Girls’ Games IV – tweens and teens today are same same but different

We adored Madonna, today there is Lady Gaga. The through all times eternal icon for all girls of any kind is Marilyn Monroe – these are the women who are sexy and thereby adored by men, but who still keep the power over themselves and turn the worship to their own profit. This is why big busted Lara Croft worked well also for women even if her breast size was debated.

We found inspiration in future heroes Princess Leia, Ripley and E.T. Today’s girls get inspired by mystic Bella Swan, Arven and Avatar. I’d say the only difference is that in the 80s space was the mystery – the future, today the Twilight zone is what we long for – a place we don’t know anything about and therefore can have promising hopes for.


TV provided us with Pamela Barnes Ewing, Sammy Jo Carrington and Melissa Channing. Today it’s Hannah Montana, Lauren Conrad and Sara Sidle(CSI) and many more. In the 80s the grown up intrigues were showing us how normal we were in our real lives. Today someone else’s strange real lives are telling us how boring we are in our real lives.


We wore Levi’s, Converse and biker tights. Today’s girls dream of Chanel, Miss Sixty and Louis Vuitton. The economy is kind of different and the kindness of the parents has grown.


We screamed after Michael Jackson, Kiss and a little later on Public Enemy. Girls today have a wider selection and much younger, almost peers to follow. Some of the faves are Tokio Hotel, Robert Pattinsson, Zac Efron, Jonas Brothers, McFly.


So the habits are the same while there are minor differences in economy, lifestyle and male icons. What differs is of course the standard access to Internet, mobiles and games.

Most remarkable is probably the mobile phone use. 54% of all am teens text daily and sends and receives 50 or more messages per day – 1500 per month! 14-17 year old girls are the most active texters, sending 100 or more messages per day.

Next is that girls play games. 97% of all American kids and more than half of American adults play often. The NPD Group report “Gamer Segmentation 2009,” says that 28% of females are playing video games (40% of all players). But not all female gamers are young. More than 33% of women ages 18 and up play video games – surpassing the 18% of boys ages 17 and younger who play video games.

With Stardoll’s 60 million members there is no doubt that girls like and spend time on online fashion games, if they are designed the right way. A majority of the girls on Stardoll are 11-12 years old.

Stardoll was specifically designed for these young girls – those who had left their Barbies and who started to turn to the grown up world for the first time. It was designed to be a free pass from school yards’ peer pressure and from impossible media dreams. It’s a place where girls know they are welcome, where they are safe to be girls. It’s a place where they can explore their growing personalities and try out both looks and social behavior without worries, restrictions or risk taking. They can’t do anything wrong, their creations are always right, they are right.

But it is also those who still have the time, and who is still more in an experimental world of play. Around the age of 15 these girls are turning to the real world for real life practice. They almost don’t play computer games at all.
What they practice on and offline is self marketing – to be seen. They blog and participate in social networks to promote themselves. They do absolutely use Facebook or other social networks, but not as often as those age 25-45 years old. They don’t need to, they see their friends much more often than we oldies do.

Overall the media time spent is not that different!
8-18 years old spend 32% of their media time on TV, 25% on their computer and 20% on their mobile phone. Consoles only take 5% of their time, partly due to that it’s not a multimediatasking activity. Both TV and videogames are decreasing the older the teenager get, while music takes more and more of their time. Style, music and friends make the identity.





Going back to my own teenage head I guess girls run about the same kind of mental life today. Friends and media are the only things that matters. Popularity and being seen is in focus and most girls don’t have time for games between school, sports and friends as soon as they are free to go and do where/whatever they want.

all stats are found here

Previous Girls' Games Posts
1980-1984
Kids 2010
1984-1994

Let's Create! Pottery app

I'd say Polish Infinity Dreams had a female gamer in their mind when developing this great iPad app.

It's great looking, full of extra graphic elements that make me happy. It's not just to create your potter, but also to see polaroids of them, to sell them and to buy new beautyful patterns to decorate them further. It's the full dream, not only a small part of it made because someone discovered the technical possibility.

Introduction and pushing me further in the game play is made through a fake e-mail conversation with the game that encourages me to take step after step, just the way I'd like to be involved in any social community with too many details to learn at first visit. I learn it at the time I'm ready.

