What It Means To Be A Girl Gamer (aka my first writing gig!)

I sent this as a sample article to Examiner.com, which they accepted. Things are still being set up, but I am now a local "Girl Gamer Examiner" for Kansas City. :D
Examiner is nation wide, but it focuses on local issues in various cities. I'm fairly pleased with myself considering I have no professional writing experience and submitted this on a whim.

The article is posted below:

When you hear the word 'girl gamer', what do you think of? Popular culture paints us as the sullen girlfriend, watching on as our boyfriends ignore us while playing Halo. Hardcore gaming just isn't our forte. We're the care takers, lovers of all shiny pink things, who spell everything plural with a “Z” and think violent games are “icky”. It would seem that because of our gender, we're doomed to the title “casual gamer” and are confined to our baby pink Nintendo DS to play Imagine: Babyz.
It's as if hearing our voices on Xbox Live is a rare and melodious phenomena that only occurs once in a great eon. In a 2009 study conducted by the Entertainment Software Association, 40% of the gaming population is female and women 18 and older comprise of 34% of the gaming population. While we are certainly not the majority, these statistics indicate that we're more than just a novel concept.
Luckily there are those in the industry setting out to change the perception of girl gamers. Professional gaming groups such as Ubisoft's Frag Dolls aim to encourage women to play video games and prove that women can enjoy the same games as men. Sony has an annual scholarship running for the past three years called G.I.R.L. (Gamers in Real Life) to “positively impact the way females are depicted in video games and create and influence content to be appealing to women", as stated on their website.
While girl gamers have come a long way, there seems to be this parallel between the Frag Dolls and the “gurl gamerz” marketing would depict us as. Despite the slick, shiny, pink packaging, girl gamers are more than baby simulator enthusiasts with dubious spelling skills.

Not Pulitzer material, mind you, but it's a start. ^^