I’m normally a bit sceptical about some of the claims about the sexualisation of teenage girls and women, because I think that sometimes such discussions play into the hands of those who’d want to circumscribe or erase the possibility of a positive and autonomous definition and articulation of female sexuality in favour of either puritanism and/or the reinscription of traditional gender roles, because I like to lean towards the libertarian side of the sex wars, and because we just have too many moral panics. Nuance often gets lost. And the insta-loud condemnation thing often works against any examination of complexities or reflection on issues. But there’s not a lot of nuance in this really vile “Bimbo avatars” site targeted at teen girls. [I decline to link directly to the site.]
One word: Ewwwwww.
Via Laurel Papworth, whose post you can read for all the sickening detail.
Getting away from this repulsive website, it may be of interest to note that Andrew Bartlett advises that there is currently a Senate Inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children. Andrew’s blogged about it here.
Christ almighty.
That capitalists inveterately seek ways to make a return on capital is a given.
The intertubes, and especially the Web 2.0, have provided new opportunities previously undreamt.
The obsessions catered to by Miss Bimbo have long been the obsessions of young adult women. These obsessions are indulged by commerce and rewarded by popular culture. This process is indeed sexualisation of a kind that perpetuates inequality between the sexes. But this isn’t what it looks like especially to pubescent girls.
There is no novelty in pubescent girls seeking to emulate their older sisters as role models. That’s been going on since dress-ups were invented.
The Miss Bimbo entrepreneurs have simply married an old idea to new technology. That technology circumvents traditional methods of parental control, thus expanding the field of girls’ fantasies.
Some adults, no doubt, are genuinely shocked that girls’ fantasies can exploit the biographical opportunities provided by Miss Bimbo. I think that these people are naive.
Many adults feign shock. This is disingenuous.
Certainly, the Miss Bimbo entrepreneurs have taken the opportunity to be more explicitly sexual with their product. Critics have proclaimed that their ambition is to maximise the time when children are “innocent”. These critics condemn Miss Bimbo of destroying “innocence”.
But what is this “innocence” of which they speak?
The way that girls have embraced the biographical opportunities presented by Miss Bimbo suggests that they have some insight into the ways of the world. Insight undermines innocence.
Once insight is admitted, then the countermeasures aren’t protection, rather they are suppression.
It would take much more than suppressing Miss Bimbo to alter girls’ insights into the world of their older sisters.
Suppressing Miss Bimbo without suppressing much else would simply give us a warm sensation of righteousness in a make-believe world where girls who cannot be seen acting out their fantasies can be deemed to be “innocent”.
Oh come on. surely this is parody and self-parody, along the lines of “Computers for Dummies”. No one who uses them actually thinks they are a dummy.
As for “Sexualisation of Children”, you have to admit that the model used on the web page doesn’t exactly appear to be a child. It’s teens not children, they’re targeting, and teens may be mentally immature but they’re generally not too physically immature to be interested in (actually, remembering my own teens, damn near obsessed by) sex.
Well, of course when you have half-witted parents giving their 16 year-old daughters breast enlargements for their sweet 16, what do you expect?
It’s so depressing that these kids really think their lives depend on the size of their tits! And when parents buy into it, what chance does the child have?
The cult of celebrity plays no small part in all this-every minute detail (real and fabricated) of the celebrity’s life is on parade and reported with breathless wonder! There’s even a tv channel devoted to this pap!
For God’s sake, Paul McCartney’s divorce is more widely reported than what’s going on in Tibet, Sudan and Iraq! How many women’s magazines are entirely given over to gossip about the “stars”, where once they talked about serious issues among the recipes and fluff? They even encouraged budding authors, by publishing short stories!
I stopped buying the magazines when the Diana frenzy was at its height. It used to infuriate me that lazy editors stuck her face and a sensational headline on their covers to sell their magazines! Then the light bulb went on, and I stopped buying them. My mistake was not writing to the editors to tell them I was no longer a consumer and why.
According to The Age (I have no intention of accessing the site) you can enhance your bimbo with surgery and other options. This is just gross.
Its not just gross. Its apparently quite expensive. The owners of the site get a proportion of the mobile phone fee for each hit a kid makes on the site. I don’t know of that’s for each separate “enhancement”, etc., or just to get onto the site. Rampant consumerism and greedy capitalism at work, liable to bring the misery it usually brings, I’d reckon.
It just makes me sad. And angry.. The attitude teenage girls seem to have at the moment is ‘it ok to be a sex object, just a long as I am desired’ and they adorn themselves with playboy bunny symbols and tell themselves that that is ‘girlpower’.
(I have a problem with the concept of ‘girl’ power itself, its just another device to keep women infantised). Sigh.
jane says;
Really, that’s amazing. Can you point us to some statistics in support of that. Also…
I thought that so outrageous a development, I Googled it to find out more.
I found this item:
- which leads in with a reference to a certain 17-year-old Aubrie Wills who is getting a breat implant.
The article also reports this;
Several 17-year-olds inquired. Inlcudin one with “severe asymmetry” – which was actually corrected.
So, how many “half-witted parents” are actually “giving their 16 year-old daughters breast enlargements”.
My guess? None or at any rate, hardly any. Which raises the question: “Why are we even discussing this – and not the plight of women in Sudan?”
I saw something about this on the 7:30 Report last night, and was horrified (particularly by the business model, which involves syphoning money out of the kiddies’ mobile phones). They interviewed the oik who runs the website, and his attitude was, basically, that it’s all in good fun, just a bit of a larf, really. Some people seem to be born without a moral sense.
Gotta admit, though, it’s a slick business plan.
Legal, addictive, tiny overheads.
Who could have dreamt of such an operation even ten years ago?
Hold on a second, this is a game, right? As far as I can see this is not about girls wanting to be their ‘bimbos’ at all, any more than GTA is about really wanting to be a murderer, or WOW is about really wanting to be a gnome. The business model is a separate issue.
Katz, you got stuck in the Spaminator.
Eliot Ramsey asks for statistics on breast enhancements. Here’s some American ones:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYD/is_5_40/ai_n13472441
Thanks interesting about the syphoning money out of kiddies’ mobile phones.
I stupidly downloaded a Simpsons theme tune ringtone for my phone and I ended up getting money taken off my account every week (I am talking about $7.00 or so bucks a week – I had a pre-paid). There’s no way to contact the people who run these things and get payments stopped. The phone died and that was it.
It’s bollocks this “Bimbo” bull. And frankly I am sick of arguments about everything just being parody and all that.
“It’s bollocks this “Bimbo” bull. And frankly I am sick of arguments about everything just being parody and all that.”
I sometimes wonder whether it’s just assumed that teenage girls are complete morons and left at that. If you don’t think they can see the difference between a game and reality, then that’s what you’re suggesting.
Katz, I’m not arguing for suppressing anything.
And I agree that it’s a symptom of a broader issue, and as I said in the post, I’m not in the business of advocating blindness to women’s sexuality, or that of teens. However, this sort of thing perpetuates and reinforces the cultural attitudes which it seeks to monetise. And I’m not of the view that “anything the market demands capitalists will supply” is an adequate ethical statement.
Hmph. Lotsa people speaking for teenage girls here, yet paradoxically few seem to be posting.
I’m not gonna argue that teenage girls are any more or less aware of the a) sexist, and b) satirical elements to the site. If we can see the problems with it, they – savvy consumers of media as they are – will surely be able to?
And, if despite that (or because of it) they dig it, well, there’s plenty of grown women walking around with the word “slut” arching over their rumps courtesy of a cheap polyester tracksuit they thought was cool.
So, I think this site is stupid, because it’s sexist. Not because teens might be exposed to it. Thinking of the children in this context (like so many others I think) is a little naive. They can think fine (or not) for themselves.
The idea of children as a kind of weird, sponge-like automaton, soaking up any messages that pass them by, so long as they’re wrapped in appropriate video game/web site/trading card/new-fangled doodad form is as old as the hills. They are that no more or less than we are (which is to say, sometimes). And they don’t need us to get angry for them, they’re teenagers, they’re frigging angry all the time and quite capable of doing it themselves.
You don’t have to be a ‘complete moron’ to lack the maturity as a teenager to decipher the nuances of advertising that we as adults seem to take for granted. Maybe you’re arguing that teenage girls instinctively realise that it’s a parody (if indeed it is) but buy into it anyway, to which I also call bollocks.
“The idea of children as a kind of weird, sponge-like automaton, soaking up any messages that pass them by, so long as they’re wrapped in appropriate video game/web site/trading card/new-fangled doodad form is as old as the hills.”
True, and the assumption here is that the game, in some way, has a ‘message’ to begin with. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Rather it takes a recognisable, stereotyped figure from the broader media environment and makes a game of ‘her’. If there is a message there I don’t think it’s as clear as the criticism implies. I’m also not sure how much this has to do with sex or sexuality in the first place.
To take the example of Bratz. I sat down one day and watched the TV show, and the message was pretty clearly that a sense of entitlement and a reliance on subterfuge were no substitute for hard work. The ‘bimbos’ in the show were the bad guys. The sympathetic characters were basically designer-clad independent media operators, winning contracts by being creative. It was a lot smarter than most of the cartoons targeted at male children.
Neither am I.
I wasn’t attempting to make a statement about my ethical position on this issue.
