Love it and Shove it - Sim style

[strangetomato]

I have a gripe, but I also brought along something I like to balance it out. I'll start with the bad, then end with the good (like sugar after the medicine).

I've been enjoying the glimpse at Sims 3, but I've been turned off in a big way by the new heap of gender stereotyping and the fact that sims wish specifically for a male or female baby. I'm really hoping there's also a "don't give a shit" option.

 

And also that someone makes a mod to remove the blue/pink blankets or make them purple or bright red or anything other than the two gendered colours. 'Cause, you know, it's so important to know the gender of a baby. Otherwise, how would you know whether to say the baby is pretty or smart or strong or... and so on and so on. *gags*

(An image can be found in this GoS thread - just as an example, of course. My gripe is obviously with the game, not the player.)

But, lest I jump to conclusions, maybe this is just one of many options and we can now change the outfits of babies? I'm just making assumptions, based on the baby gender wants. *crosses fingers* Dear EAxis, please change this before the game is released. Oh, who am I kidding?

Now for the good, to wash that bitter taste from my mouth: the Late to the Party - Short Hair for Men mesh by fantasyrogue. This is a brilliant male hair mesh, in my opinion. I LOVE it. To echo my comments on her post at GoS, this really looks more like typical male hair to me (especially those gents who are 30+), which I'm always eager to have more of. I'm in love with the suggestion of a receeding/thinning hairline on this mesh, because so many guys do have that, and I find it endearing.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Of all the things that suck about TS3, it seems pretty silly to be upset about the pink/blue thing - it's a cartoony representation of gender, just like the eyelashes for female servos in TS2. It's not like the game makes you pick girly traits for girls and vice versa. As for the gender wishes, if they work like other wishes than you can make them go away if you want to. Also, real people have wants for particular genders, and not usually because of sexism.

Also, it's been really hard for me to tell male and female sims apart in the game as it is - their faces all look so damn similar. It's really a relief when sims are dressed in stereotypically male/female clothing.

The mother having to stay home with the baby is annoying, but I got done being outraged over it back in TS2. (Sigh.)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Say what you will, but the issue of gender will never be silly and inconsequential to me.

And maybe not all desire for one gender over another in a child is rooted in sexism (though some surely are, since gender inequality is still a very real thing), but it does come back to the idea that there are significant differences between the sexes and somehow these differences matter more than the inherent differences among members of the same sex or those between any and all people.

I know real people do this all the time, and it bothers me in RL too. It's not like it's any of my business when it's a personal thing, of course, but I prefer not to think this way myself, so I'd rather it not play such a major role in the game.

It is a little reassuring that people seem to be saying that all of these wants can be ignored. I'm hearing a lot of other bad things with gender stereotyping, though. (See simnovoris's comment above.)

[(Anonymous)]

Well, there's a difference between, say, assuming that women can't do something just because they're women, or assuming that all women will naturally like the same things or choose to behave in the same ways, and dressing a baby in pink so that people won't think it's a boy. I don't personally think gender roles are necessarily bad, they're just there. Then again, my sister shaved her head as a way of protesting the idea that women should have long hair, so maybe they can be.

If it makes you feel any better, I think there'll probably be a generic "Have a baby" want/wish, too, since multiple levels of specificity exist elsewhere in the game too - for example, my sim rolled up "Write a Novel", "Write a Sci-Fi Novel" and "Write a Novel that Makes at least $30 a week in royalties". Basically, you get to lock (or "promise") 4 wishes at a time, and you can make any of them go away (either the promised ones or the ones that are available to be promised) by right-clicking them. If you make one go away, it usually doesn't come back, or at least not for a while.

I will be majorly disappointed if there is some male-specific moodlet for having great woohoo, but I kind of doubt that there is - for one thing, I haven't seen (or heard of) any gender-specific moodlets (with the exception of the pregnancy-related ones, since apparently there is no intentional male pregnancy in this one, though there have apparently been unintentional ones in which the man's body disappears completely for the entire three days). Secondly, most of the moodlets like that, which seem to only exist in the sim's head (also, "Had a cold shower", "Ate unevenly cooked food", "Leftovers tasted like Refrigerator", etc.) have to do with the quality of the objects used and not anything to do with the actual sim(s). Maybe in this case it has to do with the bed? There is definitely a bad moodlet that you get from getting a partial night's rest, which claims only to trigger if it was on a cheap bed.

I have heard of the issue all sims apparently loving pregnancy, which would kind of suck too, if it's true. There's a "Dislikes Children" trait, though, so I guess the real test of it will be to get a woman who dislikes children pregnant, and see if she likes it too.