Also it's not crucial that my copy gets identical with the suggested original. I don't have to start over, and I don't loose anything. It's fun just to create, and I get rewarded with money to buy new patterns for if I can make it identical. This is probably one of the issues that is the most female friendly feature.

More about girls' games later...

Full summary from toucharcade.com
Let's Create! Potter in iTunes store

Girls’ Games III – 1984-1994

In 1984 I was eleven and games had become quite male gendered, but I didn’t really notice. At that time all we wanted was to have fun together. We watched videos at home or hung out in the park and made all old school pranks we could come up with. The first ‘date’ was a gang of us going to see Splash and the next we went to the Tivoli, always with our parents in the background. They kind of supported us to do fun stuff together in a demi freedom.



This absence of problems soon turned to something very complex and confusing – the teenage. The old classmates went out of status as we changed school and the run for the top started. The top equaled being popular and seen, preferable by everyone. There was no self analysis or strategy in that plan, only thoughtless action. And the peer pressure was heavy. Everyone did their best to sit on everybody they could sit on to reach higher status. It was all about doing things nobody else dared and about doing things everybody else did - rebelling from parents, school, teachers and old friends – embracing new friends and media. Brands, style and music were some of the very important details to get right.


In the late 80s the supermodels were the most unreachable goal every girl aimed for. Elle McPherson, Paulina Porizkova, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington were later run over by even more unattainable Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campell and Kate Moss. http://forums.thefashionspot.com/f96/supermodels-1980s-35456.html I scanned every magazine, knew every Stockholm based model and even today I know every image from these times by heart. They almost feel like old friends of mine when I see them today. The girls with contracts were admired by everyone. My doubtlessly biggest focus was not to get a boyfriend, it was to lose some weight. I was 100% convinced that that would do my success in all ways.

The goals were clear: to be popular, to be seen

The method was: to lose weight and become a supermodel



During ‘college’ years the girls started to work weekends to earn extra money to save. The boys did not in the same extent for some reason, maybe they trusted everything to solve by itself, maybe they were always saved by parents when needed?
Everyone was going to the gym, solarium and spent a lot of time on their hair. Things were more relaxed and the hunt for popularity in school was not at all as intense. Studies, work and a few selected friends and gossiping occupied all our time. We played board games, went to discos and parties and baked a cake in the afternoons. We never watched TV, at most an hour between school and homework. Games did not exist. To the girls.

But the boys played all along though we didn’t know. Or rather – we did know, but we were that uninterested that we didn’t even hear them talking about it. It was something they did by themselves or boys only and probably didn’t talk about not to be a bore to the girls.

I realized this when I met my first boyfriend (I was very late on this, more interested in myself than in boys as said before) and a console was a natural part of his apartment even though he wasn’t a big gamer. I had no fear though and outplayed him frequently. I didn’t last for very long there. I'd say that both he and his friends had no problem with the girls playing though, rather that they were not going to change their interest for any girl and almost forced us to play if we were going to hang out.

On the arcades I felt a little more mal placé. Those places were dark, uncozy and non social. Not very girly in any way.

Finally, in the university, Internet, e-mail and mobiles appeared!!! The two first were easy to adopt. No more did we have to run around all libraries to find the information we were looking for, and no more did we have to send letters by snail mail to our abroad friends.

The mobile phones took some time though to approach. They were no very user friendly to begin with and many girls hesitated to use them when it went ok as it did, but finally we did and no more we have to get up early in the weekend mornings to not miss everyone before they were out of their homes.

So what’s the same and where are the differences in teens’ habits today? To be continued…

Previous posts on Girls' Games
Girls' Games I - 1980-1984
Girls' Games II - kids 2010

Girls' Games II - 2010

In 2010 7-10 years old boys play football and/or hockey. Girls too, 'it’s so good with team sports'. Then girls also do the gymnastics, ride horses and dance. No boys do that. Obviously it’s not considered important for the future.

Girls’ and boys’ outfits are more clearly separated both in colors and styles than back in the 80s, and the toys provided are still different according to current gender. Girls play with Littlest Pets and boys with Star Wars dolls, sorry figures, and Pokemon collectibles. Barbies are often passé already by 7. The ‘throw ball on the wall’ game has completely vanished. There were of course little commercialism in that, and no status gained.



