A representatividade feminina gorda em jogos eletrônicos: a personagem Mei (Overwatch) e a desconstrução de estereótipos socioculturais

Abstract

The present essay seeks to investigate how the representation of a fat female character in an electronic game occurs. Female representation in games is constantly subject to inadequate characterizations; their narrative construction is shallow and incomplete, and their bodies suffer from unnecessarily exaggerated sexualization. The female characters’ body structure is mostly thin and delineated, thus defining this body type as a pattern - however, this representation does not reflect the existing body diversity. Based on this premise, the objective of this work is to identify how the representation of the fat female figure breaks with the patterns and meanings imposed on this body type, taking into account that the fat body has a series of negative stereotypes attributed to its image. Mei, a character of the electronic game Overwatch, was chosen as object of study, aiming to analyze her construction as a character and to identify how her representation demystifies the negative significations attached to the fat female body. The analysis verified that Mei is a person well constructed in narrative terms, and her elaboration was developed without taking into account any aspect of corporal structure. However, her body still stirs up arguments, leaving her personal and intellectual traits in the background - reinforcing the distinction’s sense of the fat body, which can’t ever be totally ignored and dealt with normally.