The One Time I'm Thankful for My Psycho-Ex

Most of us have had that weird crazy significant other at some point in our lifetime. And for those that haven't, the rest of us are very jealous of you. Well I was on the phone with Amanda, my rather extensively lying ex-girlfriend, a few days ago while I was doing my Japanese homework. She was carrying on and on about nothing in particular, and I added an occasional "Yep," or "I know right?" while I effortlessly blocked her out. Then she said something that caught my attention.

"So I'm thinking about joining the air force after I get out of high school this year."

I sat there, stymied. Now if you knew Amanda, you'd know that she's the typical private school Abercrombie and Fitch girl, not really basic training material. The conversation continued and, after a while of her rambling about her newly-developed-in-the-last-five-minutes aspiration, we began talking about women in the military.

After doing some general research, I verified that women and men are in fact separated during basic training as well as most other military training prior to deployment. Some argue that the demands on women during training are much more lenient than those on men. Others argue the exact opposite, saying that women are actually pushed much harder than men. I suppose the only real solution would be to merge the two groups during training. Of course they would bunk separately, but perhaps the only way to legitimately settle the argument would be to give both men and women the exact same experience.

What do you think?

Also Ironically About Zombies...

So about a week ago I bought the recently-released video game Left 4 Dead for the PC. Basically, the point of the game is to work together with three other people online to get through a 45 minute campaign. The catch is that you are constantly battling hordes of the undead while doing so. For example, the first campaign places the four characters, three men and one woman, on a rooftop in an urban city with the goal of reaching the top of the nearby 40-floor hospital in order to be rescued.

What I found interesting was initially brought to my attention when I was listening to the developer commentary on the game. One of the developers was talking about character design and began detailing the process of how they created Zoey (the one girl in the team). He said, "...we had to make her look battle-hardened, but also sexy at the same time." After hearing that, I began to think about her character more critically. I included an early concept drawing of her at the top of the blog just to give an idea of what she looks like in the game. The fact that Zoey, being the only female, had to be "sexy" really struck me as a statement about what the most important factors in displaying women are.

Some might argue that women have to be depicted in this way in order to please the male video game market. I would have actually probably agreed with that had I not played another video game recently called Far Cry 2. In this game, there are two or three different playable women characters, but none of them are modeled the same way that Zoey is. The characters all are depicted as being truly battle-hardened, plus they are all 35+ years old. Going by what some might argue, that would mean that the video game would not be as popular. However, the game has scored equally, if not higher than Left 4 Dead in various publications and websites.

I suppose my argument isn't as much how a video game should be made, but how women should be depicted. If it does not make sense to have a tall tan blonde in stilettos running through the rainforest, THEN DON'T HAVE ONE. To me, the believablility of a video game is far more important than if I am attracted to it. And even though I am hooked on Left 4 Dead, I would be just as hooked even if Zoey was ugly as sin.