After four years we finally see the first female player character in the Pokemon games: Kris. After selecting the girl option upon beginning a new game the player will be greeted by her as their sprite, with her bike shorts, red shirt, strange sneakers and backpack. Kris isn’t very revealing in her looks, unlike Hilda from Pokemon Black and White, and her character has no defined color or style that goes specifically along with a

feminine look I would argue. Rather, she seems to mirror the player of Gold pretty well. They both wear shorts, and they both have extremely spiky hair that certainly could not be styled like that in real life. So, problem solved, right? Well, the creation of female protagonists would continue for years to come, and unfortunately most didnot mirror their male character as well as Kris mirrored Gold. 

The issue began with the creation of Pokemon Firered and Leafgreen, the remakes to Pokemon Red and Blue (I know its confusing, but Game Freak is dumb). Upon being released on the sweet gorgeous Game Boy advance, in comparison to the original Game Boy, it was time for various graphical improvements and more details to be added.

 As such the player characters got a revamp, or character should I say. Red was redesigned, now with some more details added to his jacket, hat and accessories. And a new character was added! Introducing the unnamed protagonist who never received an official name but was the second female protagonist in the Pokemon series to follow Kris in leading an example of what was to come. For simplicity’s sake, we will refer to her as Leaf, since that is what the fans have ultimately deemed her. Now Leaf is an interesting character, who sports opposite colors of Red and also opposite amounts of skin showing apparently. Where Red has extremely large pants that do not fit him at all Leaf has a fitted short skirt, that might not be appropriate for adventuring. She also sports a sleeveless shirt and a VS Seeker that color codes itself as Pink, for females, just in case you forgot, that she is female, and females like Pink, Ga

me Freak really is subtle with their identifiers. Again, it is not an issue that Leaf is wearing a short skirt, but it is in comparison to Red wearing baggy pants and a backpack, with Leaf wearing her skirt and a purse that seems to set Leaf apart as the stereotypical “female” character for “females” to immerse themselves in. These stereotypes in design would continue for a few more generations, but I wanted to go over one more.

Pokemon Diamond and Pearl released on the Nintendo DS, sporting amazing revamped graphics, new Pokemon, new tiles and of course new player characters. Dawn and Lucas are perhaps the most interesting characters we can analyze from the list of player characters, and yes it may shock you to hear but this is again another situation in which the female protagonist is shown to wear more revealing clothing than the male player character. Again we see the male character with baggy pants, and this time with red shoes, a red hat, a red scarf and a blue watch. In comparison, Dawn has a pink stylized hat, with pink boots, a pink watch, a pink scarf, a purse and a dress that ends in a short skirt with pink edges. Now we see how both are wearing scarves, right? An obvious nod to Sinnoh being the coldest Pokemon region. And yet, Dawn is wearing a short dress. Her legs are revealed, and her dress is strapless? Here I think Game Freak is being very obvious in how they show the female character as always revealing more skin, as if females themselves wish to do so and wish to sacrifice comfort, and safety, for style. Lastly, to make matters worse in Pokemon Platinum we see Lucas and Dawn revamped, this time with heavier clothes! Lucas dons a heavy winter jacket, and keeps his full length pants and scarf. Dawn too gets some nice winter clothing, a full scarf and long sleeves for her…dress, that once again exposes her legs. Still. Now that Lucas is showing zero skin it would make sense for Dawn to do the same, perhaps too much sense for Game Freak though.