Table Top Games

My inspiration for this week's tag is Snakes and Ladders. I remember a board that my mum and uncle had as children, which had little morals on it. If you were good you went up the ladder and if you were bad you went down the snake. The board had cute illustrations of the misdemeanors/good deeds and the consequences of both. While I was doing some research I came across this blog post with some interesting thoughts about the game http://elizabethmcclung.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/evening-of-intimacy-and-lessons-from.html

Anyway I decided to use the theme of table top games to make morals for my snakes and ladders tag. The little girl on square 38 is cheating - she is holding cards behind her back. What an awful, sneaking cheat she is, so down the snake she goes. The little boy on square 18 is congratulating the little girl who has one the game of ludo they're playing - well done young man, up the ladder you go! I haven't thought about the consequences of these, but in the original they were very variable and didn't always reflect the crime. Little girls quite often ended up destitute for their bad behaviour, whilst boys got the cane! The crimes were also quite stereotypical - for instance, the boy chased a cat, while the girl skipped in the road! For my tag, I had the girl cheating and the boy being a good loser. (Not that I'm saying boys always cheat and are bad losers!)
Who knew Snakes and Ladders was such a minefield of morality and sexual politics?!