I'm a Girl?

After working in a game store for the last few months I have had a chance to observe a few things. More recently, like this week I have had a complaint from a few people of the same nature. Basically several people came in and made the same complaint about different games. The complaint didn't have anything to do with gameplay, graphics or anything like that. Frankly it kind of surprised me that they had this complaint. What was it?

The complaint was that they were a girl in the game they were playing.

In one case there was an option to change the character to a male or female. But in the other the girl was the main protagonist and you didn't have the option. The last time that I heard someone mention it was today. The game was portal and the person saw their reflection in the portal and asked "Is that what you the person looks like?"

I answered, "Yeah."

"I'm a girl, I don't want to be a girl, I'm a guy."

The thing I don't get is the guy went on to make this an even bigger deal and I just had to think, do you realize how long it was before there were that many girls in games as playable characters? The market for that kind of thing is pretty male oriented and even worse when there are women in games they traditionally look like Laura Croft. What's the matter with playing a female protagonist? I mean I don't see any issue with it really. This guy acted like it was dehumanizing to have to be a girl for a few hours in a game.

I mean do these people think about the fact that any time a girl played she had to be a guy for years nearly...and that when they finally started to use girls they were almost always there to be this sexual object. Not that it actually is a huge deal, but it kind of pissed me off is all.