He has also issued provocative quotes, like this widely reported statement: “The missions and goals for the bimbos are morally sound and teach children about the real world. We apologise to any players whom this may inconvenience but we feel in light of this weeks proceedings it is the correct action to take.” With his eyes set on other countries, Bimbo developer Jacquart has bowed only a little to media pressure to alter his site - the homepage now includes the message: “As a result of this rather surprising media attention we have decided to remove the option of purchasing diet pills from the game. It has had a steady increase of traffic since January - reaching 1.2 million players as of late March, but it too is starting to drop off.) (The French site, Ma Bimbo, has been around since October 2006 and features a less sexualized drawing on the site’s front page. The cash infusion provides players more “Bimbo dollars” to buy things such as breast implants, tanning sessions and pedicures, all to make them more popular on the site.Ī Frenchman has already sued Miss Bimbo’s French sister site after his daughter ran up a text message bill of $200. Although it is free to register for and play Miss Bimbo, when players run out of virtual currency, they have the option to continue to compete by buying Bimbo text messages at the cost of $2.99. “Frankly, what have kids already absorbed from the media about their own worth and the worth of girls if this site is so popular?”Īnother hot-button issue is the crass commercialism of a site that encourages youngsters to alter physical appearances with artificial and hyper-sexualized alternatives. “Our research shows that representation of girls in media tends toward overvaluing them for their appearance and undervaluing them for their inner character,” Cook told the Los Angeles Times. Parental groups and feminist organizations have piled on with arguments exemplified by Allene Cook, executive director of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. But this time, instead of boys encouraged to use violence in real life (picked up by playing first-person shooter games), girls playing Miss Bimbo might internalize the game’s competitive diet-pill popping and plastic surgery. Like so many “kids and video games” stories before it, the gist of the arguments against Miss Bimbo was that impressionable young girls might subscribe to the social mores of the game. And others noted that the bare Bimbo that a player starts out with is slender, long-legged and dressed in her skivvies. Breast implants to keep one’s pet Bimbo well endowed ignited further conversation. Of the many charged issues that come with Miss Bimbo game play, it seemed that media pundits were most focused on the diet pills available for purchase to keep one’s Bimbo thin (they have since been removed from the game). A post on the Miss Bimbo homepage cites “unforeseen worldwide interest” as the reason for the site’s inability to load. At the time of writing this story, the game was inoperable. Traffic has since dipped as the press frenzy has died down. Charming.Robin Goad, research director of Hitwise in Britain, a company that collects Internet usage data internationally, said British traffic to the site increased a hundredfold between March 22 and 25. Evans also claims that the game is just aiming to be realistic: “The breast operations are just one part of the game and we are not encouraging young girls to have them, just reflecting real life.” You know, the kind of real life where nine year-olds get boob jobs. While feeding your bimbo too much chocolate has added virtual pounds to the animated girls’ hips, feeding her fruits and vegetables will improve her health, Evans points out. “But there are lots of positive lessons that replicate messages in real life.” Perhaps even worse than the sexist and dangerous messages being sent to young women, is the cavalier response of the Miss Bimbo creators (both men, btw). They are given missions, including securing plastic surgery at the game’s clinic to give their dolls bigger breasts, and they have to keep her at her target weight with diet pills. They compete against other players to earn “bimbo” dollars so they can dress her in sexy outfits and take her clubbing. An online game, Miss Bimbo, encourages girls (as in under 10 years old) to buy their avatars plastic surgery – face lifts, boob jobs, you name it – in order to be the “hottest, coolest, most famous bimbo in the whole world.” Yeah.Ĭhildren are given a naked virtual character to look after.
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