But even though girls and boys seldom mix, the love games appear in the same age as before, around 7 or 8, and offer opportunities to spend some time together. Otherwise it’s only in computer games that I see girls and boys unite.

Today the computer experience starts a lot earlier though. Seven years ago we played on Disney.com with our one year old daughter. Today our youngest boy’s first words in the morning are ‘I want to play the veggies’ (veggie samurai for iPad).

My girls and their girl friends join at someone’s place playing Indiana Jones or Wii , and iPet. The family favourite is Little Big Planet. The girls spend most of their gaming time customizing their sackboy while dad is running the game forward.


The girls also play online. I’d say none of their male friends would ever join in the favourites girlsgogames or Stardoll, but otherwise it’s both online and by the consoles that they and their class mates find a common interest that today is gender neutral. The girls sit in the phone with Eliot and Linn while playing Panfu. They suddenly spend a couple of hours at the boy next door – playing Star Wars – a game they would not choose themselves, but that is fun enough and the console itself is not a problem.

Somewhat we’re back to the start of the games. I’d say many children don’t see the games, computers and consoles as male gendered. They don’t see them as techniques or machines, but as media for entertainment. They are not afraid to handle a joystick, even though I admit that the girls still want to watch for a while before trying a game, while the boys just jump into the game giving it what it takes.

Why this has changed lately? Both computers and consoles have become a standard in our life style? Lots of dads (and some moms) keep buying new consoles and want their kids to play too? Computers are both tools, entertainment and communication today?

I know I generalize a lot. Also there are more local preferences today as the supply is much wider than 30 years ago (at least in Sweden who has shifted from a social state to a capitalistic model), but I have also run communication with millions of girls word wide for the last 5 years, why I believe there is some truth in these generalizations.

There are some stronger separations in real life toys and spare time occupations than 30 years ago though and there are yet not many games that are built for girls by girls, or even for boys and girls, by girls. And why don’t women play as much in the middle of their lives and returning stronger than men later on. And what do the girls find so great about the sackboy? To be continued…

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Girls' Games I - 1980-1984

Girls' Games I - 1980-1984

I'm thinking about girls' games, why and what they are, and I begin here today with my own experiences of games, friends and what we played back then around 1980-1984.

Me and a friend went to see a movie on our own for the first time when we were about seven. We choose Star Wars. Soon after dad returned from the States with a Star Wars printed long sleeved t-shirt for me. I wore it every day. It made me kind of interesting and in and Princess Leia in the front of the image was radiant.

Star Wars was a big thing by then. The boys in class did nothing but played with Star Wars dolls (for boys called figures, for girls dolls), while the girls had absolutely no interest in spacecrafts’ heavy artillery down the sandbox, resulting in explosions throwing the dolls, sorry figures, in all directions. We were lining up for ‘throwing ball at the wall’, where the rules were clear and everybody waited for their turn. Conflicts were by that easy to solve through discussions, and no pell-mell necessary. A few of the guys were sometimes jumping in.


About the same time most of us got a Game & Watch. I got some strange copy from dad when he came home from Asia. There was also a digital watch including a plane bombing game that gained me some status amongst my classmates.

Neither Star Wars or these first games had any gender tags by then. They were marketed as family entertainment.


A couple of years later the talented boys (these later on, not very cool guys) in class started to focus on Dungeons and Dragons, as well as designing road and water maps on checked paper. The girls at that time were lining up for jumping twist with rubber strings, waiting for our turn, following the rules. Sometimes we tried to adopt the guys’ interests as football and marbles just to get some time spent together, but most of all we enjoyed the mixed teams hunting each other down on the meandering backyards. Actually when thinking about it, the same guys sometimes jumped in on the rubber strings and also preferred the mixed team hunts.

A guy in our class got an Atari console. We used to gather at his place to race with cars. The girls tried it. The guys had absolutely no problem with that, and they did not in any way try to exclude us, and yet we weren’t that interested, only for shorter pauses in more interesting real life interactions. Soon all boys had a console at home. None of the girls did. I guess also the parents found car racings and war games more proper for young boys than for the girls.

