In my spare time, I used to manage the finer details of a top supermodel’s diary. I coordinated everything from her dietary regime to her counselling sessions. I even managed the logistics of her various facelifts and breast enlargements (and reductions) – not to mention her ill-advised foray into the world of diet pills. She was, of course, an online avatar. And I was an angsty 13-year-old addicted to Miss Bimbo, an internet game dedicated to creating the “hottest, coolest, most famous bimbo in the whole world.”
In 2008, when Miss Bimbo was at its peak, it had around 200,000 British users, most of whom were young girls aged between 9 and 16. We thought nothing of the toxic messages about gender that we were absorbing. After a deserved international outcry, the creators of Miss Bimbo redesigned the game, sans cosmetic surgery. But 17 years later, young people are still being exposed to these damaging ideas about women.
On 20 March, the advertising watchdog released the findings of an investigation showing several examples of mobile gaming adverts with harmful stereotyping of women as sexual objects, sexual encounters that were implied to be non-consensual, and the use of pornographic tropes.
As part of its investigation, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) used avatars or constructed online profiles, such as that of a female or male child, to monitor the ads served to people when playing games on their mobile phones.
While the vast majority of ads that were monitored didn’t contain content that objectified women, the ASA identified and banned eight that featured “shocking” content that portrayed women in a harmful way.
One such ad depicted an animated woman with her “clothed bottom turned towards the viewer”, who was then shown the options“Next girl” and “Slap” while the woman’s dialogue text read, “Punish me… please”.
Another ad showed conversations with three virtual boyfriends, one of whom was described as “obsessively possessive, aggressively jealous and won’t let you out of his sight,” as well as being a “kidnapper and killer.” The text described yanking the woman “into the car, swiftly knocking her out.”
Another character was described as “Molly, an 18-year-old straight girl, is adorably shy and easily flustered. She’s stuck with a life sentence but would do anything for freedom”. The dialogue text stated, “Begging with wide, terrified eyes, Officer, I can’t spend my whole life behind bars, can I?”
These ads clearly employ the same rhetoric used in mainstream pornography – yet they’re being served to young boys and girls who are just trying to play games on their phones.
The ASA banned eight out of 5,923 adverts served to its digital avatars, noting that “harmful or degrading portrayals of women in ads are completely unacceptable, and we take a zero-tolerance approach to this kind of content.”
Jessica Tye, regulatory projects manager at the ASA, said: ‘We know that seeing harmful portrayals of women can have lasting effects, especially on younger audiences.
“Whilst we’re glad to see that most advertisers are doing the right thing, the small number who aren’t must take responsibility. Through this report, we’re making it clear: there’s no room for these kinds of ads in mobile gaming, or anywhere.”