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'Frankly, what have kids already absorbed from the media about their own worth and the worth of girls if this site is so popular?'Īnother hot-button issue is the crass commercialism of a site that encourages youngsters to alter physical appearances with artificial and hyper-sexualized alternatives.Īlthough it is free to register for and play 'Miss Bimbo,' when players run out of virtual currency, they have the option to continue to compete by buying Bimbo text messages at the cost of $2.99. 'Our research shows that representation of girls in media tends toward overvaluing them for their appearance and undervaluing them for their inner character,' Cook told the Los Angeles Times. Parental groups and feminist organizations have piled on with arguments exemplified by Allene Cook, executive director of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. But this time, instead of boys encouraged to use violence in real life (picked up by playing first-person shooter games), girls playing 'Miss Bimbo' might internalize the game's competitive diet-pill popping and plastic surgery. Like so many 'kids and video games' stories before it, the gist of the arguments against 'Miss Bimbo' was that impressionable young girls might subscribe to the social mores of the game. And others noted that the bare bimbo that a player starts out with is slender, long-legged and dressed in her skivvies. Breast implants to keep one's pet Bimbo well-endowed ignited further conversation. Of the many charged issues that come with 'Miss Bimbo' game play, it seemed that media pundits were most focused on the diet pills available for purchase to keep one's Bimbo thin (they have since been removed from the game). A post on the 'Miss Bimbo' homepage cites 'unforeseen worldwide interest' as the reason for the site's inability to load.

At the time of writing this story, the game was inoperable. Traffic has since dipped as the press frenzy has died down. Robin Goad, research director of Hitwise in Britain, a company that collects Internet usage data internationally, said British traffic to the site increased 100-fold from March 22 to March 25. After last week's blitzkrieg, user traffic skyrocketed on the site and 'Miss Bimbo' is now poised to break the 500,000-user mark. Cultural commentators have weighed in on the game on multiple outlets - the likes of CNN, MSNBC and every British news outlet imaginable.īefore the media descended, 250,000 users had signed up to live and shop in Bimbo City. Needless to say, parental and media watch groups jumped at invitations from the press to question, if not openly condemn, 'Miss Bimbo's' virtual value system. Points are won by gamers who make their Bimbo avatars skinny, win boyfriends, dress well and accrue 'Bimbo attitude' in beauty salons and clothing stores. In 'Miss Bimbo's' hyper-pink and lacy world, players compete to become the most famous person in Bimbo City. The very premise of the game got people talking. A rough-hewn game powered by seemingly slow servers, 'Miss Bimbo' was bumbling along collecting users mostly in poor, industrial cities in Britain.Īt some point in late March, members of the British press caught wind of 'Miss Bimbo,' and like raw meat thrown to a pack of starvelings, 'Miss Bimbo' became the controversial story du jour. In case you missed it, Nicolas Jacquart, a 23-year-old developer from south England, had designed and launched an online game called 'Miss Bimbo' intended for female players age 9 to 16. Media scrutiny or free publicity? You decide. But as the media pounced, with round-the-clock scrutiny of the values the 'Miss Bimbo' game espouses, it only helped to double the number of users. As news of the 'Miss Bimbo' video game grew like kudzu across news websites and cable TV, so did public awareness about a relatively obscure online gaming site intended for little girls. Why look a gift horse in the mouth, right? Well, it turns out few media outlets did. What news outlet looking to fill a 24/7 news cycle could resist? 'Miss Bimbo' had all the right ingredients for a splashy news story: a sensational headline (key word: 'bimbo') a sexy tech angle (online video game) young children potentially at risk (catnip for concerned parents everywhere) and a built-in base of available media commentators (whether gaming experts or women's groups or media watchdogs).

The 'Miss Bimbo' story arrived like a gift to newsrooms around the world last week: the perfect illustration of the new lows to which our celebrity-obsessed culture has sunk.

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