke her mind, and she played Pac-man like it was her job. She could accumulate the maximum number of extra lives, outrun Pinky, Blinky, Inky, and Clyde with a sneer. Watching her play was mesmerizing–a ballet of flashes and animation.
Pac-man was presumably a male avatar, but a round yellow circle munching wafers did not exactly possess strong gender markers. I never thought much about the character being male until Ms. Pac-man came out. I grew up in an era where sexist language was common–mankind, postman, policeman, etc. To me, Pac-man did not mean anything more than a member of the Pac-kind race.
And, then, there was my mama–the gamer. When I think back, my mother was my exact age now when we bought our Atari 2600. She was 37, a mother of two children, a good Christian women who sang in the church choir, paid her taxes, baked pies on weekends, and pretty much made June Cleaver seem like a deadbeat. My mother loved jigsaw puzzles, board games, and worked the daily crossword puzzle every night after the last supper dish was dried and put away.
Marsha White, though, most definitely did not fit the stereotype of an 80’s gamer. And, yet, that summer, I witnessed one of the greatest unknown moments in gaming history. Perhaps if more game designers had known about this event, they could’ve been making billions well before the advent of the Facebook games.
My mom usually enjoyed most of our Atari games, but she had a favorite: Megamania. She could play this game for hours on end. Megamania was a more challenging version of Space Invaders. In it, the “attackers” would come at you (a random gun, spaceship-shaped avatar) in a variety of approaches. Some were bowties, others were blocks of cheese, still others were radial tires. I was ten-years-old and adequate at the game. My prowess was saved for River Raid.
I don’t remember much about the day itself. It might’ve been afternoon or evening. I don’t even know who else was home. In my memory, it was just me, Mom, and a joystick. She sat cross-legged in front of our old-school television and battled each new round. Soon, she was on levels she had never been to before. I could feel my heart beating faster. The excitement made my feet wiggle, stomach tingle.
And, then, the magical moment, the memory I will cling to until the day I die–Marsha White, my middle-aged mother, beat Megamania. She pushed that orange button and released one last streak of light and defeated the last remaining enemy. It was over! The game stopped!
Years later, when game graphics became more sophisticated and I found more and more avatars were either male or ridiculously oversexualized females, I did not play video games as much. It did not seem like a world for me anymore. I had been written out of the script.
Slowly, I found my way back to games again, and the love I knew as a child returned. But, I will never forget the two most important gamers in my life: my cousin and my mother. They taught me that technology is not just for “the boys.” They showed me if you keep trying, you can beat anything. They proved that this new and exciting medium belong just as much to women as it did to men. They also showed me that this world of fun, mental stimulation, and creative opportunity is worth fighting for.
My mama was a gamer before it was cool, and that makes me so very proud.
