MissBimbo.com
Posted by smcutts on April 16, 2008
Maybe you have heard of the newest web sensation? Sweeping through France and Britain, the ‘fashion game’ MissBimbo.com offers girls as young as seven years old the opportunity to create an online profile and build their own Bimbo. Members are then responsible for feeding, clothing, enhancing and caring for their Bimbo. Options include diet pills (recently removed as a result of negative publicity), sexy lingerie, meal logs (with helpful instructions for calorie reduction) and cosmetic surgery.
The young, French, male creator of MissBimbo.com has a little sister in the fourth grade. When asked by a reporter how he would feel if someone called his sister a ‘bimbo’, he replied, ‘I wouldn’t like it.’ But he appeared to have no comprehension of the term’s potential impact on other young members of his site. In the USA alone, 80% of fourth graders fear ‘getting fat’ more than their own death or that of their parents. 40% of fourth graders have already begun a diet as a means of coping with this fear. Statistics in Canada are almost identical.
I have to confess that it always makes me a bit nervous to use this column as a forum to discuss trends such as MissBimbo.com – I do not want to give even more publicity to these types of for-profit, esteem-damaging enterprises. Rather, it is my hope that readers take the information in the spirit in which it is given – as a call to action, a plea for proactive protest leading to positive change. Clearly, our fourth graders deserve a better legacy than planning the rest of their lives around a number on the scale. But then again, so do the rest of us!
Stop and consider for a moment what, if any, impact joining or even stopping by to visit MissBimbo.com could have on you or your loved ones – male or female. What message are we sending to our own generation, and the ones to come, by continuing to endorse or participate in negative gender stereotyping for a profit? How will even the most casual encounter with a site such as this color our sense of ourselves in days to come? Is it really worth it to take that risk?
Joining MissBimbo.com is no different than grabbing a copy of the latest so-called ‘fun and fluffy’ magazine to kick back and relax with. 70% of female readership for magazines like Cosmopolitan and Shape report a reduction in self-esteem within 30 seconds. 50% of female readers report wanting to lose weight as a result of viewing such magazines, although only 29% are actually overweight. ‘How low can we go’ might work as a childhood party game. But it is not a worthwhile use of a life…especially when we know and can do much better.
Or do we? We will only know for sure when knowing translates into doing. Twenty five times more people suffer from eating disorders than are HIV positive. More women die each year from eating disorders than from breast cancer. Sites like MissBimbo.com are not just a vague threat to our collective self-esteem. They are known killers.
It is time to fight for our lives. It is time to take our self-esteem, and our power to choose, and use them as a powerful weapon against the war-for-profit raging against our bodies, minds and lives. It is our life. How are we going to use it? What legacy will we live by, and leave behind?
Warmly and with HOPE,
Shannon
