Becoming The Ultimate Bimbo
MayorBob.
Posted to Etcetera on Tue Mar 25, 2008 at 05:36:13 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
Call it an online training academy for wretched excess. Or call it Second Life for airheads. Whatever you want to call it, there is an online game all the rage over in Europe which will likely catch a fire at this end of the Atlantic. It's called "Miss Bimbo" and it makes the moral lessons of Bratz look benign by comparison.
The stated goal of playing Miss Bimbo is to "become the hottest, coolest most famous bimbo ever!" Once you log on and register a membership at the site, you can begin your journey to total bimboness. You find a "cool place to live" and "a fun job" to pay for all that will make you a total bimbo. Then you set out shopping for all the cool bimbo gear which establishes you as "the trendsetting bimbo in town" which allows you to "date that famous hottie" while you're showing the world the "social starlet" you have become. You complete "104 tasks" and along the way you can even buy some "meds or plastic surgery" to turn you into a "star bimbo." You is typically a 9 to 16-year-old girl and, of course they're not buying real clothes or getting real medical procedures; when they sign up they are given a teenaged avatar to outfit and take care of - sort of a materialistic tamagotchi doll.
The game is technically free to play, but if you overspend your allotment of virtual cash and still want to ascend to the next level of bimboness, the cost goes up. Players either text message, at a cost of (UK) £1.50 a message, or use PayPal to top off their account. One parent in France discovered his daughter had run up a £100 mobile bill without his knowledge and is threatening to sue the web site. There are an estimated 200,000 players in the UK and an additional 1.2 million players in France and the game is under fire for more than unauthorized mobile bills. The site is lambasted by dieticians in Britain for promoting bad diet habits and "as lethal as pro-anorexia websites ... children will get caught up with the extremely damaging and appalling messages."
Perhaps the game feature catching the most flak is that players should "stop at nothing" to reach total bimboness. Bimbo diet pills cost 100 bimbo dollars. But for maximum payback, they're told to get those breast implants. They'll cost the player 11,500 bimbo dollars but net the player 2,000 bimbo attitudes (making the user much more popular on the site). Nick Williams, a British parent, was appalled when his daughter was spotted checking out the possible plastic surgeries available:"Katie is far too young for that kind of thing and it is irresponsible of the site's creators to be leading young girls astray. They are easily influenced at that age as to what is cool."
Nicole Jacquart designed the game and she laughs off the criticism:"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."
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