melanie mack how are you hello hi doing great really happy to be here
yay i love i was looking um at your youtube channel and you've been doing like videos
pretty steadily was youtube your first platform because i noticed you had a um like who even knows
what viral is anymore like right but you had this one video and i i wonder if it was your biggest
success at the time it was from 2013 it was called fake girl gamer right right yeah that was my first
viral video i've ever made wow yeah and you talked about you're like you're like ah this is this is a
a title that gets thrown around this is an insult that gets thrown around and it's this
idea and i've never been a gamer really like i dabbled a little bit like i played sega genesis
um i played sonic the hedgehog i played a little bit of indiana jones occasionally i would steal my
brother's game boy and do a little dr mario um so i'm not at all pretending to like at all know what
i'm talking about but i i love seeing similarities to the comedy industry and i think i see that
kind of in like the nerd world and then the gaming world the more people i talk to and it seems like
there's just so much competition and it also seems like the presence of just a beautiful woman uh
whether she's good at what she's doing or she's just starting out i feel like it triggers people
and like i want to hear about your experience because i feel like you're in a couple different
worlds of the internet right yeah i'm kind of in a couple different spaces but i feel like
what i'm most known for is the gaming space because that's what i started with and that's
what i put most of my time into and like um the whole fitness stuff which has been really
fun and exciting that's that's more of a new word development for the past like year or two
um but gaming is is is at the core of it and i do find that with myself and a lot of opinions
that i do have in the gaming space and especially involving you know women and and female characters
in games and and how i appreciate the very beautiful and even unrealistic beauty standards
i love it like look at classic lara croft that like perfect hourglass shape that there's no way
any real person could achieve quite that exaggeration that's a good example and i've talked
about i don't know if you know anna that star wars girl she was one of the first people i talked to
where she was like from from the nerd world and she was like no we need to stand up for these
and these artists and i can't remember their names but they were known for
drawing female characters and such because she's like it's a fantasy you're not supposed to have
realistic proportions like it's aspirational i think for women it's a fun fantasy aspect for
women and men as well so i'm just wondering like and i totally interrupt you but i'm wondering
when did you start to notice a little bit of a change um and a little bit of less acceptance for
basically like unrealistic or just beautiful women or beautiful characters in in like the
gaming world well i think it didn't really fully hit me until i don't know right around 2018 ish
um around the time like shadow of the tomb raider came out for example i feel like it really started
hitting me then because i've always admired the exaggerated beauty characters and all that but
at the time whenever we did start seeing more practical designs uh i was i was fine with it i
was even before i was like oh this is cool we you know let's let's have some diversity here but then
it finally clicked with me that this isn't about diversity they're they're just completely
shaming even uh these these more curvy and and unrealistic beauty standard characters as if
this is something that we have to apply to real life and as if anybody who plays a video game
is going to expect real women to look like this and things of that nature and so then i started
realizing hey this this looks like a big push against femininity in general because when you're
really unpacking why do these female characters have such exaggerated proportions well a lot of
it is just like with cartoons um it's a way to exaggerate certain characteristics and so someone
like lara croft um you know she's that femme fatale and giving her the proportions that she has
is an exaggeration of her being a woman just to just that extra stress like yes this is a powerful
woman and she is all woman you know super woman and she's extra feminine and like why is that a
bad thing and it's like yeah it's not simply inclusion it's not simply diversity it's like
beautiful women whether real or fantastical are are kind of like shamed are are
it's everyone's kind of more comfortable [ __ ] on them it's like it's like yeah well some women
do have really big boobs some women do have long legs some women do have like a naturally
thin kind of like constitution fast metabolism whatever and and that's like okay and i just feel
it's just an over correction in a sense and we see it everywhere from yeah like gaming to hollywood
to like really i don't know i think comedy as well like comedy content i see it i i feel like i
there's no way i would get a special on like nhbo or comedy central unless i was a super like woke
liberal or i went back to like my man-hating feminist ways like my fresh out of college
you know brainwashed sensibilities or if i were to like start to transition or be like a very vocal
like i don't know become like bisexual or lesbian or right you're just a regular person sorry you're
not gonna get a comedy special and i've kind of uh come to grips with that and i've sort of like okay
now i'm just going a different way i'm you know thank god that's not the only option in comedy
yeah and i i see even a bit of that in the gaming space in general just the things that
i've said which to me i consider pretty tame even uh are are very against the the approved narrative
and so me even being as outspoken as i have lately has put me at risk in
the gaming space of not getting future sponsor opportunities or not getting hosting
opportunities that i otherwise would have before if i just parroted the narrative and
and it's just wild to me because you know you can be a woman in this space and make a tweet and say
you know men suck they don't deserve rights or something like that and and get a hundred thousand
likes on it and have all the opportunities in the world but then if you say something else like
you know i made a tweet not long ago saying hey you know as women maybe we should stop being
victims here and and stop calling everyone a misogynist because they make a get in the
kitchen joke on xbox live it ain't that deep it's a joke just toss it right back at him
and and for me to even say that was seen as extremely controversial and and i know every
time i make a tweet like that or something like that that hey you know this might risk
my future in the gaming space but i ain't just gonna sit back and not share my opinions
on things things have completely over corrected like you said and it's just ridiculous right now
your twitter is the best if you're not following melanie mack on twitter right now you're missing
out because i'm like obsessed with all of your stuff i'm gonna play a little bit of one of your
rants where like every word out of your mouth i was like yes yes yes um and then we're gonna
expand uh a little bit on it all right feminism they say defend women they say but then when we
stand against the erasure of femininity and trying to force us all into one amorphous genderless blob
no then we're in cells or internalized misogynist instead we're supposed to push for women to be
victims to not take a joke to be weak that ain't feminism bro you're doing it wrong
fight for feminism they say defend yeah it's like it's you're basically summing up perfectly like
i don't know if it's an overcorrection or just it just seems like a very icky
motivation going on here it doesn't feel like acceptance to me it doesn't feel
i feel like i can only be accepted if i am an angry kind of caricature of a woman right if
you hate men you are perfectly accepted i mean yeah come on right ahead here get all the gigs
and it's like i i don't know i could never pretend to be a certain way just to get work just to get
specials just to like make more money and it's interesting that you say that you think you're
in danger of losing some work because of even just throwing out like a tic tac or tweet and
it's like you hear it and even people in the chat are like oh melanie's just saying things that are
common sense like how would this possibly cost her work but what kinds of opportunities do you think
you know having these out opinions is like really costing you what do you think you would
miss out on well here's the thing i mean i've been in the gaming industry for 12 years now
it is very interconnected and uh there is there there's a push for a certain narrative um now
some people might have the best of intentions and just kind of fall into it um but there are a lot
of people who uh push this narrative for almost controlling like purposes because the more that
us women play victim then the more they can control us
you