As I remember it the girls and the boys had different interests of their own as well as mixing up and trying out each others' games. The theme of the console games did by time not match the girls' interests at all why the games became a boys' thing.

To be continued...

Art inspiring to art

Now I get it - my fascination for 3D and art getting inspired by eachother. Julian Meagher is here showing me that it is more about art inspiring to art that is the interesting thing about it.

4 Previous posts on art inspired by art

Digital inspried oil canvases

Again a wonderful oil on canvas inspired by the digital formats. Hand made is appreciated mostly by the time put on something easy to make fast kind of. By Maurizio Bongiovanni. More to see on my fave design site Koi koi.

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Färgsamling

Nu är jag igenom Maja Jacobsons 'Färgen gör människan' och har under tiden hunnit tänka igenom vad rosa, lila och blått betyder för mig och många andra. Kläder speglar alltid det aktuella samhället och det blir lika mycket en historiebok som en bok om färger. Det är ju det som är så roligt med mode... tycker jag. Jag samlar här flera artiklar kring färg.

"De där svarta kläderna är verkligen jag"
Du får bara en chans att göra ett första intryck. Under den parollen blir vi slavar under våra ytor. Men även om vi har ett aldrig så avslappnat förhållande till innehållet i våra garderober, så sänder kläderna meddelanden om vilka vi är - eller vill vara. I kostym blir man behandlad på ett annat sätt än i munkjacka. Genom att välja sexiga kläder stärker man sin könsidentitet inför festen. Men den som är alltför stajlad på universitetet får det svårt att bli tagen på allvar.

Kampen om färgernas betydelse går vidare
Färger reser över tid och rum och byter betydelse genom grupptryck, teknikutveckling, kommers, revolutioner och ren slump. Vi har läst boken "Färgen gör människan", pratat med författaren Maja Jacobson och ger sju kulturhistoriskt färgstarka svar.

Färgernas alfabet
Med färgsymbolik menar vi användningen av färger för att beskriva sinnestillstånd, egenskaper och kulturella uppfattningar. "Färgska" är det första språket vi lär oss och ett användbart sätt att kommunicera utan ord.

Svart sätter färg på trafiken
Den vita hajpen har lagt sig. Silver börjar bli hopplöst ute. Nu kommer svart på bred front. Men den som vill synas i trafiken ska välja starkt gulgrönt. Bilfärger är både mode och vetenskap.

Den problematiska färgen
För flickor är rosa bekymmersamt, för pojkar i det ­närmaste tabu. Men hur kan en färg väcka så många – och i vissa fall kluvna – känslor?
– Rosa är en kulturell nyckelsymbol för sam­hällets föreställningar om kön, sexualitet och makt i samhället, säger genusforskaren Fanny Ambjörnsson.

Color Symbolism
The world we see is filled with color. Color is important in art and in various cultures around the world. People of the world see colour differently. This is because tradition, religion, and symbolism affects how people feel about color.

Lace and Purple - Women's only

Lace is something of the most feminine you can wear. You see a ruffled shirt sometimes on some guy trying out the leather rokoko rock style, but a sheer layer of white lace is very rare to spot.

Also the colors of purple and purpur are often reserved for women. Especially in soft materials. As well as the overall - in soft materials, and knickers or bloomers.

Until 200 years ago the fashion was different. Men posed in lace and purpur to show off their financial grandeur. Purpur was the most expensive color to produce, gathered en masse from small shells and lace the most expensive fabrics. The men were just as much as the women porters of these signals of wealth.

With the industrial revolution wealth came with work and men started to wear more practical and dull suits, while their women got the one and single task to still represent the status of the couple with expensive and fantastic outfits. The women became the beautyful, the jewellery great to look at.


At the same time Darwinists concluded that men and women had different purposes, they were different and it got important to show those differencies by all powers. So the purple, still worn by women became the color of the weak, of fragility close associated with trembeling flowers. The lace became as female as can be, and the blommers are only seen as women's underwear ever since.

There was an attempt in the 70s to brake these associations, but I believe it only made them stronger. Will we ever see them on men again? Do we want to?

Sad, not scared, of what we are becoming

Strong images from Japanese artist Tetsuya Ishida touch me as visualizing the human disapproval of and unhappiness in what and who we are becoming.