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.