Gen Katz is editor of Games4Girls.com, an online zine that focuses on games that appeal to girls. For this exclusive Your Studio blog, she writes about Paper Dolls and Dress-Up videogames. You can get The Princess Bride Game Paper Dolls featuring Buttercup and Westley by clicking here and scrolling down to “Printables.”
I’ve been reviewing games for girls for about 10 years and while styles have changed, dressing the bod still ranks as one of the more satisfying, fun activities that come up in games. We even have dress-up category on our game site on Games4Girls.com.
While dressing up and paper dolls have been around for a long time, Barbie Fashion Designer was the breakthrough game for girls. Not only the clothing design, but novel attachments and material, made the clothes construction actually possible. It was never done that way again.
From then on, if it was a girl game, it had dress-up. Games expanded the dressing component by including the role of designer to the games. Barbie Fashion Show includes the requisite wedding assignment. Every Barbie game, including the ones with horse adventures, has a dress-up component. Girls’ favorite characters, such as Raven, Hannah Montana and the Bratz have dress-up — some to greater or lesser degree. In the Bratz games, shopping around for clothes, accessories and make-up becomes a major component of the game.
For Sims 2 H&M Fashion Stuff, Electronic Arts in has actually linked up with a real store – H&M. “See it in the game – wear it on the street.”
And, of course, there is the whole panoply of Disney characters, each one of them a princess with a multitude of ball gowns, necklaces and tiaras. If you mother objected to Barbie or Disney, there was the politically correct American Girl Dress Designer, where you could dress dolls in the historically appropriate costume and even put on a play. It’s actually a good game, but too complicated if all you wanted to do was dress-up without a history lesson. To cut to the chase, here is a site that offers pages full of wedding dresses. 
Pets offer yet another opportunity for dress up: their hair colored, and manes braided, festooned with accessories and garlands of flowers. What would virtual worlds be without dress-up?
And lets not leave the men out of this dressing-up activity. In spite of those who consider that dressing-up is “girly girly” and a trivial pursuit, when men go at it, they go all the way. In Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, the customization options are so extreme they would make any Barbie game pale by comparison. Choices include accessories for left and right hand; tattoos (some of these are so gorgeous that your skater must go shirtless); glasses; hair (bald, afro, dreds); facial hair (soul patch, goatee beard); socks (long argyle, plaid, none); shoes (high tops, and something called “dvs marathons”); belt and belt buckle – and I’m sure I’ve left some stuff out.
For boys, cars are their dress-up face to the world. It’s called “pimping,” but it really should be called “primping.” In racing games, the object to winning the races is to fancy up your car, get street cred and attract the girls.
In the movie and game Iron Man, a wealthy industrialist and genius inventor who has, at my last count, 35 power suits to his name in different colors, different powers, and different styles, will be seen in at least four of them.
And finally, to give recognition to where it started, we can’t forget paper dolls. Dover makes an endless variety of paper doll books: brides, show people, story-book characters. There’s even one for George W. Bush with wife Laura and their two daughters. My favorite is the Erte collection. They are so gorgeous, and I was wondering, “Why not just show all the costumes already on the models?” It was then that I realized that it’s because that’s not dressing up. Dressing up requires the action of putting on, taking off, choice and accessorizing. Just looking isn’t enough.
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