Tessa G.S. sent in a link to the online game Miss Bimbo. Here are some images from the game:
Tessa says,
In this case, you build a “bimbo” by placing your character on diets, getting plastic surgery, shopping for clothes, attending a-list parties, dating handsome men— all with the aim of becoming the most popular bimbo in the game…[According to the website] MissBimbo is an educational tool, a social meeting place and a hot pot of bimboism. It is free to enjoy bimboland.
An educational tool? Really?
According to CNN, parents have expressed concern that pre-teen girls are playing a game that encourages them to have their characters get breast implants and facelifts, as well as go on diets.
The game also reinforces the idea that girls are always rivals, whether competing for popularity or men (or the perfect wedding, as the movie “Bride Wars” shows).
While we’re on the topic of video games (sort of), Burk M. told me about Sexy Beach 3. In the game, you get to pick a female character, what she’s wearing, which of several beach-related activities she’s involved in (playing tag, “playful floating,” limbo, etc.), the location (beach, reef, waterfall, and so on) and the time of day. And then you can take the role of a disembodied hand that rubs various parts of her body while her nipples get hard and she moans in delight and eventually appears to orgasm. Here’s an example (Not Safe for Work):
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB7mdLRziYo[/youtube]
As another example of video games that socialize girls into gender roles, Ryan pointed out the video game Imagine Babyz (image found here; it’s sometimes spelled “Babies” instead):
A description of the game (from Play.com):
Entertain the babies – Play with them and their toys, play music to make them dance and take them into the garden to play on swings and other garden toys.
Exchange information, photos and clothing with other players through Wi-Fi.
Keep the house clean – Use fun mini-games to create a welcoming home for the babies: wash up, clean and vacuum, paint the walls, mow the grass, trim hedges and drive away spiders!
Make the house to your own taste – Use the money you earn and the vouchers you receive in succeeding in your missions – buy items at the shops to decorate the house…Embody a young student who visits her grandmother’s house for the summer. Your grandmother leaves to go on holiday and leaves you in charge of her house. During her absence you will have to maintain the house and even decorate it to your taste. In order to do this you will need to earn money by taking care of all your neighbour’s babies, where you will find your vocation – babysitting!
Burk sent in this video of BoneTown, the “world’s first action adventure porno game,” a video game about exactly what you’d think it’s about:
So you start out with fat girls, but eventually get to move up to the hotties. You get access to hotter women by getting bigger balls. And apparently your name is Butt Man. Also, according to the “history” section, Mormons colonized the island of Bonetown and there’s Jew Magic. I really don’t know. Part of your goal is to protect sexual liberation from “corporate conservatism.”
This photo was used to illustrate how sex in the game is about pleasuring women, not just men:
Uh huh. Nothing gives women more pleasure than giving men oral sex.
There’s a lot of interesting racial and gender stuff going on there. I’m not even sure what to do with all of it. I kinda giggled at the pure ridiculousness sometimes.
NEW!
Matt K. told us about the game My World, My Way, which centers around a female character who is spoiled and bratty and gets her way by using “pout points” and being selfish. The object of the game is to get a boyfriend, of course.
“Change the world to get what you want. Selfishness is your power!”
Nice.
NEW! (Mar. ’10): Joe F. sent in a short video showing some scenes from the video game Mass Effect. He points out that in the game the romantic/sexual options include a heterosexual couple or a lesbian option, but not one for gay men. One scene allows the male protagonist to bring a woman back to his room, where among other things you can make her perform a sexy dance while you, the player, look at her basically through the eyes of the male character. There is no option for the male character to dance for her.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUAfQDgTxwY[/youtube]
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Comments 24
SarahMC — December 17, 2008
I feel bad for the next generation of women. Their (male) sex partners are going to be so bad in bed.
Ranah — December 17, 2008
Both games are japanese, and the way girls respond in japanese animations, games, and real porn movies is always absurd. To sum it up, girls should be fragile, childish, shy and scream every now and then (from surprise, shame, pain OR pleasure / arousal).
