Dove & Epic Games Fight Back Against Hypersexualized Female Game Characters

Dove has been on a mission to advocate for proper representation of women in the gaming industry for a while now. In a new campaign spot from the company and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, the duo aims to take down the toxic portrayals of girls as hypersexualized characters.
 
The video depicts the star of an action game, Cinthia, who returns to her dressing room after filming and removes her body armor and mask to reveal that she’s not the overly sexualized she is portrayed as. The protagonist stares worriedly into the mirror about her appearance. Once it’s time for her to return to the set, she decides that she’s done with this false voluptuous appearance, and instead embraces her natural beauty.
 

Cinthia is based on a real-life person, and is part of Dove’s public image bank, allowing developers to download characters drawn in the likeness of real women. This is accompanied by Unreal Engine’s ‘Real Virtual Beauty Training’ education tool, which aims to teach what proper representation and diversity for females in the gaming world should look like.
 
The campaign was inspired by Dove’s research that showed 60% of girls and 62% of women did not feel adequately represented in games. In addition, one-third of young girls also felt like their self-esteem was negatively impacted due to a lack of variety in terms of characters.
 

 
 
[via Famous Campaigns and LBB Online, screenshot via Dove]