The drug-pushers’ defence is equally morally invalid in the case of Miss Bimbo despite the fact that Miss Bimbo isn’t illegal, at least not yet.
Beyond expressions of ethical disapprobation, the question remains how, if at all, should the Miss Bimbos of cyberspace be countered?
Moral outrage may spur action, but that emotion should never be seen to drive action, else Miss Bimbo’s opponents will look as foolish as the RSL in 1964 when that august body attempted to ban the play “One Day of the Year”.
Adrian, it’s not a parody, it’s a game. ‘Buying in’ doesn’t imply what you seem to think it does in terms of identification.
Thanks for the clarification, Katz.
I’m not sure how ethical distaste may spur action (and I find “moral outrage” problematic!). It would seem to me the best action to take would be to counter this sort of thing in the cultural trenches. It might be a *good thing* if content makers and net entrepreneurs turned their attention to creating and marketing games targeted at teens which don’t play to these stereotypes.
Klaus I was responding in part to comment 3. Obviously a parody is only a parody if recognised as such by the recipient.
Indeed, and the same is true of a game I suppose.
My problem with this kind of critique is twofold:
1) kids do know what ‘play’ is, even if they may not have the resources to discern parody, irony etc; whereas adult commentators seem to have trouble with the game vs real life distinction
2) the emphasis should be on the shoddy business practices, and helping kids to steer clear of those, but instead we’re overly worried about content, which actually feeds the aura of these products and turns them into sites of resistance and fascination; we’re making content look more dangerous than forms of participation whereas we should be helping kids to understand that some forms of participation leave us open to exploitation, or even just to something as mundane as wasting our time
Kim says;
Actually, no, I provided some statistics on breast implants at 8. These were
more or less in line with the statistics you provided, showing that statistically speaking hardly any 16 year olds get breast implants. Perhaps none in fact, and only a few 17 year olds, and more likely for reconstructive surgery.
This suggests the issue is a media beat-up for the purposes of generating righteous indignation amongst the idle but opiniated. You know? Like Alan Jones?
The statistics I asked for related to jane’s statement that;
Oh, I’m sorry for misreading your comment.
How you reach this conclusion when the American statistics presented derive from a professional body of “aesthetic” rather than reconstructive surgeons is beyond me though.
Content is still a problem. The assumption seems to be the content of games does not matter because it is a game. But there is a huge body of evidence that says that game content can shape both behaviour and affect. Children are not just sponges but nor are they ‘just’ unresponsive to or critical of the content.
Also “kids know what play is” is a statement that is problematic. The main function of play is learning.
Well I was going to log on and see the irony value for myself but its down at the moment. I think the irony thing can be valid or it can be a defense it really depends. Grand Theft Auto is most definitely ironic and cathartic from my experience, there are other games Doom for instance that tend to increase aggressiveness in the player (and give you nightmares to boot). But I should add that GTA is for mature players and there are good reasons for this.
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I can’t judge this but from anecdotal experience there is a culture out there in which young girls are encouraged to think of themselves in terms of a very narrow sexual typology defined by pornography and hip-hop videos. I don’t think this is the whole story and I don’t buy into the ‘anti-sex feminism’ line either (those people appear to have severe personal issues). However there is, say, a lack of grace and ettiquette in these days of pagan resurgence.
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It’s likewise true that marketing techniques viz the young and very young are constructed to circumvent logical review. There’s an element of subliminal programming in it. I wonder if direct marketing to kids hardwires behaviours that lead to credit card maxing a decade later. I also wonder if framing ‘girl power’ entirely in terms of sexual desirability circumvents the progress society has made.
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All I know is if I had kids I’d wanna raide ‘em about a thousand kms from the nearest shopping mall.
“There’s no way to contact the people who run these things and get payments stopped.”
Well, actually there is, but you need to read the really, really fine print (I suggest an electron microscope) in the advert to find out how to do it and even then it is very, very difficuly.
Surely it’s not a case of teenage girls being either sponge-like morons or active agents playing a game ironically. The truth is going to be somewhere in-between and will be dependent on who the individual girls are who log on.
Personally, I don’t like this and I’m dubious about claims to do with ‘play’ and ‘irony’ in this case, because I’m having difficulty reading irony here.
I don’t want it squashed or banned. But if I was a parent I’d be furious about my daughter being directly marketed to in this way. Just train them up into good little consumers right now.
Eliot Ramsay, I have no idea how reach your conclusions from those figures. The figures for breast augmentation in under 18s look quite alarming and there seems no evidence offered that it’s only reconstructive.
As well, why do imagine that discussion about this precludes discussion about the plight of Sudanese women? And if you find the discussion worthless, you can always choose to look away.
Su, content may be a problem, but don’t we have guidelines for age-appropriate content? If they aren’t being adhered to then that is the issue, not the existence of this or that particular form of content.
“Also “kids know what play is” is a statement that is problematic. The main function of play is learning.”
The purported function of play has nothing to do with my statement: what I’m saying is that kids can tell the difference between a game and real life. We need to adjust our expectations when dealing with something that is framed as a game, and is engaged with as a game as opposed to something that is not. We should be more worried about the way in which kids are treated as consumers then about the products themselves.
Yes I got what you meant but I am disagreeing with your last statement. Children doapply what is learnt in a game environment to the lived environment. They do not make the rigid distinction between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ that you suggest. There is always a carryover, even for adults.
Yeah pretty much. I don’t know that morally-inspired cencorship is the answer. A lot of solutions to current social problems aren’t political they’re ethical. As a consumer you have power and responsibility. I’d like to see this cultivated more. But considering the almost automatic material appeasement of ballistic tantrums that I see almost on a daily basis I don’t see it happening any time soon.
Are the categories ‘game’ and ‘reality’ so clear cut? I’d agree that most people, regardless of age or maturity, know the difference between the two and will engage differently with something which is a ‘game’. But, how exactly do they engage differently? Is there no seepage or crossover between the two categories? Because something is a game can we make an assumption that it doesn’t effect, engage or interplay with reality? I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I think drawing a thick black line between the two is problematic.
I’m not keen on a thick black line either, but I think it’s a handy distinction for engaging with these issues in a sensible way. While we knee-jerk over game content, more socially acceptable expressions of the same ideas are being delivered as an actual way of life to kids. My point would be that we should consider the possibility that by treating the bimbo as a figure of fun, girls are not necessarily being asked to identify with her. It may in fact be the opposite.
And there is an even bigger mountain saying it doesn’t. The research in this area is contradictory and ambiguous, despite some valiant efforts, and I would be extremely reluctant to cite either side.
But they also apply what is learned in a real environment to game ones.
I’m not positing kids as the opposite of the sponges I characterised necessarily, but I find frankly we take these urges to protect and apply them to children because ‘we know better’, when in reality, we are often simply arbiting for taste or our own morality, rather than a need or pressing ethical imperative (hence, why we get so worked up when it comes to children liking stuff we consider shit, but not adults [unless you're Keith Windschuttle at the opera]).
I feel that reactions to stuff like this sometimes say more about society’s perception of childhood, and our ‘need’ to protect that concept, rather than centreing on children, per se.
For example children often display a range of tastes and emotions that we are only to eager to dismiss because they’re children, rather than because they’re bad in and of themselves, and rather than simply accepting that some kids, like some adults, have bad taste, or ethically dubious tastes.
I think our ideas of susceptible kids, influenceable kids, etc. – whilst not entirely incorrect – are often misapplied in certain situations, or applied in ways that ignore the complex realities of how these things work. We posit children as victims in situations where they may not be (I would argue this is such a case), and at the same time give them a type of agency, where they may not have it (they like it because they want to be like sluts, rather than because it’s fun).
Btw, I think you’re exactly on the money Klaus. In a much more concise way.
First of all “influenced by” is not the same as “victim of”, and asking that people consider the content critically is not the same as kneejerk moralising. The latest metanalyses of studies on violent videogames are definitely not supporting your viewpoint but leaving that aside, on what evidence are you “arguing that this is such a case?”
Sheesh. It always makes me suspicious when feminist criticism of egregious examples of sexism is ‘disappeared’ by claims that feminists are the ones denying consumers any agency, or are just moralising. Saying this game stinks to high heaven and is treating girls as moronic and vacuous is a pretty obvious and perfectly valid criticism. You don’t want to believe that the constant message that being a ‘girl’ = pink+thin+plastic surgery has any effect? Fine argue that if you like; provide some evidence to back it up. In the meantime I will continue to assume that the message my conceivably have some effect and criticize it on that basis.
On another point: it used to be accepted that marketing could actually create demand, is that no longer considered a valid position?
“Saying this game stinks to high heaven and is treating girls as moronic and vacuous is a pretty obvious and perfectly valid criticism.”
But is it? You certainly haven’t addressed my suggestion that gaming does not necessarily mean identification.
Su, if you think this is an anti-feminist position then you are way off, and the suggestion that disagreeing with you means ‘disappearing’ your viewpoint is disingenuous. It’s time to recognise that your position might not be self-evident, even to those who are pro-feminist.
Meta-analysis don’t mean shit because they are essentially sanding out the differences and often end up comparing apples with oranges. I’m not saying games influence people, I’m not saying they don’t. I’m saying we don’t know if they do, and we certainly don’t know how.
