The Dog Candy doesn’t carry a warning.

by Lauredhel on March 26, 2008

The website trumpets:

» 1964 online players at the present time and 206 851 registered Bimbos!

bimbocity

Miss Bimbo is a webgame aimed at girls as young as seven years old (grade 2). With a pricey-text-message business model and a pink-slathered aesthetic, the game rests on participants performing competitive virtual femininity with pots of enthusiasm and pots of cash.

Become the hottest, coolest most famous bimbo ever !

Welcome to Miss Bimbo. Enter the exciting world of the first ever, virtual fashion game !
Become the most famous, beautiful, sought after bimbo across the globe!

* Find your own cool place to live.
* Find a fun job to pay for your needs and all the clothes a Bimbo could possibly want.
* Shop for the latest fashions and become the trendsetting bimbo in town !
* Become a socialite and skyrocket to the top of fame and popularity.
* Date that famous hottie you’ve had your eye on and show the Bimbo world the social starlet you are !
* Even resort to meds or plastic surgery. Stop at nothing to become the reigning bimbo !
* Tackle your 104 tasks as quick as possible to become the rising star bimbo !!

Are you ready to become the hottest of hot Bimbos !?!

The criteria for the hottest bimbo? Fashion, Attitude, and Looks. Bimbos are judged on what they wear, their popularity, and how well their bodies conform to the patriarchal mandate. The game has, at its core, the mall with shops, a beautician studio, and a tanning salon. White girls only, I guess!

I registered with a birthdate putting me at barely seven years old. All I had to do was put in an (inactive) email address and claim it was my parents’ address, and I had immediate access to the game. And here’s what I saw first – yup, white girls only.

yourbimbo

(That “target weight”, by the way, calculates to a BMI of 20.5. And I’m eyeballing the pic as a fair bit lighter.]

So I wandered into the Market. Top of the list – “Diet Pill”.

After that, I had the choice of various fruits or vegetables, a chocolate bar, soy milk, soda, water, steak and chips (there is a specific advance remonstration about this option in the Rules section), cereal bar, bread, medicines, cupboards, a gym subscription or exercise equipment, and pet food. Protein? Not so much. Apparently growing girls’ bodies don’t need such trivialities. Books? Hahahahaha.

Off the to Shop. Top of the list again? Diet Pill, with the rollover text proclaiming, “Diet Pill, the easier way to eat!” The chocolate bar, soda can, cereal bar, steak and chips all carry warnings about “making your bimbo fatter”. Only the soy milk, vegetables, and bottled water come without a harange. And the rollover on the Vegetables? “Vegetables feed your bimbo without making her fatter. This is the most balanced meal.”

The Clinic? Offers plastic surgery, breast implants, and a psychologist. Because you’ll need one.

If players don’t have a parent-funded cellphone or Paypal account to load up the Bimbo Dollars?

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! Ain’t love grand !

Yup. They’re training second-grade girls in prostitution as a means to plastic surgery. Officially ill. Leaving site now.

[h/t to baroquestar]

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Tagged as: ableism, beautician, breast implants, classism, consumerism, diet pills, fashion game, fat hate, femininity, feminism, heterosexism, miss bimbo, nicolas jacquart, plastic surgery, prostitution, racism, tanning salon, target weight, toxic femininity, virtual world, webgame

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This article was written by lauredhel

Lauredhel is a forty-something woman with a disability. She lives in her Western Australian family home where books, Lego, and soapmaking gear constantly compete for space. She blogs about feminism, reproductive justice, freedom from violence, the use and misuse of language, medical science, being disabled, her vegetable garden, and whatever else pops into her head. Lauredhel also blogs at FWD/Forward (feminists with disabilities), scribbles at her personal dreamwidth journal Selective and Arbitrary, and co-moderates Hollaback Australia. She joined Hoyden About Town in 2007.

lauredhel has written 1311 posts for Hoyden About Town. If you liked this post, you might like to subscribe to the feed via RSS or EMAIL to get instantly updated for more posts like this.

{ 3 trackbacks }

first bratz, now bimbos « unconventional beauty: March 26, 2008 at 5:21 am
Me too « blue milk: April 6, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Racism Fatigue at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture: April 16, 2008 at 10:01 pm

{ 13 comments }

1 baroquestar March 26, 2008 at 1:26 am: Aside from the endless amounts of deconstruction we could do on this hellish version of “real life” (apparently, that’s what the developer thinks it reflects, anyway), it reminds me strongly of a childhood memory I’ve been getting mileage out of for years.

