A new website featuring a game where girls rack up credits to buy boob jobs, trade in diet pills and designer lingerie is threatening to launch the moral brigade into a tizzy about ‘sexing up’ our underage children and teaching them how to be bimbos. Bollocks!
Almost without exception little girls play with dolls, play dress-ups (as do the boys) and play games of ‘let’s pretend’. These games rely on a vivid imagination and a shared language and culture. As we get older Barbie dolls give way to new games of fantasy, teenage teasings about boys and who would make a better kisser, Brad Pitt or George Clooney.
The Miss Bimbo game is an extension of ‘let’s pretend’ that girls have played since very small. It uses a shared culture and a common language. In an age where girls can read about anorexic superstars just by looking at the covers of Famous, NW, Who, and so on, why is it so outragous to think they know about diet pills and sexy lingerie?
As a parent, it’s our job to raise happy, healthy children prepared for the world. By shielding them from the all-pervasive celebrity culture you’re risking them becoming naive, socially outcast tweens and teens. Instead, use it as an opportunity to extend their education – highlighting the differences about reality and celebrity.
Are we afraid by playing games such as Miss Bimbo that our daughters will start taking diet pills and buying lacy lingerie? If we’ve done our jobs correctly, our kids will realise this is just fantasy, a fun escape from reality for a little while, a game to be played with friends. NOT a guidebook on how to live their lives. NOT a manual on how to be pretty or popular. A fun game. That’s it.
And if we haven’t done our jobs properly, and our daughters are easily swayed then this can be a chance to get things back on track. Don’t be blind to opportunities.
Post Script: As it so happens, the game has been changed, allegedly as a result of media pressure. This featured on the Miss Bimbo.com website:
“As a result of this rather surprising media attention we have decided to remove the option of purchasing diet pills from the game. We apologise to any players whom this may inconvenience but we feel in light of this week’s proceedings it is the correct action to take.”