If you want to call me sexist, don’t beat about the bush. There’s nothing that makes my criticism any more or less feminist than yours. I’m not trying to disappear anything, I quote myself: “I think this site is stupid, because it’s sexist.”
So I have, in fact, said “this game stinks to high heaven and is treating girls as moronic and vacuous”.
.
I am not saying that, gosh darn it, and have never said it anywhere. What I am saying is that this message may not, despite being totally sexist.
I don’t think anyone is disputing demand, Su. But you are putting motive and method into the head of teenage and younger girls – a place none of us here have access to.
I am not arguing that the site _isn’t_ sexist. I am simply arguing that we cannot claim to know what young people are thinking or why, and furthermore we don’t have the right to tell them what to think. We only have the right to say what we think. I feel like you’ve put a whole lot of words into my mouth and yet adroitly manage to avoid what I actually wrote.
The reason why this stuff bothers me is because it can so easily devolve into censorship, which I am firmly against. If the ideas are shit, let them stand and fall on their own merits. It’s not traumatic to younger people, so let them think and engage, and reject or accept themselves, with discussion and ideas from others. Is that so frigging chauvinist?
I was a teenage girl once, but I’m not sure I understand the outrage. I notice on Lauren Papworth’s blog she says she’d prefer to see 8-year-olds “beating the sh-t” out of other people’s characters on World of Warcraft. (I sometimes play WOW, for the record.) Why is fake violence towards others so much more acceptable than a fake stereotypical obsession with beauty?
If people are worried about their children taking online games too seriously, perhaps they should supervise their children more. But you’d have to think that most of the kids playing this bimbo game would be taking it just about as seriously as they take the idea of killing rival “races” in WOW.
And I still just don’t get why this is news anywhere. It’s the internet. It’s full of stuff that demeans women. I would have thought the best approach (for mainstream news outlets, at least) would be to ignore things like this, instead of giving them publicity.
According to The Age, British players of the game are mostly girls aged between nine and sixteen. Nine is really too young for a child to be engaging in play of this type.
Apropos of the wondering about whether young children can recognise and understand irony, I find that the great majority of the second / third year university students who take my Jane Austen course do not understand what irony actually is nor can they explain how it works.
Well I’ve being trying several times today to register for Miss Bimbo (take a wild guess as to which net de plume I’d use for this exercise) with the object of indulging in a little surrealistic mischief but everything beyond the homepage now seems to be down indefinitely.
Which leads me to believe that what the site is actually promoting is Nic Jacquart’s design and marketing chops for prospective clients. And his ability to harvest some good market research data and direct marketing leads. You reckon the MSM stumbled on this by accident?
“And when you send the media releases out, make sure the Guardian and Daily Tele are top of the list. You’ll get more news inches in outrage from them than you ever will in positive coverage from the Sun or the lad mags.”
Incidentally I only heard about this via left wing/feminist blogs.
Since this is such a volatile topic, I’ll just restrict myself to a few observations, apparently at random.
Protecting childhood innocence? Firstly the idea of the child as precious object to be sheltered from all life’s vicissitudes is a fairly recent invention in human history –dating back around 150 years in Western civilization generally.
Speaking as a former kid, yes we could tell the difference between structured play and reality and that yes, each informed the other. And reality tends to win out in the long run as it’s where we have to live when not indulging in fantasy role-playing. Well most of us.
I wonder how many of the women with issues about Miss Bimbo, not only played with dolls when they were young but personalised and projected onto them in private fantasy scenarios?
On the other hand, apropos of some chorine’s parent’s comment about Busby Berkeley, “I did not raise my daughter to be a human harp”, you could make the point that playing with dolls is one thing, playing at being a doll is another.
Why are some people down on World of Warcraft et al as a substitute for Miss Bimbo? Sure WOW involves killing but so did the Commando comics I read as a kid. But death wasn’t the reason I read ‘em, just the spice to hot up the drama. Personally I’d rather see a generation of young women developing skills in strategy, tactics, people and decision management and networking while in high pressure situations rather than in doing a peer group-driven cost/benefit analysis of going for a boob job vs. a nose job. Also for me natural breasts in chain mail bras are much hotter than plastic ones in distressed designer wifebeaters. But hey, I’m kinky that way. I’d rather see a chick wielding a sword than a mobile phone. On the other hand though, you’d look pretty silly talking into a large piece of cutlery: “No, I’m out the front now. Do you want to go somewhere quieter?”
If I had a nine-year-old daughter, I’d just like totally freak if I caught her trying on different breasts for size, even just online.
Adrien’s point about direct marketing to kids, especially in these days of effortless online transactions where you never feel the pain th actual money changing hands, possibly leading to patterns of irresponsible credit management later on is well taken. Particularly when the little bastards work out how to hack your Paypal account. “Ooh, Daddy’s password is my birthday? Cool!”
So yes, there should be an easy to find and use cancel button, even for computer unsavvy parents, for sites like MB.
I agree with what’s been pointed out elsewhere here, that the guts of dealing with these kinds of issues should start as close to home as possible, revolving around ethics and common sense. Rather than moralizing and high profile political/legislative hacks.
Just to taunt the few diehard cultural warriors still holed up in the jungle awaiting orders to fight to death from the Imperial General Staff, I’d observe that everything that’s really icky about Miss Bimbo has been driven far more by unbrindled free market forces that by some hippie/pinko “if it feels good, do it man” ethos.
Read the last four paras of this article. Don’t tell me that wasn’t high quality spin prepared well in advance
Having a forum on a site that encourages both easy access (when its working) and young girls to emphasis their sexuality is not a good look in a world that’s spawned terms like “internet predator” and “grooming”.
Hmm. Now I think about it, perhaps I won’t register after all at Miss Bimbo.
Instead I will buy this loving repackaged collection of the Best of Commando Comics. “Achtung!”
If only they’d do the same for ‘The Trigan Empire’.
Humbert Humbert, Nabs?
From the Stink Tank
Well that’s what the missus calls me shed and I was down there yesterday with Tubs ‘n Shagger ‘n Johnno, ‘n we got to talkin’ about this “Bimbo” website. At first Tubs just said a “Dickhead” website for blokes would do nicely, but then it got a bit serious and Johnno grabbed me pad and we jotted down all about “Dickhead”.
“Ya gotta go for a wider market, all sorts of blokes – old, young, workin’, retired”, says Tubs. Shagger used to run the servo out on the Highway, he said ya gotta stock icy poles for the kiddies, magazines for the ladies, fuel of course, snacks, bait for the fishermen,… so we reckoned “Dickhead” website could have all these different parts with
1. skimpy costumed girls
2. some pictures of sport
3. competitions that anyone could understand
4. Tubs reckoned a part for a home handyman or gardening
5. Shagger wanted a bit of day-to-day events somehow maybe photos
6. more girls in swimming costumes
We were trying to work out how you’d make some cash, ‘n Johnno said you’d get subscribers and if “Dickhead” got huge you could sorta use all the subscribers like a lever to get more cash. Somehow ya might get everyone to pay, even if they weren’t a subscriber. Mind you, we’d had a few beers by then.
Bloody Keith arrives from the Bowling Club, ‘n we get him to look through the stuff. He reads it twice, then says, “Ya buncha dills. Someone’s already thought of this. It’s called commercial TV! Yep, we all pay for it through the ads, even if we never watch it.”
cheerio
Half right Tony. I give your comment two fingers up.
Interesting that the focus has seemed to fall largely on the artificial-breasts aspect of the game. Personally I was more disgusted (not “offended” or “outraged” or “shocked”; digusted.) by the diet and prostitution aspects of the game. The top item at the shop is the Diet Pills, captioned “Diet Pill, the easier way to eat!”; and the rules contain this bit of advice to their preteen customers:
“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 !”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”
WE’ve already established the principle – now we’re basically musing over where irony sits in a 21st century table of elements.
Also diet pills = corsets. This kinda shit has been going like forever. The main difference today is that billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of very clever people are working to sell some generally unfeasible archetypes through state of the media to mass audiences that can also be precisely segmented up and targeted by spending power and whuffie kudos.
On a slightly related note, I miss the days when the LP coven would go feral late at night and start posting pinups of hot dames with weapons.
And in a bit of perfect synchronicity, my iTunes random play has just thrown up Neil Diamond singing “Girl, You’re Be A Woman Soon.”
And there was never any feminist resistance to corsets, oh no. What’s your point?
Even the developer doesn’t claim ‘irony’ as his excuse for this game. This whole thread is a giant Bingo match, with a side serve of creepy.
I’m not going to argue that kids understand irony because my father still doesn’t seem to understand it, and he’s in his 50s.
But meaning doesn’t just lie in the hands of the creator Lauredhel. After all, the outrage has been not about someone having this idea, but about kids taking meaning from it.
Of course I never even suggested that irony was an excuse. In fact, I don’t excuse the game, I only think it is well beside the point to condemn it.
“What’s your point?”
That conceptually this is nothing new. The point I have never made is that I accept or approve of this.
In fact I look forward to smart young female troublemakers signing up for Miss Bimbo and subverting it from within. Worked for Jane Austen. Hell, I’d do it myself if I wasn’t a middle aged man who looks like the evil mastermind from a Roger Moore-era James Bond movie. Back when they wore cravats. Not a good look when you get busted causing trouble on a tweenie girl site.
