Teenage Coders Who Developed Tampon Run Bring Game to App Store, Create Catcall Run
Our Diva Cup runneth over.
Back in September we wrote about Tampon Run, a game created by high-schoolers Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser designed to dispel taboos surrounding menstruation and inspired by the 2013 real-life case of a State Trooper confiscating tampons (but not guns) from visitors attending a Texas State Capitol vote on abortion restrictions. Well good news, fans of political and body-positive projectiles: Tampon Run is coming to an Apple App store near you, and it has a sequel!
According to The Verge, the Tampon Run app is a little more involved than the online version, with a more fully-developed antagonist and progressively difficult challenges. Houser and Gonzalez hope the app will generate more players for the game, which has only had 232,000 unique visitors since launching last September. The two high-schoolers, who met for the first time at a Girls Who Code event last summer, are also in talks to write a book “that would encourage girls to code,” although they’re well aware a vocal minority may not want them in their chosen field. Houser says that although Gamergate “was horrible to see and to hear about […] it strangely made me want to be here more. I want to stand here like a woman. I want to hold my ground.”
At least Houser and Gonzalez have some handy projectiles to fling at anyone who gets in their way: in Catcall Run, players hurl “tools of empowerment” like pencils and books at catcallers who then change into graduation gowns after being “educated” in the error of their ways. To learn more about tampons and other menstrual missiles, how the pair got into games, and their thoughts on the stigma surrounding women’s bodies, check out the girls’ TED talk from back in December:
(via The Verge)
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