Miss Bimbo, the internet game for 9 – 16 year old girls, has 1.2 million French players and 200,000 UK members, a month after it opened.

It also has healthcare professionals, parents groups, and anorexia and bulimia sufferers groups up in arms.

The aim of the game is to create “the coolest, richest and most famous bimbo in the world”. Competing against other children young girls earn “bimbo dollars” to buy plastic surgery, diet pills, facelifts, lingerie and fashionable nightclub outfits.

Registration on the Miss Bimbo site is free but it makes money by charging £1.50 per text message to buy “dollars” to spend on the characters. On the rules section it states that despite contestants wanting “to keep your bimbo waif thin . . . every girl needs to eat, every now and again”. It also helpfully suggests feeding the character to prevent her dying of starvation.

The timesonline has a piece on it today, interviewing the creator – entrepreneur, Nicholas Jacquart, as well as cross-section of other stake-holders in the debate over whether the media can influence body image/self-esteem.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article3613881.ece

Students might like to use the article to look at how and why children are seen as a particularly susceptible and “innocent” audience in media influence debates.

It might also offer a springboard into thinking about theories of media influence such as the cultivation theory. …. “Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of Beat, an organisation that supports those suffering eating disorders, said that the website could make girls believe that weight and body size manipulation were acceptable.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivation_theory

At  £1.50 per text message, students might also want to reflect on the ‘lethal’ effects media consumption might have on their bank balance