No, Jane Austen’s frustration with her lot has left us with some wonderful literature. Her own circumstances were hardly improved at all, despite all of that wit.
“Her own circumstances were hardly improved at all, despite all of that wit.”
OK then, it worked for us afterwards. Her elegant, witty and emotionally profound response to dealing with Miss Bimbo as one of the national sports of Regency England has enriched, wised up and embiggened generations of women since.
Miss Bimbo is a cheesy, repellant, but not quite as dumb in achieving its aims as it appears, marketing stunt. As was being being presented at Court so Prinny could run a sly eye over your potrine while checking with his networks and confidants there’d be no major comebacks if he whisked you off for a for a dirty weekend at his new Moghul Empire-styled loveshack in Brighton.
As I’ve said before this shit has going on like forever. The big difference now is that it’s both paradoxically more obvious and more insidious. Any woman who wishes to subvert, game or mindfuck it can receive a lifetime supply of one-liners and pranking ideas from me. No timewasters or fat chicks though. I have enough body fat for two.
How, in practice, as opposed to comparisons with Jane, would anyone be able to “subvert” that site “from within”?
“This shit has [been] going on like forever.” So that’s a reason to carry on tolerating it then?
Not sure if your one-liners, though memorable, would be a help or a hindrance. “Libidinous prongs” is still giving me the heebies.
Patrick g.: Whenever feminists criticize some portion of the culture there is a predictable reaction; accusations of moralizing/impinging on free speech/giving solace and succour to the pro-censorship lobby followed by a consensus (arrived at with much mutual grooming and backscratching amongst the menz) that the problem is not really a problem at all. That is what I was referring to when I said I become suspicious; because the same pattern occurs over and over in regard to pretty much any issue that feminists raise. Talk about knee.jerk.
You seem to be occupying an interesting position whereby you admit that something is sexist but say that it still may be harmless. Did I miss a memo? Has sexist been redefined in recent years? If it is sexist, it ain’t harmless.
Klaus K. Can you describe to me how someone becomes involved in a sim type game while remaining completely detached from the avatar? How long do you think you would play such a game? Isn’t the whole point of these games, the premise upon which they are developed, that you do become identified with the avatar, otherwise you simply stop playing?
Kim wrote:
Build a bot to exploit it. I haven’t looked at the game itself, but there may be ways of costing the owner more than they make out of you, or by “farming” it (i.e. mindlessly upgrading your items until they can be traded), then perhaps auctioning the most egregious examples of your farming efforts to “won’t somebody think of the children” social conservatives like Albrechtson or something. Game designers and computer programmers are incredibly lazy – they always forget something. Perhaps it’s possible to win the game with a bimbo that looks like Devine (or worse, John Travolta pretending to be Devine). That’s got to be worth something to somebody.
Actually, the best thing to do is probably swamp the place with 40-60 year old males to creep the living f*ck out of every body.
“How, in practice, as opposed to comparisons with Jane, would anyone be able to “subvert” that site “from within”?”
Well no one saw Jane coming. Who can predict how some very smart young woman will inspiringly puncture the current set of smug and over-inflated macho tyres? Perhaps starting with the Bimbo SUV.
Look, we may be talking across eachother but I don’t think we’re at cross purposes. My point is don’t get mad, get on top and turn ‘em into a figure of fun and the issue into to an subtle yet powerful mindfuck and distribute the outcome widely to get younger others thinking along the sme lines.
You can only throw yourself under a horse once but good, emotionally engaging, well thought out and bloody funny shitstirring can be for generations.
Trust me on this. I’m a comfortably-built well-to-do Anglo-Saxon and rather butch bloke with laissez faire domestic hygiene. I know what women really need.
Ha!
But my point is that the actual users of this site are neither going to build bots to subvert it nor write novels. Someone else might want to do a bit of culture-jamming, sure. But if you’re participating in it, you’re participating in it. You’re not subverting it. It’s not a forum – you can’t make comments, it’s a game and you play by its rules. This goes to the question of the alleged “irony” that its users are supposed to regard it with. I very much doubt anyone not already caught up in the logic of “sexay” would go within a mile of it. There’s not some sort of ironic postmodern subject undermining it, even if occasionally people might use it just because it’s so dumb. Though the insidious way it makes money off users would work against that!
““This shit has [been] going on like forever.” So that’s a reason to carry on tolerating it then?”
(sigh) As I’ve pointed out before, observation does not equal approval or acquiescence. Any input about the forces arraigned against you should be welcome albeit assessed intelligently – so all the better to finally beat ‘em further like a tin drum, grasshopper.
Actually, Fanny Burney saw Jane Austen coming, and laid the palms beneath her feet.
Austen wasn’t a subverter. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, of the shit-stirring description in her fiction (except perhaps in the novel she didn’t finish.) She just saw things exactly as they were and got on with it. That’s a quality of mind so rare as to be practically superhuman. It’s emphatically not a model anyone ought to have put in front of them for aspiring toward.
Charlotte Bronte was the rebel – and all that rage hurt her and interfered with her gifts. But thank god for her! Someone had to say those painful things so the rest of us could have a chance at putting it behind us.
We’re way past the point when we can only deal with gross insults to the dignity and humanity of women by making coded and sly slantwise jabs at those insults, Nabakov, and to hear you saying otherwise is exceptionally dismaying.
“You’re not subverting it.”
Yes, that’s why after a bit of thought I gave up on signing up for it The best deliverable outcome would be an amusing dinner story and I have too many of them already.
However using it subversively within a bigger work/text/stunt to make a double take point for an audience you feel you need to impress I think is something worth exploring. Again I refer back to Austen who deftly illuminated the deep cultural and emotional subtexts running underneath all the social rituals of her time.
I’m sure many chyx somewhere on this planet are already thinking along these lines. No doubt whatever they come up will lack the elegant but rather archaic elisions and circumlocutions of Ms Austen but will recompense with 21st century wit, spit and style. And if it’s half as barbly funny, well then I’m willing to smugly patronise it.
My comments are not getting any more helpful for anyone looking to take sides or pick on others, are they?
“She just saw things exactly as they were and got on with it.”
In a highly codified society that too often communicates in metaphors when it comes to the relationship between money, love, property and companionship, that’s subversion.
“We’re way past the point when we can only deal with gross insults to the dignity and humanity of women by making coded and sly slantwise jabs at those insults”
Not what I meant. I was thinking a sustained attitudinal change campaign, based around a core emotional message, spun out into a sustained series of sub campaigns using ridicule and mockery, not of the likes of Miss Bimbo per se, but of the ultimate end users of such projects ie: male marketers.
Look I’m easy like a cat on Sunday morning. And as sincere. What would you like me to say?
Well, I was out with my 4 year old daughter for fish n chips tonight (aka “chips n fish” to her), and got a real shock when she asked whether chips make you fat. I said yes but only if you have too many, or too often. She said “daddy – im never eating chips again!”
Of course, she did within seconds. But Ive still filed it away under “monitor healthy diet v neurotic slimness faultline”
From the Stink Tank
Well that’s what the missus calls me shed and I was down there yesterday with Tubs ‘n Shagger ‘n Johnno, ‘n we got to talkin’ about this “Bimbo” website. At first Tubs just said a “D**khead” website for blokes would do nicely, but then it got a bit serious and Johnno grabbed a bit of paper and we jotted down all about “D**khead”.
“Ya gotta go for a wider market, all sorts of blokes – old, young, workin’, retired”, says Tubs. Shagger used to run the servo out on the Highway, he said ya gotta stock icy poles for the kiddies, magazines for the ladies, fuel of course, snacks, bait for the fishermen,… so we reckoned “D**khead” could have all these different parts with
1. skimpy clad women, good lookers mind
2. some pictures of sport
3. competitions that anyone could understand
4. Tubs reckoned a part for a home handyman or gardening
5. Shagger wanted a bit of day-to-day events somehow maybe photos
6. more girls in swimming costumes
We were trying to work out how you’d make some cash, ‘n Johnno said you’d get subscribers and if “D**khead” got huge you could sorta use all the subscribers like a lever to get more cash. Somehow ya might get everyone to pay, even if they weren’t a subscriber. Mind you, we’d had a few beers by then.
Bloody Keith arrives from the Bowling Club, ‘n we get him to look through the stuff. He reads it twice, then says, “Ya buncha dills. Someone’s already thought of this. It’s called commercial TV! Yep, we all pay for it through the ads, even if we never watch it.”
Kim wrote:
Point taken. I still want a Devine building site though. Including dog poo dinner. Perhaps parady is a reasonable approach. I wonder how much it would cost to license his image from the estate?
:s/parady//parody/
Fine says;
3,841 women 18 or younger underwent breast augmentation out of a population of 300 million.
North American women have the highest incidence of breast cancer in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer
200,000 women in the U.S. undergo breast cancer surgery annually
http://www.veridex.com/ShowNewsItem.aspx?id=19
The USA had the second highest rate of mastectomy with 56 per cent of women diagnosed with breast cancer undergoing an operation for removal of a breast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastectomy
Breast cancer amongst young women – under 18 say – is quite rare. Perhaps less than 2 per cent of the total diagnosed.
