Women Soldiers in Call of Duty

I have never gone Black Friday shopping before and this Thanksgiving break my mom, boyfriend, and I ventured to Wal-Mart just to see what all the fuss was about. Somehow we ended up with an X-Box despite the fact that people were actually fighting over them (I am pretty sure my foreign boyfriend cut in line to get one). Anyways I gave it to my dad and we bought him a couple of games including the new Call of Duty: Ghosts game. While my boyfriend and dad were playing the video game I noticed that there were actually female soldiers featured and I was impressed despite the violent nature of the game. I decided to google this to see if maybe it was a new development to have women characters featured in the game, and it turns out that this newest edition of Call of Duty is the first to do so. I found this article (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2013/11/04/call-of-duty-ghosts-launch/3349755/), which doesn't really focus on the introduction of female characters but it does address the change. The article discusses all of the changes this newest edition features, one of which is the possibility of being a woman soldier, which according to the article is "a nod to the growing female player base." Despite the fact that this game glorifies violence and actually directly coincides with one of our previous discussions regarding the glorifications of American troops in general, I think this is nevertheless a step in the right direction. From what I saw the female soldiers are just as tough as the men and are by no means dainty or fragile but rather complete badasses. I was pleasantly surprised to notice this change due to the fact that women are largely portrayed as both submissive and promiscuous in most video games (for example the Grand Theft Auto franchise which portrays almost all the women in the game as hookers or strippers). I think this is a positive step!