Articles and discussions about the effects of video & computer games on children, especially girls, often come up these days. My feeling is that we can’t stop the sexist potrayals and the violence, however we should make efforts to educate children about real life versus fantasy. But sometimes I see examples of this that are so subtle that I worry about the pervasive and cumulative effects of all the media kids are exposed to. I was reading a graphics card package and there was a set of photos touting its amazing features. One picture showed a graphically generated woman, nice and curvy. The caption underneath said something about how in order to render all the curves effectively, you need lots of polygons, which of course this card would do. So, buy this card, you’ll get better boobs on your screen. Woo hoo. I guess that should be more palatable marketing to me than connecting beer with bikinis and sex with violence. But it still gives me cause to pause — and think about society and what should be healthy and what shouldn’t be. What messages should I fight back against and what ones are OK?