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ProduktNr=0&Ausgabe=231698&ArtikelNr=90440&filename=90440.pdf
So, about 4,000 young women a year – or about 2240 breast augmentations arising out of cancer ops a year.
Then there are a few other possible contributing factors, like pronounced assymetry.
Add another 1,000 – say 3,240.
Well, what do you know?
Think about it.
I’m amazed you can hold a broom large enough to use such sweeping generalisations. I reiterate: if you want to call me a sexist, don’t mess about with ‘whenevers’ and ‘this always happens’ ‘the menz’.
I, as clearly stated, am not talking about ‘any issue that feminists raise’. I’m talking about this issue, that lots of people have raised. I’m responding to it because this kind of shoddy arguing, relying as it does on appeals to various nebulous hegemonies and a feminist authority prescribing what is, and what isn’t feminism ,is one of the things in this world guaranteed to give me the screaming shits.
Enough. I’m gonna stick to the actual argument from now on.
I guess I am in a way, yes. Rather though, I’m saying that I do not presume to know the minds of pre/adolescents, and believe that they are perfectly capable (or rather, as capable as adults) of criticising, deconstructing, or blithely believing something, and I find moves to ‘protect’ people from ideas (as opposed to actually unpleasant things) that *we* happen to disagree with are often a little arrogant, a little short-sighted, and almost inevitably misguided.
All I’m saying – not that this isn’t sexist, for the love of god, get over your monomania about that, if you can somehow manage to see past my gender – is that, if we can decide that it’s sexist, I’m pretty confident that kids can make that decision too, or not – as adults do. And that the way to oppose these things is put forth the reasons why it’s bad and let people decide for themselves. You know, like how we approach decision-making in a democracy.
Point out where I or anyone else has used shoddy arguments or said anything about what feminism is. Kaomagma may help with your intestinal disturbance.
Point out in regard to your last para where I or anyone else advocated anything remotely resembling censorship. All I did, if you use your reading skills, was to disagree with Klaus that there was no problem at all with the content. In fact what I have been doing is “putting forth the reasons” that the content is a problem. It is you who have got your y-fronts in a lather about censorship despite the fact that zero people have recommended anything other than talking about what makes this site problematic.
Quit rushing around the jungle beating your chest about stuff that just ain’t in this thread.
You’re right Su, no one but me mentioned censorship. It just seems, to me, that it’s a logical conclusion from the kind of arguments you have been putting forward.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re concerned that kids playing this game will be unduly influenced by what you see as sexist content, unable to differentiate wholly between game and real life, and irony and not irony. Will indeed become influenced by the sexist over-and-undertones of the game, and start believing and/or perpetuating them. Is that right?
If it is, then surely, the logical thing to do would be protect the kids who aren’t capable of making the informed, rational decision that an adult would, by banning the objectionable content – at least from them, until they are capable of making that informed decision?
That’s why I worry about censorship. My argument is that a) they won’t be influenced overmuch by the game and b) they are no more or less capable than the median adult in making decisions about what they find objectionable or not.
Let’s leave all the other guff aside, you’re right in arguing that it is beside the point. I found your last post kinda insulting, but accept that I brought it upon myself and should have moderating my last response.
I work in Community Health. My personal favourite expereince of “feminist consciousness” concerned the responses of my community nursing colleagues to the epidemic of child murders for purposes of Satanic ritual sacrifice underway in the sleepy, Federation-era suburb of Kingsgrove in Sydney’s south-west a few years ago.
You’ve never heard of it? That’s odd, because it was absolute unquestioned lore around here that babies were being bred in captivity, or stolen for the purposes of such sacrificial rituals.
Also in the Illawarra. A book was even written about that.
It more or less coincided with the plague of “repressed memory” incidents that community nurses were very worried about at the time.
I, rather foolishly on reflection, kept asking for evidence that babies were being murdered on altars in Kingsgrobe basements – and that kindy teachers in Belmore and Roselands were conducting orgies with five year old kids.
My truculent refusal to accept the claims unquestioned was everywhere interpreted as just so much typical bourgeois patriarchal belligerence.
And there you have the problem; all of those completely false assumptions, along with the false logic come into play EVERY time(my personal observation) women simply discuss issues around images of women. The holy cow of free speech is now being used to hose down discussion whenever women even mention objectionable content.
The logical thing is, in fact, to make our arguments known as widely as possible so that parents and girls are not shamed and blustered by the “it’s only a game”, “this is just harmless fun” arguments, so that they will consider exactly what it is that they are being sold and decide whether they really want to buy in. The noisome portrayal of girls on that site is part of a marketing juggernaut that can be very difficult to resist, even if you want to, and especially when any objection to it is buried under the straw issue of censorship.
You may not personally be aware that this is what you are doing but whenever feminist discussion is buried in that way, you are participating in the dynamic of the backlash and defending the patriarchy.
Despite appearances, “holy cow” and “hose down” is not really a mixed metaphor: I meant it was being hosed down with holy cow milk OF COURSE.
A wet T-shirt contest is only a game too. So’s dwarf-throwing.
Wait, what was my point again?
Yep, all good, clean fun FDB.
Censororship is one logical outcome, but it’s not othe only one. I’m very much an anti-censorship feminsit and I’m certainly not advocating that.
Of course, that then immediately opens the question of what to do about such games, except for complaining about them.
I like the idea of pranking them and making the site unmanageable, but is this realistic?
Jeepers, I think it’s a horrid website and tacky and money-wasting etc, but what should I do about it? Parody? Discussion? Yes certainly.
Just as a whole lot of blokes think “The Footy Show” on TV is boorish. What they can do in practice is to refuse to watch it and tell their mates why. Some of these social changes take decades, which seems glacial to the affronted, but eventually the changes occur.
What gives me the screaming irrits PatrickG at 8.48am, is the presimption that a sentient being has the right to lecture and harangue: viz priests & vicars from pulpits, PM and Ministers from on high, Fidel from a reviewing stand, etc. And in many countries: European, Australia, it takes the classic “School Marm” or “School Master” form. The essential aspects IMHO are as follows:
a) I know better than you, because I’m older, better educated, and more moral
b) Your behaviour is wrong [2008 version: inappropriate], see a) above
c) If you persist in your behaviour, I will either come down on you like a ton [tonne] of bricks, or get legislation altered, to ensure that Right Behaviour is encouraged
d) There is no limit to my harangues
e) What? You disagree? Go and stand in the corner for half an hour. I’m the School Master/Marm
f) I must write to “The Age”/”SMH” about this
g) I must write a column about it
and the all-purpose pursed lips, look of disapproval, “what’s the world coming to?”
etc.
You know the score.
So, is each of us going to participate in this antiquated attitudinising? Or are we prepared to think a bit more deeply and consider (as some posters wrote earlier) that other citizens – young or old – may have their own opinions about their own lives and how best to live them???
Awwwww Eliot at [8.38am]
You’re spoiling the paaaarty by bringing in those figures and facts like errrky gate-crashers…. Why you do that? Some of us might sulk. Shame on youse. Where’s the Bundy??
Fine says;
There’s also finger-wagging and shunning and shaming. All good.
su says;
What about all those women’s magazines causing the nationwide pandemic of anorexia.
No, wait. We have an epidemic of obesity, don’t we? That’s must be because of ‘Australia’s Biggest Loser’
Or to translate from the passive-agressive :
a)I have a different opinion to yours, here is some info that forms a basis
b)I disagree with your response and here is why
c)I like to argue my point through to the end despite all of your gesturing to straw men
d)repeat c)until my argument has reached its conclusion
f)Argument that discussion in the public realm is a good thing
g)I am prepared to argue a different viewpoint even though I know someone is going to tell me that, in contrast to themselves, *someone* (nudge, wink) does it all wrong; pursed lips blah harrangue blah
No one would disagree that children have opinions and make choices although saying they are qualitatively the same as those made by adults is a stretch.
Ambigulous says;
And I haven’t even gotten around to asking if there’s evidence children actually use the Miss Bimbo web site, yet.
There is, at the end of the day, more substance to the concepts of childhood and adulthood than mere age.
“Can you describe to me how someone becomes involved in a sim type game while remaining completely detached from the avatar? How long do you think you would play such a game? Isn’t the whole point of these games, the premise upon which they are developed, that you do become identified with the avatar, otherwise you simply stop playing?”
An example: when I play, say, The Sims 2, I create families, I manipulate their lives and I have an investment in the outcome, but I don’t identify with them. I don’t see the lovable but hideously ugly hill-billy couple that I created, who live in a shack, as something I aspire to be simply because I play with them. I do care what happens to them in the game, and try to make sure they don’t set anything on fire or turn up to work smelling really bad. I haven’t (well not yet) done anything in my own life that emulates their behaviour.
It’s much the same when writing fiction, although the terms are less strict and I tend to take it a bit more seriously, my characters are not me, they don’t change me as much as I change them because I don’t identify strongly with them. I empathise with them, I try to get into their heads, but they don’t change me because I know they aren’t real.
Personally, I’d prefer my kids to be writing fiction to playing The Sims, and I’d prefer they played the Sims to playing with ‘Bimbos’, but my primary objection is in terms of form, not content. What I’m saying is, the content of this game is less objectionable precisely because it is a game. If it really were a ‘how to’ guide, I would be more disturbed. The fact that Paris Hilton can make a living by actually playing the bimbo role in real life is more of a worry to me.
