The next installment of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise is set to release on November 14th. GTA VI will be groundbreaking in many ways, but one of its new feats will be the first playable female protagonist in the series history with Lucia Caminos. And the internet does what it does which is lose their minds as they collectively objectify her for likes, shares, and social clout.

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Lucia isn’t the first female protagonist in gaming to be objectified like this. There’s a history of it. Tomb Raider is a retrospective lesson in understanding the reaction to GTA’s Lucia. Tomb Raider, aka Lara Croft debuted in 1996 as a British archeologist. She raids tombs with akimbo pistols, shorts, combat boots, and a crop top. The people lost their minds. This was before social media but during the time that the internet was increasing its reach and gaming magazines were how people got their video game news. Lara Croft was featured on magazine covers in various poses and articles of clothing as if she was posing for Playboy. A fan of the game even made a patch to the code of the original game to be able to remove her clothing and play the game with her nude. After a certain point the creators of the game had to get involved legally to stop these people.

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Lucia may not be on magazine covers the same way Lara was but she’s gracing the magazines of our time which is Instagram carousels with countless memes discussing her features, capabilities and people projecting their relationship hopes and dreams onto her.

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I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that. But we live in a consumerist capitalistic culture that encourages us to view others as things that only have value if they’re useful to us in some way. If we can consume them in some form. And while Lucia isn’t a real person, I believe that the way we interact with her online reflects the attitudes that we can carry towards women in real life whether we’re aware of them or not. And its not just men that can perpetuate, but women and other groups as well as consumerism can envelope us all if we aren’t careful. We gotta stop being weird

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