When I was in first grade, I discovered the rising phenomenon called Pokémon. During recess, on the school bus, and even at my swim meets, every guy I knew seemed to be playing the Pokémon video games. Ironically, I did know a girl at my swim club who could beat every guy there, but in my memor, it was mainly guys who obsessed over it. I of course wanted to fit in with the cool things all my friends were doing. So when my birthday came around, I asked my parents for two things: a Gameboy and a Pokémon video game. What I got was a Pokémon themed Gameboy, a copy of Pokémon Yellow, and a special Pokémon themed carrying case (which I unfortunately could not find a picture of, but I promise it was awesome).
For me, gazing at it once again after all these years, the Gameboy at first seemed to favor no particular gender. The Gameboy is small in size with only a few buttons. The main buttons are named simply as A and B. However, the game Pokémon Yellow does include a lot of written directions in the game play, so a basic understanding of the English language is required.
The primary color, a bright yellow, doesn’t closely adhere to any commercial idea of gender. In fact, the Pokémon featured as decoration, Pikachu, Jigglypuff, and Togepi, appeal to me as some of the cutest looking Pokémon. Why did the designers opt to go with these characters as opposed to some of the scarier or tougher looking specimens such as Charizard or Mewtwo? When I considered this, I decided that the Gameboy appeared slightly feminine in commercial ideas of gender.
That was until a member of my in-class group, Katie, pointed out a small but obvious detail that I had overlooked in my analysis. Right beneath the screen of the device appear the words “Gameboy”. For me, I was so used to thinking of a “Gameboy” as only a gaming device that I completely overlooked the not-so-subtle gendering of its name. Nothing is more dangerous than when it becomes so commonplace that we can hardly recognize the commercial gendering it has undergone.
In the game Pokémon Yellow, the gendering was a bit more obvious to me, though I will admit that none of this occurred to me as a young boy. Right from the game’s opening the player is offered only a male avatar and a list containing three male names to choose from. More choosey players did have the option to type in their own names, but I seriously doubt having a male looking character with a girl’s name works as a sufficient substitute for not being able to choose a female character. Then the player gets introduced to his or her rival, who is also a male. Then the player gets introduced to the Pokémon Professor, who is also a male.
Once the player gets further into the world, he or she will meet many female NPCs such as other trainers and gym leaders. There’s even an exclusively female Pokémon gym in the game (that uses only plant Pokémon, go figure). To me this seems a little strange. Apparently, the creators of Pokémon envisioned a world where both men and women would enjoy Pokémon equally, then they decided that in the real world only boys would enjoy it.
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