For me, censorship is out of the question, although offering parental guidelines is important and I think there is scope for improving the flow of information to parents about the content of games like this so they can decide if it is appropriate for their children. If the company can’t make a profit while being up-front about, on the one hand, the age-appropriateness of their content, and on the other, how they extract payment from users (ie mobile phone money syphoning) then they will eventually cease to exist.
Your little statistical excursus is somewhat undermined by your misleading and deliberate selection of only the smaller number reported by one body of surgeons, Eliot.
Just sayin…
Kim says;
Oh, I’m sorry Kim. I wouldn’t want to mislead people by referring to data compiled by some national body of silly-old oncology surgeons.
Which data are in question? The tiny proportion of under-18s having breast augmentations? The vast numbers of women in the USA undergoing mastectomies? The irrelevant opinions of those who have no evidence at all but what some feeble pretext to vent their vent their tedious opinions about what “we should think”?
Just point me to the fact you wish to dispute and I’ll go and get you some additional corroborative data, if you’d like?
Or, and here’s a twist, you could provide some actual data of your own – as opposed to your merely untutored opinions about all and sundry.
I’ll take your word for it on the Sims, Klaus because I’m not a gamer. This game is different in that it offers only one character and because we are talking about children as the users.
The discussion has kind of been hampered by the free choice/passive sponge set up at the beginning. But there are more subtle ways of viewing the influence. I would argue that this site is acting as a context specifying stimulus. It (and other representations of women and girls) are setting parameters for expectations about behaviour in the real world. To give an example of context specification: In a domestic violence situation the behaviour of the parties is influenced by their knowledge of cultural factors such as the degree to which submissiveness is seen as an feminine virtue, the degree to which physical violence is accepted or ignored, prior knowledge about the likelihood of prosecution, about the financial consequences of leaving an abusive relationship etc. All of those factors will influence reporting, attempts to leave the relationship, whether the violence is ongoing etc. The worrisome thing (apart from the obvious) is the narrowness of the parameters that the culture specifies for ‘acceptable’ girl appearance, behaviour etc.
Ignoring data provided by people who actually perform cosmetic breast enhancements obviously, Eliot.
You’ve also actually demonstrated nothing about the percentage of the smaller number you seized on to argue that they must be cancer related, because you haven’t cited anything on the incidence of breast cancer among girls aged 16 and 17.
But it’s a waste of time pointing this out, I’m sure, as you’re obviously just looking for whatever spin you can put on something authoritative to support what you want to say anyway.
“I’ll take your word for it on the Sims, Klaus because I’m not a gamer. This game is different in that it offers only one character and because we are talking about children as the users.”
This, I think, is part of the problem. Anybody who actually plays role-playing games of the various kinds finds it difficult to stomach being told that they have undue influence because it is manifestly untrue. Those who don’t play, and have little direct experience of, role-playing games tend to be the ones who are willing to take this kinds of perspective and run with it. It looks like the D & D panic all over again, except now it’s ’sexism’ or ‘violence’ instead of ‘witchcraft’.
I should add that I am not a ‘gamer’ either. I play computer and console games, but there is a pretty big difference in the relationships to gaming between what I do and what ‘gamers’ do.
I take an ecological model of child development, and I assume that it is how parents and immediate circle mediate external cultural forces that is more important to children than the ‘messages’ contained therein. Framing is more important than you imply, and there is a difference between a game that is understood to be a game in terms of how that sets expectations of behaviour, and other things kids are exposed to that are not, in fact, games.
Having said all of that, I don’t think some of the content is age-appropriate to kids under 12 since there may be implied sexual relationships that younger children shouldn’t necessarily be exposed to (it’s the same in The Sims, BTW, and it is classified ‘M’, which is a clear signal to parents). The companies responsible for this need to be obligated to offer clear parental warnings.
I didn’t say I hadn’t played video games, Klaus, just that I was unable to comment on your account of the degree of involvement in the Sims because I have not played them consistently enough (ie I wasn’t engaged and so I stopped). Also I never, ever panic.
With regards to framing. Cultural influences come in many forms and strengths and there can be discordance or agreement between them. The medium (real or virtual) may or may not indicate how strong that cultural influence is. In that example I gave, often ideas about feminine submissiveness come from media representations. If you have a strong cultural influence in your life that is a powerful supporter of assertiveness then those representations may have less effect. The kind of portrayal that occurs on the site I would think, tends to be reinforced by numerous other cultural products. A child living in a neglectful family who interacts mainly in the virtual space will have a different relationship with a game than another child who lives in an environment which offers a greater range of opportunities for engaging with the world.
Remember “Science is a human activity”, well “Children learn about the world and their place in it through all of their interactions.” Longer and clunkier but self-evidently true.
I agree with Klaus, that yes, things need to be rated, but I do think Su, that the domestic violence analogy is a looooooong bow to draw. I don’t know that you can argue this game is saying “this is acceptable femininity”. Surely the appeal lies in the fact it is clearly not acceptable?
I just don’t think you can break things down as clearly as that in this case – it’s not a print advertisement, just another brick in the house of chauvinism where the gender relations go unquestioned, unstated and unaccented. This is different. I would argue also that games are more negativist than that, but that’s a debate for another thread.
su at 11.29am
I didn’t make myself sufficiently clear: most of this School Master/School Marm attitudinising is directed at OTHER ADULTS. That’s what makes it particularly irritating. Some is directed at teh teens. BTW, discussion is fine. Drifting across into sermonising… well, whatever takes your fancy I suppose…..
“passive/aggressive”? – oh dear, an unwelcome (occasional) aspect of LP are these inept and gratuitous diagnoses of others’ psychologies… sometimes insults about the sex-life or drunkenness of another poster FFS [on another thread recently]. Piffle!
Kim at 12.26
“as you’re obviously just looking for whatever spin you can put on something authoritative to support what you want to say anyway.”
well, Kim, that’s not obvious to me…. I thought he was trying to obtain reasonably accurate data, and make best-guess assumptions to fill in the gap(s). Seemed fair to me. But CrikeyGollyGosh actual data can be a damned wet blanket on baseless surmise, can it not?
I was not drawing an analogy Patrick g! I was giving an example of how “context specifying stimuli” work. It is a concept from social psychology and I did not think I should drop it in without an example.
Pass-agg is a communication style, not a psychological disorder, ambigulous. Your ’sermonising’ is my ‘observation’.
But see, I just don’t think you can speculate about what this hypothetical kid will and won’t get/act from this game. There’s just way too many way to many variables to think about.
I would argue that a kid with a neglectful family (not sure, necessarily, how neglect plays into this, there are plenty of hands-on sexists), who interacts largely in a virtual space will be more resistant, not less.
But my point is you can argue either way, there’s no way to know and I really doubt that one type of kid will necessarily have the same reaction to anything as the same type.
My question would be about what, in fact, they are learning from this particular interaction. For my part, I don’t think it’s true that they are learning to identify with that figure or to seek to emulate those actions any more than I learnt to emulate the actions of the character in Doom 2, or my brother has learnt to be a murderer by playing Grand Theft Auto when he was fifteen. And yet the same notions of influence were used in each of those cases to argue against those games. I found them dubious then, and I find them dubious now.
“A child living in a neglectful family who interacts mainly in the virtual space will have a different relationship with a game than another child who lives in an environment which offers a greater range of opportunities for engaging with the world.”
Maybe, but this supports my point more readily than it does yours. If over-identification is linked to neglect then we should focus on the neglect. Purging the culture of sites of possible identification is coming at things from the wrong end.
And you will notice that I didn’t! Instead I am just talking about the concept that learning occurs across all environments and is generalized between environments, limit the environments and that will have an effect.
Klaus just read again what I said about context specification. We are not talking about monkey see, monkey do, we are talking about the construction of expectations around behaviour; what those parameters are and how broad or narrow.
None of what I am saying requires that a child make no distinction between an avatar and themselves.
And again with the “purging the internet”! Farrrrk. Headdesk, headbrickwall.
The notion of purging is not drawn from your comments here su, and I apologise if there is an implied attribution to you. I also note that disputing the basis of your critique of content doesn’t necessarily prevent us agreeing on courses of action. I think we have things upside down critiquing content when it comes to games, whereas you think it is worth dwelling on the question of the negative effects of particular content in games. I’m prepared to accept that your interest in content doesn’t preclude my concerns about form and modes of delivery, nor does it preclude other forms of action on your part.
Thanks for the clarification su.
(obviously) I’m not aware of that terminolgy.
Not accusing you of sermonising, su. But – gee – there’s a fair bit of it around.
And the insults that fly around in LP sometimes, would make the MSM blush; or an editor reach for his defamation-lawyer-on-tap.
Just sayin’
Kim says;
I did, actually. I said this at 8:38 am;
- then I linked you to this chart at Breast Care.
Less than 2 per cent. Hence the laughably minute proportion of augmentation procedures amongst women under 18 in the total sample – barely enough to fuel the ridiculous beat up in the tabloid rant “informing” your “opnion” on the matter.
If that.
What you haven’t done is supply even a jot of evidence (a) in support of your opinion, (b) rebutting the evidence presented to you. Have you? And you won’t.
Probably on the very good grounds that (b) is inconvenient to (a).
How tedious.
You’re still working off the wrong sample.
