Let me start by saying something that anyone who has ever listened to our show already knows…I Hate Pink! I have hated pink for so long and with such passion that I can no longer remember if I have always hated pink or if I hate pink because of all that it has come to stand for in our heteronormative, misogynistic society. That being said, when I look back at pictures of me as a child there are no pictures of me wearing pink (and none of me wearing dresses past the toddler stage). In the same way that I do now with my own daughter, my mother allowed me to choose my own clothes as a child (thank goodness for Granimals) and as a family member told me when I came out to her so very long ago, “We have known since you were a child and all you would wear were boy-ish clothes” (as if gender and sexual orientation are inextricably connected but that’s a post for another day). And looking back at those pictures now I see that what I wore was girls clothing, but in muted colors. There were lots of brown, burgundy, and green…and no friggin’ pink.
So what does this have to do with games? Bear with me a while and we’ll get there. Really. When my daughter was born I refused to dress her in anything pink. Her room was painted lavender (a fair compromise in my opinion) and her first set of bedding was dark blue (which was overridden and returned for pink by my partner), but the accompanying comforter and accessories were a gender neutral light green Winnie the Pooh set (and Winnie is about as ambiguous as you can get). For the first 2+ years of her life Pea was dressed in beautiful jewel tones that we chose for her at first and that she later chose for herself. Until she went to pre-school and all of her little friends in their annoyingly pink, frilly clothes with their annoyingly pink frilly toys got Pea asking for pink clothes. And she was resolute. There was no talking her out of it. I even struggled with the idea of buying her a toy kitchen for Christmas, not because it was pink but because it just went along with that notion of what a woman’s heteronormative role “should” be. And then Alex called me out on a podcast and reminded me that even strong, feminist badasses had to eat and that Pea probably wanted the kitchen so badly because I myself spent so much time in the kitchen cooking for and with her (I am an excellent cook if I do say so myself).
For the 2 years after the pre-school pink exposure everything Pea wore had to be pink. From ponytail holders to shoestring. I was in a fucking nightmare. Until I just let go. I ignored the pink as well as I could and let her run with pink. This year when she started Kindergarten there were different little girls who come from different and differing backgrounds and they don’t all wear pink. And so Pea became comfortable with wearing other colors again. In fact, the new motto seems to be “the more colors the better”, even her socks must be mis-matched. And just when I was starting to get used to the pink.
And finally, video games. While I have always taken issue with the depiction of female characters in video games, one in particular has always driven me to the brink of insanity…Princess Peach. She was always getting snatched from her own castle and needing to get rescued. And when she did finally get her own game (but only on a handheld device) she was advertised with a bunch on screaming, hysterical (look up the etymology of that one) little girls dressed in pink frilly dresses. And she made it through her own adventures with powers like crying and burning shit to the ground with PMS.
So it should be no small surprise that I felt downright ill the first time Pea and I played Super Mario 3D World together and she wanted to be…had to be Princess Peach. While Pea like the fact that Princess Peach wore a pink dress she is also obsessed with using power-ups to change her costume, especially the Fire Flower which gives Princess Peach a new dress and hairdo. She would look for particular power ups just to taunt me “get me the white dress and ponytail or get me the pink kitty costume” and then she would proceed to follow me around throwing fireballs at (or kitty slashing) me and anything else in out field of view.
And then it struck me. She not only likes the change in the physical appearance that the power ups bring, but she like the change in powers that came each outfit as well. What she is doing with Princess Peach is really no different from what I do whenever I start a new RPG. I can spend anywhere from 20 to an hour choosing the race, class, age, gender, etc. of my character so that I can make her (I always play a women if there is the option because I want to see myself in the story). And now Pea is doing the same thing. Blonde haired, blue eyed princess with a ponytail who can kick bad guy ass all over the screen. She doesn’t see Peach as the neurotic, helpless figure that I did, she sees her as powerful…as her. Sam meet tons of bricks, ton of bricks meet Sam. Now all of this time I have been struggling with my own historical narrative of Peach just as Pea was building her own narrative for her. For her the pink was powerful because it was what she wanted and it still allowed her to kick butt in the process. And seemingly, just to prove to her Mama that she is not being totally snowed in the process of loving Peach she does take the opportunity to mention that Princess Peach wouldn’t really be able to run well in that ridiculous dress and heels and second that she is pissed off that no matter what order we press start in Peach can’t lead the party around the board and that girls can lead just as well as boys. I know that this is most likely tied to the fact that I use the game tablet to play so that we can do the tapping and blowing puzzles, but I don’t want to tell her that just yet. I don’t want to remove the reason for and the opportunity to practice her righteous indignation…just yet.
In the end this experience with my pink, princess, ass kicking loving daughter has taught me what I already professed to “know” even if I didn’t live, that feminism has many faces. That while princesses can be negative role models that they are not necessarily so. While pink can be a way of marking something as “inferior” or used for gender coding in a heteronarmative society that it can also be empowering if your choice is just that an informed choice. This is something that I am sure to struggle with as time goes on and I welcome the opportunity to think it all through critically. But, I doubt that pink will ever be my color of choice.
For a fun take on bringing together different women under the feminist umbrella check out the episode of HAWP that I found while writing this post.