In my day, we played computer games not on the ‘net or our phones, but on big clunky tv-for-monitor, tape-drive, 15 mins to boot a game type machines. And one of those games was a Barbie game, which pitted you against another girl for a date with Ken. You had to get the right hair, car, shoes and such, all on time, or else Ken would *shock, horror* go out with some other sap.

I’ve been recounting that game to people for the last 20 years or so with a good laugh. You know, “har, har, weren’t the 80s funny and horrifying, thank god we don’t do that any more.”

Oh, no. We’ve apparently used this glorious, brave new world of technology to PERFECT the sexualisation and pornographication of our young women. Great. The 21st century version of my long-laughed over Barbie game, complete with surgery and instruction manuals for disordered eating.
2 Lauredhel March 26, 2008 at 2:09 am: There’s an interview with the developer in the Guardian.

The creators of Miss Bimbo insist it is “harmless fun”. Nicolas Jacquart, the 23-year-old web designer from Tooting, south London, who created it, said: “It is not a bad influence for young children. They learn to take care of their bimbos. The missions and goals are morally sound and teach children about the real world.

“If they eat too much chocolate in the game it is bad for their bimbos’ bodies and their happiness levels compared to if they eat fruit and vegetables, which reinforces positive healthy eating messages.

“If they are having problems with boyfriends or at work, the bimbos can talk through them with a psychiatrist.

“The breast operations are just one part of the game and we are not encouraging young girls to have them, just reflecting real life.”

Lauredhel’s last blog post..The Dog Candy doesn?t carry a warning.
3 bcapirigi March 26, 2008 at 8:09 am: dang, the site’s down. i hope it’s not for good!

[Edited out URL. bcapirigi runs a site with the following mandate (rot-13ed for those who don't want to know): "Guvf fvgr jnf chg gbtrgure ol n thl jub jbeevrf gung va-pnyy rfpbegf zvtug nyvrangr gurve pyvragryr ol cynlvat ernyyl fuvggl obare-xvyyvat zhfvp." ~lauredhel]
4 Helen March 26, 2008 at 12:54 pm: This might be useful.

Helen’s last blog post..Crawling out of the woodwork
5 Lauredhel March 26, 2008 at 3:01 pm: Helen: excellent! If anyone can’t access images, I’ll transcribe here: it’s a Geek Girl Stereotype Bingo card.

“Basically the rules are that when you see a media article, blog post, or anything else talking about women in relation to a geeky hobby (gaming, technology, science, etc) you pull out this scorecard and mark down which points the article touches on. If you get three in a row (diagonal counts), you win! If you get blackout, you win even more!”

There are nine cells in a pink matrix. Left to right, top row first:

- Simple or easy as being attractive to women.
- Cuteness or visual attractiveness as being attractive to women.
- The colour choice(s) as being attractive to women.
- Relationships being mentioned as being attractive to women.
- “Social” as being attractive to women.
- Women are seen as “casual”/non-serious users.
- Mentions shopping or accessories
- Talks about weight loss
- Femininity ala “pink” and other code words

Do we have blackout?
6 Tracee Sioux March 28, 2008 at 8:12 am: This is my story tomorrow. I suspect the site was pulled down for phone law violations.I couldn’t get on today. The creator – a 23 year old male – has a vested interested in convincing little girls to be his bimbo.

Tracee Sioux’s last blog post..Abstinence Only Failure
7 Lauredhel March 28, 2008 at 12:49 pm: The creator – a 23 year old male – has a vested interested in convincing little girls to be his bimbo.

Thin ones, anyway. Brrrrrr.
8 Helen March 28, 2008 at 7:15 pm: I’m so disheartened by the response from male LP’ers to Kim’s post on this topic on LP. So many of them really don’t get it, even the ones who I would have expected to get it.

Helen’s last blog post..Friday Dogblogging: Crate
9 tigtog March 28, 2008 at 10:00 pm: Me too, Helen. Me too.
10 Lauredhel March 28, 2008 at 10:57 pm: Helen: yes yesitty mcyesyes. Affirmative.
11 su March 29, 2008 at 12:38 pm: Yes. Yes. I was hoping for an opportunity to use the phrase “the silverbacks of the internet” because that is how it feels some times: like you have to wait out the intimidating rush of the blokes every freaking time something is tagged “feminism”.
12 Helen March 30, 2008 at 5:34 pm: The designers of Chinese toys are still trying to figure out the bimbo thing, though.

Helen’s last blog post..Ten minutes to Earth hour
13 Krista April 4, 2008 at 12:24 am: Are we absolutely sure it isn’t parody? It’s so over-the-top I can’t imagine it being used as a real game for girls.