Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Virtual Bimbo

According to CNN, there's a web game out there called "Miss Bimbo" that encourages girls -- the site claims most users are between 7 and 17 -- to diet, find boyfriends, and get breast jobs. You know, all the things you want your little girl to aspire to.

Users 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, which cost 100 bimbo dollars.

Breast implants sell at 11,500 bimbo dollars and net the buyer 2,000 bimbo attitudes, making her more popular on the site.

And bagging a billionaire boyfriend is the most desirable way to earn the all important "mula" or bimbo dollars. ...

The site says: "Bimbo dollars is 'the cabbage,' 'bread,' the 'mula' you'll need to buy nice things and to get by in bimbo world. To earn some bimbo cash you will have to (gasp) work or find a boyfriend to be your sugar daddy and hook you up with a phat expense account!"

The advice on feeding the dolls is even more spurious, encouraging them to feed the dolls "every now and then" even though they want to keep their Bimbos "waif thin."

Although there are a number of parental activists that oppose the game (obviously), I tend to think the influence of the game is overrated. I think this might be feed into fears a young girl already has about her body image or sexuality, but if you're a normal, balanced girl, you'd understand the game is just a game. It's comparable to the argument about violent video games. Video games don't cause violence, but they sure can feed into tendencies that are already there.

Meanwhile, though, I'm not rushing to visit missbimbo.com, and I'm fairly certain the company created it knowing it would be perceived as controversial. Therefore, parents would ban it and therefore girls would want to play it more. But don't you love it when misogynistic sites feed into the fears of young girls and try to reinforce terrible stereotypes?

Cross-posted.

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