As if Miss Bimbo wasn't enough of a sign of the coming apocalypse brought to us by unrealistic standards of things that humans should do to their body, I just read an article on the BBC website about Demi Moore and leeches. The blood sucking kind. She says that she had some leech treatments at a woman's house in Austria and it was great.
Now I try not to take any medical or health advice from celebrities who seem to live away from my world, but I just have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of leeches. No matter how delusional the person using the leeches may be.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Miss Bimbo
The Miss Bimbo game has been all over the blogosphere, and I can’t help but jump into the fray. This game is a virtual world where players get a virtual bimbo and they can get her plastic surgery and control her eating so that she looks like a perfect bimbo and wins the Mss Bimbo contest.
There is a lot of discussion about whether this game is bad or just funny. The game is targeted toward 9 to 16 year-old girls.
When I first heard about this game I was convinced it was a fake site created to piss off all of the women of the world. The reality that it is a real site with 200,000 players makes me very, very sad. Have we come so far from the days of Reviving Ophelia?
I don't think this game is ironic or clever, I think this game is bad for girls. Nine-year olds might be sophisticated in some ways, but numerous studies have shown that girls are directly affected by discussions of diets and body types. That is why The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty exists.
The media affects the way that girls feel about their bodies:
· 9% of 9 year old have vomited to lose weight
· 81% of 10 year old are afraid of being fat
· 53% of 13 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies
· 78% of 18 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies
· The #1 wish of girls 11-17 years old is to lose weight
Source: Body Wars: Making Peace with Women’s Bodies,
by Margo Maine, Ph.D., Gürze Books, 2000
As if we didn’t have enough problems with stereotypes and body image now girls can actually cut bits off of their characters.
I just wish that people paid more attention to the fact that what their child sees effects their views of themselves.
I would like to see this game die a slow death.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Professor Layton and the Curious Village is Worth Your While
Are you looking forward to the release of Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm? Well, neither am I.
However, if you are looking for a game to play I highly recommend Professor Layton and the
There are many reasons this game is fun. So I thought I would list them out:
The puzzles are varied and you can skip them.
This means that you are not stuck on one type of puzzle that you would never ever be able to solve without the help of a cheat before you can advance. There are so many different types of puzzles that if you hate one kind you can mostly just skip it and still win the game, yeah!
The puzzles make sense.
Most games that I have played have puzzles integrated into the story that make no sense to me. Why do I want to have a falcon catch a ring or feed a monkey a banana? Maybe I just think the monkey should be able to walk a few feet and get its own banana. In Professor Layton the puzzles are either to help someone out with a problem they have or they are puzzles that villagers ask you to solve that they have created.
The characters are developed and interesting.
You don’t get to know all the back story on Professor Layton and Luke, his sidekick, but you get to know enough that you care. I wanted to help all the people in the game solve their problems. The writing was key, which is why game writers deserve more credit.
It takes less than 10 hours to solve.
Unlike some games that take forever to solve and seem to think that repetition of the same puzzles over and over again is the way to my heart, Professor Layton is solvable in less than ten hours. If you are like me and you like to look around and see the sights it can take thirteen, but that can be fun too.
It is for the Nintendo DS.
If you don’t have one, you should. The Nintendo Dual Screen (DS) is the best portable game system out there. It is good on planes, trains, in cars, and sitting in the living room. The technology is awesome and easy to navigate. No taking forever for the load screen, no having to turn on the game system and the TV and wait for the whole thing to boot. You just open it up and go.
So there you have it. So go buy it already.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
What A Wonderful World
I was really happy to see the article in the Guardian about the old people's home in
What I really liked about the article, besides the topic, was the way it was written. There was no stigma attached to being gay from the author’s perspective, just that elders who are gay or lesbian might want a place to live where they don't have to explain anything. It was written with a sweetness that lets me know that with all of the crap and discrimination and violence that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people may experience. Progress is being made. And I like progress.
Monday, March 17, 2008
In an Unlikely Place - An Interesting Commentary on Hillary Clinton
As I was trolling The Guardian I noticed that the Fashion section has Agony Aunt and I love advice columnists, so I turned my wandering eye in her direction. I was completely surprised to find a really interesting commentary about Hillary Clinton made on the basis of her clothes. It isn't superficial and trite, it is thoughtful and complex. Give it a read!
Friday, March 7, 2008
Penny Arcade
I used to read Penny Arcade. I liked that the comic was about games and it was generally funny. Then they posted a strip that made me realize that I was not their audience. I went a year or so without reading it, and then I decided to give it another try. I love webcomics and I know that a few bad posts don’t make a theme, so I decided to start reading again. A few weeks into this new adventure and they decided to post this.
When judging wet t-shirt contests and beer bongs is celebrated in a comic with an image of a woman in a wet t-shirt I am yet again, informed ever-so-gently by the creators that this is not a club for girls, so again I will remove Penny Arcade from my list of must-reads. I don’t think I will go back again.
This is just the way of the game industry in miniature. Many women who game will read the strip because they are used to looking past the sexist crap. The men usually don’t even notice. It is the women like me who they miss and they figure they are doing just fine without expanding their base, why are we needed. I think that blindly insulting a group of people to set clear “boys-only” barriers is short sighted.
Unless you make a product that only one sex can use, like after shave, it is short-sighted for a company or an industry to intentionally insult a possible market segment. This was discovered by the makers of TVs when they realized that women have an equal, if not dominant voice in the decisions on household purchases.
With the dominance of women in the casual games space I think it is ludicrous for the games industry in general to continue to assume that their audience is all male. And with their strong ties to the games industry I am putting Penny Arcade in the same boat.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Great Technology Resources
These are great sites for anyone interested in women and gaming. The sites are grouped together by type. Send me a link if you have a site that I should add.
Organizations
Women in Games
For Women and Girls Who Play
Killer Betties
Competitive Women
PMS Clan
Frag Dolls
Game Sites
Girls Inc.
Pop Cap Games
Shockwave Games
Sites Supportive of Girls in the Sciences
Engineer Girl
Girls Inc.
Girls Go Tech by the Girl Scouts
Sally Ride Science
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day
Every year as part of Engineering Week in the
Girls get to see presentations involving cool stuff like liquid nitrogen and work on experiments that can go awry. Boys can attend as well, but this is all part of an effort to bring up the numbers of girls involved in the sciences.
The ages range for these events, but at UT girls can attend who are in 1st through 8th grade. I think it is crucial that girls are given the exposure to both the science of engineering and the university campus at such a young age. As has been repeatedly studied, many girls lose interest in the sciences in middle school and I think that it is key to expose them to how fun science and college can be at an early age.
The university also has retention programs in place to help women who choose to study engineering stick to their choice and not get overwhelmed when it feels like they are the only women in a class of 200.
I spoke with Tricia Berry, the Director of the Women in Engineering Program at UT and a chemical engineer herself and she told me about the PALS program at UT where a freshman woman is teamed up with another woman in her major who is a sophomore to senior level. Ms.
I like the idea of introducing girls to the idea of engineering and then supporting them when they make the decision to pursue that field as a career. Since engineering is about solving problems it seems to me that the more diverse a workforce that is in place to solve any given problem the better.
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