When I want intelligent commentary on gaming, I look to Richie.
lol, I like that article, but you’re trying to make a real point of it are you Helen? Cause that’s a very specious argument. By that line of reasoning, you can accuse anything in the world of being sexist, by virtue of it being produced in a world with sexists. That’s just silly.
Moreover, it misses the point, being the creators are not the sole arbiters of meaning. No one here, I think, is arguing about the creator’s fem credentials, but rather the effect of his game on the people playing it; a very different kettle of fish indeed.
Let’s get back to this claim:
Now, note this from the Our Bodies Ourselves website;
Now, true, Our Bodies Ourselves is notoriously patriarchal and unreliable in its underlying world view, but it does in this instance source it’s data from 2005 Reconstructive Breast Surgery, American Society of Plastic Surgery (ASPS), Inc., 2005.
So, a tad over 1 per cent of all the breast implant surgery for augmentation in the USA in 2005 was on teenagers – a distinction, just by the way, neatly obfuscated in the Our Bodies Ourselves article by rolling the “360,000 women and teenagers” in together.
Welcome to the world of feminist social “science”. Or “lying” as we common folk call it.
Anyway, breast implant surgery for augmentation among teenagers even in the Great Satan is so passing rare as to be of disappearing insignificance.
But don’t let that stop you.
“Lying”? You’re continuing to ignore the figures on cosmetic procedures reported by those who actually conduct them, because they’re higher than the ones that suit whatever dumbassed argument you’re trying to make.
You’re obviously not coming to this discussion in good faith, so I’m going to decline to engage further.
I serially took up playing then had to go cold turkey on The Sims, Tomb Raider, and Fianl Fantasy respectively, because they brought out an addictive streak in me that was quite frightening as well as highly humiliating. But I understand not everyone goes like this over computer games (though a sibling of mine apparently has done the same thing with WOW) – what I found worrying was, during my periods of intense game-playing, at night I would dream I was in the game still, which signalled to me that it had effectively colonised the furthest shores of my imagination. If there was even a chance that a kid of mine would have a similar response I would not let her play any rpg for more than half an hour a day and I would not let her play any game with even slightly dodgy content.
Have you noticed how teenagers are always “bombarded” with messages when we personally don’t approve of what they’re reading? They’re never “bombarded” by Jane Austen novels of their geography homework.
Sometimes they’re turned into “docile couch potatoes” by televison and blogging – except when they’re being “whipped into sex crazed fiends”.
I’ve certainly binged on a game or two in my time as well, Laura. I played ‘Oblivion’ for a week straight, at least four hours a day, at one time. Part of the problem for me wasn’t the game, per se, but being unused to the level of flexibility I was being given over when I got my work done, and even how many hours I worked.
The game was just something involving that filled the time, and I found it no more psychically invasive than a number of novels I’ve read. I’ve dreamt I was in novels after engaging with them intensively as well – most recently Coetzee’s ‘Elizabeth Costello’. I question the specificity of RPGs in producing that response, although I’m sure it’s different things for different people. I totally agree with structuring kids engagement with games, novels, music, use of the telephone or internet, though, especially in terms of having them decide on what amount of time they are going to spend on it in advance, and then stick to that decision.
Re the “Bombarded” quote,
Um, Eliot, if you go back and reread the comment, you’re arguing against an utterance by a fictional character
who is a caricature of the game’s supporters…
but don’t let that stop you…
Eliot Ramsey appears to be relying on out-of-date figures.
According to figures supplied by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery as quoted in the linked article:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/nassau/ny-lisurg275627318mar27,0,6266258.story
In 1997, of 101,176 total breast augmentations 1,326 were performed on females 18 years old or younger.
In 2000 of 203,310 total breast augmentations 2,123 were performed on females 18 years old or younger.
In 2007 of 394,440 total breast augmentations 7,882 were performed on females 18 years old and younger.
Thus between 1997 and 2007 there was an approximately 400% increase in breast augmentations on women of all ages.
However, between 1997 and 2007 there was an approximately 600% increase in breast augmentations on females aged 18 and younger.
For the period between 1997 and 2007 this represents a growth rate 50% higher for under-19s than for the general population.
Eliot Ramsey, OK so I got a bit carried away with the divorce, but you have to admit that it received an extraordinary amount of press coverage and you can’t deny that the celebrity cult is very pervasive.
As for breast augmentation, sorry I didn’t provide a link in my first post, so will provide one here. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t provide any information on how many of the augmentations are as a result of mastectomy etc, but if say, 1% are for medical reasons, there are still a lot of these operations being performed on teenagers purely to increase their cup size.
Granted it also doesn’t indicate how many of the operations were performed on 16 year-olds, but I was rather puzzled that you seem to suggest that under 18s as a demographic, doesn’t include 16 year-olds. If I have misread what you wrote, I apologise.
However, I stick to my guns re who pays. These operations cost at least US$5000, a sum of money which would be beyond the pocket of most under 18s, so it seems reasonable to say that their parents would be stumping up the cash.
And, FYI, some years ago 4 corners (I think) did a report on the rapid increase in cosmetic surgery. Included in this report was a family whose adolescent daughter was getting breast implants for her 16th birthday present!
Another disturbing thing I noticed the other day while shopping for undies for me, were “training bras” for pre-adolescent girls. Why a girl under 10 would need a bra is completely beyond me, but parents must be buying this stuff for their little girls, otherwise shops wouldn’t stock it. What has got me stumped, however, is why presumably sensible people would buy into this marketing ploy?
“The companies responsible for this need to be obligated to offer clear parental warnings.”
If anyone’s wondering about this side of thing: the website in question doesn’t. They don’t even make a pretence at obtaining parental permission. All the registrant has to do is enter an email address in the “parent’s email address” field (I entered an invalid one), and the registration is immediately processed and access granted.
~~
One possible and quite sensible reaection to not understanding the minds of pre-adolescent and adolescent girls might be to listen to, and believe, the people in the discussion who have been pre-adolescent and adolescent girls.
Lauredhel, in fairness this is not a discussion about how firemen work, and I used to be a fireman so I know how they work.
I’m a dude in his late twenties, but I’m not gonna presume to speak for about what every – or even any – dude in his late twenties thinks or feels about something. I don’t think my demographic gives me an insight into personalities like that.
a tedious PS to [101]:
I just saw the insults by HC on another thread, inc. childish tantrum insults; they surpassed any tossed around by LP regulars, I must say. Quite startling.
Laura wrote:
I used to have nightmares about working the checkout at woolies after a long shift, but i’m not sure there are any long term issues involved other than vowing never to work there again.
Anecdotes about kids and games: I am a nerd, and play on and off when an interesting game comes along. For a long time when my eldest was around 3-6, she used to perch on my knee and we’d play with me using the controls and her directing the action. We played Tomb Raider (ok – dodgy graphics but bear with me) and she used to call it “the jumping girl”. Jumping girl takes shit from nobody, works out puzzles, is heroic. There isn’t a lot of altruism in it, but for an action game it’s a pretty positive experience I think. The other game we played (a lot) was Deus Ex which now is pretty much a classic of the RPG genre. You solve puzzles, talk to people, try to avoid as much as possible killing anybody. You have to think a lot to play it, and it has a novel story arc with a shifting mix of friends and foes whose allegiences shift as the story progresses. We loved it, she even kept up with the story line for the most part.
Boring story over. The point I think I want to make is that if the games aren’t engaging, they won’t be played as long as there are good alternatives. It is a simple matter of supplying those alternatives. Kids are smart and the boring games get left behind pretty quickly. Game designers, for the most part, are idiots, and stumble across good stuff only at random. Therefore, on reflection, I don’t think the game presents much of a problem. The worrying role models are prevalent in society at large and those give me much more pause for thought than something easily avoided (or mocked) like Bimbo.
jane says;
As Katz has thoughtfully pointed out, in 2007 of 394,440 total breast augmentations 7,882 were performed on females 18 years old and younger. [Thank you Katz].
There is an estimated 301,139,947 (July 2007) people in the USA. 150,569,973 of these are female. About 20 per cent of these are 0-14 years.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html
120,455,978 – say, 120 million – are females 15 or older. Twenty percent of these are over 65. Say 96 million from 16 to 64. Let’s assume 2 out of 48 (1 in 24) is 16-18.
That’s 4,000,000 from 16-18 years of age, okay?
Of which 7,882 had a breast augmentation in 2007 – for whatever reasons. Some [most?] doubtless for their own very good reasons, like radical assymetry, corrective surgery after trauma, and perhaps even some cosmetic.
That is 00.19705 per cent. Zero-zero–point-one-nine-seven-zero-five per cent.
One of the very compelling, pressing social issues of our time? Or a beat up by the tabloid media?
Whose emotional buttons are being pressed by those beating up this utterly insignificant cultural phenomenon? Hmmm?
@118.Whoops you seem to be assuming that one year’s data represents the total number of surgeries for the 16-18 yr population.
But this particular model represents a shift in the goal posts to a new extremity and therefore is of special interest. Also every single instance of modelling will seem minor when compared with the overall culture. So do we ever get to examine one example without people saying “hey that problem there is greater” or, “the overall problem is more important than this particular example”. I am going to nick Douglas Adam’s idea of the “somebody else’s problem” cloaking device and call this the “look over there at that problem” cloaking device. If someone posts a thread on LP about say Darfur or Climate Change, I don’t see people responding “Iraq is a bigger problem” or “what about biological diversity.”
