I played all the gender neutral games with my brothers (Pong, Frogger, Asteroid, Galaga) and if games had a perceived gender bend to them, I wasn’t interested.

Mostly this was due to the fact that I didn’t like other girls. They played with dolls when I wanted to climb trees. They worried about wrinkling their unifrom skirts on the playground while I was playing tackle football on the pavement.

Of course, now I love all the girly stuff, but I didn’t grow into until later. As much as it was a struggle for my mom to find activities that matched my interests, I’m grateful I wasn’t bombarded with all the silly and paronizing (?) games I see now.

I mean, come on, what kind of mother let’s her daughter play with a doll refered to as a Bratz???

If a company can make being a chef or having a baby look like non-stop excitement, I’m betting they could do the same with the professions of architect, film producer, or, yes, even stock broker…as a matter of fact, I played “stock broker” with friends when I was a teenager – we made the game up ourselves.

Preteen girls are not adults–they still want to be chefs, ice skaters, veterinarians and fashion designers. While the terms they use may be silly, they picked these things because that’s probably what makes a fun game. If every pre-teen girl who said she was going to become a marine biologist actually became a marine biologist, there’d be little room for the fish. These games provide a fantasy and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Can you seriously imagine a game where you pretended to be a stockbroker or an attorney or a Ph.D? Left trigger shorts your position? Press Down to Deny Cert? Press A to defend your thesis, press B to spend another year smoking pot?

I can see a surgeon or something, but we’re still talking about 10-year-olds. Now you may have something with the Architect–but if it were all about reality, it’d probably still be a boring game.

How about:

Imagine: Parole officer
Imagine: Repo woman
Imagine: Bookie
Imagine: Zamboni Operator (I would totally buy that)

Sorry, it’s Friday and I’m silly but I do agree that those games are B.S.