Bagelsan — December 17, 2008
I know! I kept wincing at all the yanking on of stuff that was going on. That looked really uncomfortable... :p
surprised — December 17, 2008
i was surprised to see sb3 mentioned on this site. i've fapped to those girls so many times, but it's really just harmless. it's not like you can pay them for sex, receive it, kill them, and get your money back a la grand theft auto. they're all willing participants on 'dates'.
Jamal — December 17, 2008
do they make sb3 with boys?
Elena — December 17, 2008
Jamal: Well, to put an example, this one for the Nintendo DS is rather similar to sb3, if less pervy. There are plenty of Dating Sim and erotic games for fangirls, of course.
Tiff — December 17, 2008
I'll take it!
I am in desperate need of awesome recommendations!
Lea Rosen — December 17, 2008
It's my understanding that Miss Bimbo is originally a French game that's been copied (and slightly altered) for American players. My roommate has been interested in this game for a while, and tells me that the American version is mostly altered to make it "less socialistic," which is interesting.
In any case, I don't think that the Japanese are responsible for the absurdities of sexism... and really, the game play in these two examples is quite distinct. (Certainly some of the issues raised by Miss Bimbo are present in Sexy Beach and vice versa, of course.)
Miss Bimbo is a twisted kind of virtual pet-- your bimbo can die if you don't log in and earn food for her. Sexy Beach is really targeted at a different kind of consumer, which is why it does seem less shocking, if not less problematic. Selling commodified women to adult men is not as weird as selling them to female children, even if both are manifestations of the same fundamental problem.
Ryan — December 17, 2008
Yeah! I've been waiting for the video game post all weak. This one is a little weak though. No broad generalizations about "gamers" no assumptions that the audience for a video game is male (well maybe sexy beach).
Sexy Beach is only commercially availalbe in Japan. It is available here as an import (or for those of us with Pirate hats). I've never been to Japan but those are some serious breast fetishists. I think that soc images needs to do a post at some point on the science and discussion of "Breast Physics" in video games. There are some legitimate developer blogs that discuss this (mostly in japanese for some reason).
It's interesting the "uncanny valley reaction" that bad "breast physics" can engender. My girlfriend won't let me play my copy of "Rumble Roses XX" not because it is a horribly grotesque depiction of women, but mostly because their unnatural breasts make her physically ill.
I'm not to sure about the first game listed. Is it really aimed at little girls? If I saw this I'd assume it was being played by house wives on Pogo or something. Would someone really play that game and take it LITERALLY? It seems pretty satirical to me.
There are a lot of games out there that allow you to explore roles that you might not otherwise in real life. Like say, a deer hunting game. I'd never hunt deer in real life...but I might play a deer hunting game in a bar or something if it was the only game on offer and I was waiting for my name to be called during Karaoke. Does that mean I want to be a deer hunter? Hell no!
This game looks pretty satirical to me.
Gwen Sharp, PhD — December 17, 2008
Ryan--I think the Miss Bimbo game (the images I took are from the UK version) may very well have been *meant* satirically, but it has in fact gained an actual audience of pre-teen and teen girls, regardless of what the original intent was. In one case a dad sued the company after his young daughter ran up a nearly $200 cell phone bill sending in texts (at $3 each, I think it was) to buy more "bimbo bucks" so she could buy more things in the game (which is technically free to play, but you have a limited amount of $ with the free play).
This may very well be one of those things where the parody element of the game sort of went unnoticed.
logan — December 17, 2008
It's hard to believe the creators of Miss Bimbo intended it to be satirical with quotes such as these:
"In real life there is the option of getting a boob job," said Evans (co-creater). "Yes, there are negative elements to the game. We can't ignore that life is sometimes rough. Relationships end or you can't afford the apartment you want," and he goes on to say, ""I'm not 100 percent sure that young users will rush out and get a boob job and I don't think they'll play the game and say I want to eat some vegetables, either."
