Miss Bimbo Makes a Dollar
Feminists have long bemoaned the fact that the video game industry all but ignores girls and women in its single-minded emphasis on and development of games for boys and men. This, despite the fact that recent surveys suggest that as many as 41 percent of gamers are girls and women.1
Even more troubling than the exclusion of girls and women from the industry’s strategic marketing, however, is the shockingly sexist and mysogynist nature of video games themselves. In the original version of Grand Theft Auto III, for instance, players solicited sexual services from a prostitute before beating and killing her. After public outrage, an updated version was released that no longer allowed players to solicit any sex acts from prostitutes; now they just beat them to death. In BMX XXX, boys created topless female players and “unlocked” footage of naked, performing strippers.
Duke Nukem is often referenced as one of the worst offenders: ”Duke Nukem 3D moves the ’shooter’ through pornography stores, where Duke can use XXX sex posters for target practice. Duke throws cash at a prostituted woman telling her to ‘Shake it, Baby’ his gun ever ready. In the game bonus points are awarded for the murder of these mostly prostituted and partially nude women. Duke … goes to strip clubs where Japanese women lower their kimonos exposing their breasts. Duke is encouraged to kill defenseless, often bound women.“2
And despite the fact that media watchdogs have been putting pressure on game developers to clean up the industry, the message does not seem to be getting through. And where once the gaming industry seemed content to sell their overtly sexist agenda to eager and impressionable, young boys, it now appears that they are ready and willing to package a new brand of equality for girls. Girls, too, can learn how to play their role in this strange new, yet eerily familiar, world of male/female gender roles, namely that of the willing and eager victim.
Miss Bimbo is a new online game created specifically for teen girls. Its website claims that it is a virtual fashion game and encourages girls to “become the hottest, coolest most intelligent and talented bimbo the world has ever known.” The purpose of the game is to become rich, beautiful and famous, a “social starlet” who catches the eye of that “famous handsome man you’ve had your eye on.”
And though this may sound to the reader to be a somewhat misguided but harmless pursuit, it gets worse. Through the use of virtual players, or avatars, players compete with one another to earn bimbo dollars. These dollars are then used to pay for parties, high fashion and plastic surgery. Yes, you read that right: plastic surgery. Or breast augmentation, to be more specific. Girls were originally forced to take diet pills in order to maintain their low body weights as well, but media attention put enough pressure on the creators of the game that they have since removed that option. But, sadly, the boob jobs are still in.
Writing for The Guardian, writer Kira Cochrane recently lamented: “While I wasn’t going to get too upset about Miss Bimbo, a new internet game that apparently encourages girls to embrace cosmetic surgery, this week’s story of a Florida teenager who died after breast augmentation underlines the danger of these messages. Time to put away those bimbo dollars, girls, and step away from the screen.”3
Copyright © 2007, C. C. Ley
References
1 PC World Canada: http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/a7fe9b8a0a010408019ac931643ebf2c/pg0.htm
2 Media Watch Blog: http://www.mediawatch.com/wordpress/?p=13
3 The Guardian (March 26, 2008): http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/26/gender.kiracochrane