That wasnt a boring story david. My daughter’s just getting into ABC kids games online, and Im generally keen to know about good games for girls – in fact, jst about any girl-related popular culture that isnt of the Barbie/ bimbo/ Paris H. airhead variety.
Lefty E, some of the consoles are really good on that front. Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii have great games available that can be used by quite young kids, and have nothing to do with that aspect of popular culture. It does depend on the age of your daughter, but in my experience young girls are catered to quite well by Nintendo, and the DS has quite a wide range of games, so you can follow her interests a little bit. There is stuff like Nintendogs, and there are puzzle games as well.
Thanks Klaus!
I’m not a big one for boosting products – but I played Wii recently: how much fun is that?! Gotta get one!
Wii is awesome, and very much a social console, although if you’re interested for your daughter as well some of the best stuff can be a bit difficult for younger children. Once you get bored of the Wii sports games (and it’ll probably be a few months of solid play before that is even close to happening), I recommend Warioware, Kororimpa, Super Mario Galaxy, the latest Mario Party.
Lefty E wrote:
Best rule of thumb: avoid anything deliberately marketed exclusively for girls. That includes all the execrable Bratz playstation games and whatnot. Kids love puzzles and while initially some of the subject matter of the best puzzle games is very “male” centred, the gameplay is universal. While a lot of the imagery in male centred games is very unfortunate (every woman in Deus Ex has enormous breasts for example) it’s also easy to mock.
su wrote:
I didn’t make myself clear enough su, what is most obvious to me is that games are not standalone in kids experiences and shouldn’t be viewed as such – they don’t have special powers that TV doesn’t possess. Kids flip around between the TV, talking to their friends, playing games and the images and experiences are a bit of a continuum. What I was trying to say was that you should evaluate games in the same way as you evaluate TV or your kids friends parents: the sh*t filter is universally applicable.
I have no experience of the Bratz games, but the TV show wasn’t particularly bad, at least not as bad as I expected it to be. It certainly had more interesting things to say than Ninja Turtles.
I’ve only just read through this thread. but one point leap out at me. Eliot Ramsey keeps on trying to lump reconstructive breast surgery in with augmentation surgery as if it’s a subcategory, whereas the very source he quoted points out that the two categories are entirely separate subcategories of breast implant surgery.
Reconstructive surgery is simply not referred to as augmentation, mainly because the subset of Plastic Surgeons who are Reconstructive Surgeons view themselves as an elite compared to everyday Cosmetic Surgeons.
Ok David, I didn’t realize you were talking about the game format as a whole.
tigtog says;
Contrast the passionate “concern” over the tiny numbers of young women having “cosmetic” surgery – if indeed that’s what we are even talking about here – with the ways transexual gender re-assignments are discussed on the “progressive” fringes of debates over sexual politics.
If it can be merely alleged that a woman somewhere in the world has surgery to look like Barbie, moral panic. If however a man has masses of surgery to look like Barbie, then instead he’s a courageous pioneer on the front line of transgender sexual liberation politics. Anyway…
tigtog, if reconstructive surgeons are an elite compared to everyday cosmetic surgeons, would that be because the field of cosmetic surgery is even larger than reconstructive? In which case, the absurdly tiny ratio of 16-18 year old women having any kind of breast augmentation surgery is even smaller than the absurdly minuscule 00.19705 per cent proportion of the whole we’ve already calculated?
You could be right, tigtog.
What could settle this discussion would be if those in the grip of the moral panic over the vast wave of 16-year-old American girls having breast enhancements (00.19705 per cent of the total – or less it seems) actually did a study of their reasons for doing so. I mean, if you can actually sift a statistically meaningful sample of informants from such a rare subcategory.
But that’s assuming this “debate” is about their wants…
Eliot Ramsey — I could well be wrong, but my assumption about the most important and most frequent task of reconstructive surgeons in the above context, is to treat breast-cancer patients who have undergone mastectomies, in which case your outrage would be misplaced, to say the least. But someone please correct me if I’m mistaken.
Not all or even most MTF transfolk want to look like Barbie, Eliot. You do seem to enjoy flinging stereotypes around, including describing expressions of concern and distaste as a “moral panic”, and I’m not at all impressed by downplaying thousands of surgeries by dismissing them as “only a tiny percentage” of the population. It’s still thousands of surgeries.
It is of course quite possible that the idea of masses of parents giving their daughters breast implants for their Sweet 16 parties is simply an urban legend, and that most of the augmentations are to correct asymmetries etc. However, the rise of a new demographic for augmentations would seem to indicate more of a response to marketing pressures, because unless you know something I don’t know there hasn’t been a sudden rise in the number of young women with asymmetric or malformed breasts.
I also have no problem with coming down on the side that as far as 16 year olds of either gender are concerned, surgical procedures should be about their needs, not their wants. Let them take the couple more years to age 18 to evaluate the want.
Elliot just to point out again; one year’s figures even if they are indicative of a stable trend (which is a big if) indicate a rate per year not X % of people have this surgery before the age of 18. There is a difference. You keep quoting your rubbery figure as representative of the proportion of under 18’s who have this surgery, which it is NOT.
j_p_z , I think he’s contrasting surgery done for therapeutic reasons (e.g. after mastectomy) with surgery done to give very young ladies “massive hooters” – i.e. for “beauty” reasons [warped as they seem to many adults] in contrast to medical reasons.
cheers
A game I’ve enjoyed is “I love Katamari” It’s on Playstation 2 and you’ve got a little ball, that you roll around, picking up bigger and bigger stuff. It’s quite quirky, sounds dull, but hugely addictive! Probably would appeal to younger ones, it’s got a bit of a ‘cute’ factor without being too cloying. (no cleavage in sight either, which I find a refreshing change in computer games!)
j_p_z says;
Okay then, you’re mistaken. Because the tiny numbers of pre-teen girls allegedly having boob jobs for supposedly frivolous reasons:
a) obviously doesn’t impinge upon the literally hundreds of thousands of women having mastectomies and reconstructive surgery each year – any more than the men having gender reassignments impinges upon the demonstrably greater number of men having prostate cancer surgery. Does it?
b) the panicky claims are not backed by any qualitative indications showing the reasons why the tiny percentage of girls involved had the work done anyway.
Just finger-wagging and moralising about it is not beside the point – it is the the point of this obvious beat up.
What we have here is a moral panic attempt by some fringe feminist element that has deliberately sexualised teenaged girls then held them up as sanctified ritual sacrificial “victims” for a deliberate media beat up.
tigtog says;
Not all or even most teenaged girls want to look like Barbie either, do they?
su says;
Well, my “rubbery” figures suggesting how utterly statistically inconsequential the data are for some supposed (largely imaginary) America-wide surge in teenaged breast enhancements are still more empirically sound than the total lack of any evidence whatsoever coming from the Panic Station Imagineers driving this Furphy, hey?
If yoo want to provide some trend analyses demosntrating otherwise, go right ahead, because I’d love to see it.
“Last year, 3,841 women 18 or younger underwent breast augmentation, a 24-percent jump from 3,095 in 2002, which represents a 19-percent increase from 2,596 in 2001, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Only 978 girls had the procedure in 1992. (Women between 19 and 34 account for a large segment of those getting implants; 114,005 last year.)”
You supplied your own trend figurs, Eliot Ramsay. In 1998, 978 had breast augmentation surgery. Last year, (2007?), 3,841 had breast augmentation surgery. That’s a huge increase. 978 – 3841 – in less than a decade. That’s huge. And nothing there about reconstructive surgery, just augmentation.
BTW, no-one said anything about pre-teens. Wher did you get that from?
Fine says;
Wow! 2,863! In only ten years!! What’s the population of the USA? Oh, yes, that’s right -301,000,000.
By comparison, the number of ten year old boys playing Billy Elliot in musicals by Si Relton John has doubled in just one year – from four to eight.
You need to get a clue about the difference between incidence and prevalence. See Fine about the trend.
Eliot Ramsay. You asked for a trend. I gave you one. The numbers more than tripled in less then a decade. You actually have no argument against that.
Eliot, it’s incredibly disingenuous of you to say that feminists are sexualising pre-teen girls when they are fighting a rearguard action against it. I see you also pull out the “finger-wagging and moralising” card, so you want to have it both ways there.
Can I just say to the contingent that immediately interpret every protest as “finger wagging / moralising / purse lipped” and maintain that it’s about OMG!FREESPEECH, if you sit down and have a good think I’m sure that you can think of a few instances where someone is being a complete arse and needs a right (verbal) hammering, not to mention distributed mockery. This is what is happening to young what’s his face who put up this web site. Can you get it that “freedom of speech” means that we may discuss at length and with great force why we think this site is not only worthless, but potentially damaging, as one incremental part of an avalanch of Pink-princessification / premature supermodelification of our girls. I completely get why some beneficiaries of the patriarchal social model might defend it to the death, but some of us use our freedom of speech to call you on it.
Oh, no! More gendered cultural forms …
Forty million! Well what do you know – a number that might be construed as statistically meaningful in some sense.
Eliot Ramsey wrote:
Lose argument == change subject eh Eliot?