After a week since its launch, Apple will stop selling an application aimed at children over nine years old, which inspired by the Barbie doll, allowed to perform surgical operations so that the character (a girl) was more 'thin and beautiful'.
Every Day Sexism Project has led a protest campaign on Twitter to ask iTunes to review the application, an action that has had the expected effect. And we cannot ignore that children are being continuously sent messages related to extreme cult to the body as a form of social triumph, although nobody tells them that personally this trend can have negative consequences. It reminds me of this news to a note about the activity of Jean Kilbourne, feminist author, who warns that girls receive from childhood the message that they must be beautiful (outside especially), and then they hit a wall. This is a trap that can lead to serious problems such as eating disorders..
The game
It is as explicit as it is simple (clear, simplistic and biased message, so that it arrives easy); Players subject an overweight girl to liposiction, and then dress her to accentuate the makeover. And all at the fingertips of a finger from the moment the girl or the boy pulls the smartphone from his pocket.
It's called Plastic Surgery & Plastic Dorctor & Plastic Hospital Office for Barbie version, and the protagonist is a desperate girl because diets don't work, and she wants to lose weight.
It seems that developers have nothing to do with the Mattel company
It's time for us to turn all over convey healthy lifestyles, as a way to feel more comfortable with each other's body. And without losing sight of the fact that physical appearance is not everything, because otherwise we are sending minors a distorted idea of reality, which can also cause them problems.
So if part of the messages are going to reach the children through the applications they use, we ask for more apps like Bo's (about nutrition), or to air the advantages of physical exercise. And above all Let us strive to show the world with all its nuances to our children, because with games like the one that has just been withdrawn, not only sexism and misconceptions about beauty are encouraged, but also rejection of those that are different.