Maybe I'm an idiot, but his defense of the game's use of diet pills and boob jobs doesn't hint at intended satire, but simply (and naively) claims it just won't effect the kids who play it.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=4520350
Kay — December 17, 2008
Believe it or not, this Miss Bimbo thing hit the news some months ago with a big frenzy because they sold diet pills and something else I can't remember in order to keep your bimbo at her target weight. Parents were pretty pissed. So my friend and I went to see for ourselves, and we found that the site was down so they could re-vamp it and remove the diet pill option.
Ryan — December 18, 2008
Logan - Someone really said that? Well damn I guess your right, that doesn't sound like Satire. What an idiot. I'd have to guess he's fueling the controversy fire to drive traffic to the game.
I know I wouldn't want my teenage daughter playing a game like this. Still I want to see some data on who's playing this game.
I just can't imagine some girl wanting to play this game when Ubisoft has so many great games on the Nintendo DS like imagine babies:
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/5/942105_93210_front.jpg
Now there's a sociological image!
Elena — December 18, 2008
The "Imagine" series by Ubisoft is pretty sad, IMO. I'm a big fan of the Cooking Mama games (which is not as bad as it sounds, because the only thing you see of your avatar are a pair of sexless hands, and in the sequel for the DS there's a whole extended family of both genders that teach you to cook instead of just Mama), but the pink collar ghetto sim games depress me like nothing else.
JenniferRuth — December 18, 2008
I used to work in a games store. Not one little girl ever picked up Imagine: Babies. They did buy a lot of Pokemon though.
Bagelsan — December 18, 2008
They did buy a lot of Pokemon though.
Well sure! Why feed up/slim down a Barbie-figure for no particular benefit, when taking care of a little monster critter will allow you to *explode* things? ^^
anne — December 19, 2008
I have nothing to add, but on a somewhat related note I was happy to find out that the iBoob application (an image of a woman's torso with large breasts that jiggle when you shake your iPhone/iPod Touch) was apparently axed from the Apple app store: http://www.iphonespies.com/iphoneapps/iboobs-didnt-make-it-to-app-store/
"Games" like these make me very uncomfortable, as a woman.
Sociological Images » WHAT WE’VE BEEN UP TO BEHIND YOUR BACK (DECEMBER 2008) — January 1, 2009
[...] gift marketing (sent in by Sofia A.) and we added an image of the video game Imagine: Babies to this post about how Miss Bimbo socializes girls into traditional gender [...]
Ben Ostrowsky — February 7, 2009
The funny thing to me is that the 'sex controls' are so simplistic:
http://www.bonetown.com/images/controls/keys.jpg
E - Increase Speed
W - Decrease Speed
D - Increase Power
S - Decrease Power
R - Talk
Enter - End Sex
(and I suppose it might be a coincidence that the power keys are D/s)
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Another Collection of Gender-and-Tech-Related Images » Sociological Images — August 26, 2009
[...] Station Portable, mom/daughter domesticity in a Nintendo ad, targeting the new Risk to men, and Miss Bimbo. Leave a Comment Tags: gender, science/technology, sex, sports, toys/games [...]
isabella marie g. diez — October 4, 2009
i feel so bad because i don't have any money to buy a house and other thing.i'm so woried about it.pls. someone to help me.
BlackCat — April 1, 2010
About My World, My Way, I personally think you're being too harsh on it. On the surface it looks worse than it really is.
Yes, you are a spoiled, selfish princess, which I thought was annoying, too. But really, she takes it upon herself to go out and become an adventurer, instead of moping around or waiting for prince charming to show up. Maybe it's not perfect, but certainly a step in the right direction? I mean, I come from the old days where you rescued Zelda in the castle, and what did she do? Nothing. Just waited for a man to save her. Bleh.
And the pouting thing? That's just a way to game the game. Basically, you can change the game parameters to suit your playing style. You can make the enemies drop more experience, money, items, skip over battles, or even change the enemy level to make them stronger or weaker. Having played countless RPGs, I have to say that the pouting system is quite a refreshing change from "do it the way the developers decree" which basically means grinding and farming. Boring.
It's not a perfect game, and really, what is? But it's fun, and not as bad as you make it sound. If only they'd make more games like this, and more people would buy them, and we could finally progress to more egalitarian games.