Fashioning Game Cultures: The Gendered Dynamics of Looking and Feeling Like a Gamer – Tom Apperley

This exploratory talk will consider the role that fashion, and fashion photography has in including women in gaming cultures. This inclusion has often framed women in game cultures as objects to be looked at, yet fashion and clothes also provides people with intimate ways of expressing their sense of connection to, and feeling of belonging in, game cultures. The role of clothing and fashion in gaming culture has taken on additional significance in the contemporary image-rich social media environment of crowdfunding, influencers, streaming and esports. In this environment gaming fashion becomes deeply contested, as while it provides people with access to connections, community and commerce, fragile male gamers seek to reassert a misogynist visual regime to judge women gamers by their clothing to determine if they are ‘real gamers’ or ‘e-thots.’