Beasley, Berrin, Standley, Tracy C. (2009) “Shirts vs. Skins: Clothing as an Indicator of Gender Role Stereotyping in Video Games.”

Berrin and Standley’s article "Shirts vs. Skins Clothing as an Indicator of Gender Role Stereotyping in Video Games", discusses the use of clothing as a base of stereotyping in video games. They claim that video games are a source of influence and can create a standard of gender for children who play these video games. The authors claim that as children play these games, they are being negatively influenced by the stereotypes created by avatar clothing choices (especially young males who only see women in a provocative light due to the female avatars lack of coverage).

Berrin and Standley randomly selected 47 video games from two different gaming devices and analyzed which sex was being portrayed and what kind of clothing they were wearing. They found that only 13.74 percent of characters were female of the 597. The authors used research from Funk (1993) that suggested boys were more prone to playing video games for more than 3 hours after school than girls were. As video games are under-representing women and portraying them as provocative, children are being fed this and it is becoming the new normal. A study by Berrin and Standley showed that in a sampling of adult titled video games that male characters far outweigh female characters and that the sleeve length on females was only there half the time, as females were dressed in tank tops, bathing suits and halter tops.

Berrin and Standley concluded that the amount of gender stereotypes in games is astronomical. Female characters are vastly underrepresented and overly sexualized. This creates a good breeding area for boys to grow up believing this is how women are and should be portrayed, this is unacceptable.

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