![]() “Web sites promoting extreme diets and reinforcing thinness as the ideal model certainly increase risk for vulnerable individuals,” said Melanie Marklein, a graduate assistant specializing in eating disorders at the Counseling Center. Hund said the Web site also gives young girls practice in criticizing what others, and themselves, look like as opposed to helping them learn acceptance for a diversity of body shapes and sizes. “What does work is a healthy lifestyle that can be maintained that allows flexibility in how and what a person eats.”Īs of now, the Web site has more than 450,000 registered “bimbos.”īut regardless of criticism from parents’ groups and health care experts, the Web site states on its opening page that the game will remain available to its players. “In other words, diets don’t work,” Hund said. But 95 percent of all dieters regain their lost weight in one to five years, she added. Hund said this Web site gives girls practice at making weight and body-size changes at a very quick rate, giving them the impression that those changes are easy, long-lasting and possible. The rules section of “Miss Bimbo” states that despite players wanting “to keep your bimbo waif thin…every girl needs to eat, every now and again.” The Web site instructions suggest feeding the character to prevent her from dying of starvation. Research has found that 42 percent of first- to third-grade girls want to be thinner, and 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat, Hund said. “It is very clear that media has an impact on the body image of girls and women and eating disorders,” said Anita Hund, eating disorder specialist at the University Counseling Center. Players keep a constant watch on the weight, wardrobe, wealth and happiness of their character to create “the coolest, richest and most famous bimbo in the world.” Competing against other children, they earn “bimbo dollars” to buy plastic surgery, diet pills, face lifts, lingerie and fashionable nightclub outfits. ![]() The Internet role play game that was launched from France in February has attracted young girls who are told to buy their virtual characters breast enlargement surgery and to keep them “waif thin” with diet pills. ![]() “Miss Bimbo,” an online game that encourages girls as young as nine to create an alter ego that will allow them to explore plastic surgery and extreme dieting in the search for the perfect “bimbo,” was criticized by parents groups and health care experts last month. ![]()
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