A Girl Worth Saving: What Anita Sarkeesian Failed to Mention

So first of all, I like Anita Sarkeesian. I don't love her, but I like her. I didn't like her commentary on Sucker Punch, but I did enjoy her original Tropes vs. Women series because it touched on tropes people either didn't know about or hadn't thought of; she briefly summarized the trope and gave what I thought were compelling arguments why they were problematic. I think her video game project is worthwhile, but three videos on a row on the same trope? It's been months since the first video came out and all we've heard of are damsels in distress; I want to hear her talk about other tropes - any other trope will do. Just please, god please, stop talking about the damsels in distress.

But I am going to add to the conversation on them. Because for all of her talk on sexism, her three friggin' videos have been completely devoid of intersectionality. None. At all. Anita, you're better than this, I know you talked about race . . . once. You talked about it once. Which when you consider all the videos you've made one might expect more, but okay, you did it once, so I know you know race is an important component to the representation issue . . . right?

It is, and it's worth mentioning that here's very little diversity in the damsel role.

With a few exceptions (I assume), damsels are all created to be girls the player will deem worth saving. The damsel is pretty, she's young, she's thin, she's pure - conservatively dressed, wearing white, and/or stated to be pure of heart (like in Kingdom Hearts). Most notably, she's always white. Have there been any damsels of color? Er, no really I don't know maybe there has been one or two somewhere in gaming history. But all the damsels I've seen have been white. Let's face it, we may have a black president, but the gaming industry knows that their audience - or at least their mythical audience made up of only white teenage boys - and they know that some guys won't want to save a black princess, and they certainly wouldn't want to lose that audience.

EDIT: one of the Princesses of Heart in Kingdom Hearts was Jasmine, who's not white. One exception!

Remember, all the Disney princesses that had to be rescued in some way were white. The one black princess they had was independent, which was great, I don't mean we should be reducing black girls to damsels with no power or agency. Perhaps we've actually spared them the damsel role, which is certainly one way to look at it. But let's face it, we're not relegating white girls to damsel roles because we hate them or think they're worthless. Our world values girls who are worth fighting for, and there may be some cruelty in telling girls that only some of them are worthy of being rescued.