This Christmas, like millions of other parents, I bought my two children, a boy and a girl,
a popular home video game system. I thought they could share it and when asked if this was OK
with them, they replied, "Sure mom, that would be great." So, we planned on installing the little
goody onto the TV in the family room, so that both kids would have an equal chance to play. So,
"What then?" you may be asking is the problem. The problem arose when we went to shop for
games for the system. They weren't hard to find. They were in all the local toy stores and
Walmart and Kmart too! But, there weren't any for girls! I looked high and low and came up
Why was this happening? Surely, girls must want to play video games as much as boys
do! Why then, aren't game manufacturers producing any video games that feature girls as the
main character? On a recent trip to our local Walmart store, I found over two hundred video
game titles, yes I counted, for our game system, but of these only two had female main
characters. One of them was, you guessed it, Barbie! The other one was a female warrior
dressed in a scantily clad leather outfit. I'm pretty sure the latter was designed for young men,
Surely, a big retailer, like Toys-R-Us would have more of a selection. So, off I went on
my merry way only to be once again disappointed. Toys-R-Us had over 300 titles in stock for
our game system and only the same two titles I found at Walmart were available there with one
new addition, which was the Spice Girls CD. It's price had been reduced, so I guessed it was left
over from last year when the Spice Girls used to be popular.
I ended up purchasing 4 games for my kids to play. I found a few with cartoon characters
as lead characters, that I felt would be appropriate for kids. I bought Rugrats, Loony Tu
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