The website trumpets:
» 1964 online players at the present time and 206 851 registered Bimbos!
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.
(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]
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.
There’s an interview with the developer in the Guardian.
Lauredhel’s last blog post..The Dog Candy doesn?t carry a warning.
[...] furious post on the abomination that is “miss bimbo,” but the brilliant lauredhel beat me to it. check it out at hoyden about [...]
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]
This might be useful.
Helen’s last blog post..Crawling out of the woodwork
Helen: excellent! If anyone can’t access images, I’ll transcribe here: it’s a Geek Girl Stereotype Bingo card.
There are nine cells in a pink matrix. Left to right, top row first:
Do we have blackout?
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
Thin ones, anyway. Brrrrrr.
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
Me too, Helen. Me too.
Helen: yes yesitty mcyesyes. Affirmative.
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”.
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
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.
[...] Everyone is talking about this and they’ve all done a really good job so I haven’t [...]
[...] times out of 10, are not just about her politics. 8 gazillion people sent me links to stories about Miss Bimbo this week, and I’ve chosen not to write about it because, well… maybe I just [...]