Is this "Plastic Surgery Barbie" App for kids a sick joke?

At the iTunes store, it's described like this:

This unfortunate girl has so much extra weight that no diet can help her. In our clinic she can go through a surgery called liposuction that will make her slim and beautiful. We'll need to make small cuts on problem areas and suck out the extra fat. Will you operate her, doctor?

The developer, Corina Rodriguez, is behind a range of cartoonish and oddly medicalized Apps apparently aimed at girls, such as "Barbie Dentist & Barbie Dress up" and "Leg & Foot Surgery & Doctor & Hospital Office for Barbie".

@everydaysexism is currently trying to organize a Twitter protest to have the game, which is marketed to age 9 and up, removed from iTunes.

In the interest of pseudojournalism, I downloaded the free App and played it for as long as I could stomach (pun intended). As expected, it mostly delivers a barrage of pop up ads. But in between, and scored by awful stock music, you are actually taken through the steps of a cartoon liposuction using a manual bicycle pump:

I didn't stick around for the facelift.

My favourite Barbie photo in the history of ever

Copyright Julie Lauren. via julielaurin.com

No, it's not one of Mariel Clayton's psychotic Barbie shots. Or even this old Body Shop ad. It's a photo just published by a Facebook friend, Ottawa photographer Julie Lauren.

Julie's pictures tend to explore the awkwardness of human bodies, held in contorted poses or expressions by other people, duct tape, or plastic sheeting. Her new series on dolls, however, is particularly interesting. Laurie has been gleaming thrift shops for old Barbies and related dolls and accessories, then creating interesting compositions with them.

Of all of them this one struck me as particularly meaningful. It says so much about the spectre of body image that looms over young girls as they consume magazines, fashion ads, and of course gendered Barbie play.

The setup of this shot was dead simple, all done in camera with backlight, paper and toys. For those interested, Julie explains the "making of" on her blog. 

But I'm more interested in the final effect: the pudgy little girl casually glancing over her shoulder, but not yet fully aware of the impossible perfection forming in her subconsciousness, with special emphasis on her sexual parts. 

I could go on and on, but this picture is worth more than a thousand words. Well-done, Julie.

A new line of confidence-wear for girls

As a reaction to the marketing of sexist shirts for girls like "I'm too pretty to do math" (marketed, then pulled, by JC Penney) entrepreneurial dad Kevin Wagstaff decided to start his own line of confidence-wear.

Named "Keira's Kollection" (after his young daughter), Kevin's shirts make declarations of female strength and independence. Nice stuff.

The shirts and other activewear for girls and women are available online.

Tip via Yahoo!

Related post: Urban Outfitters' drinking shirts are a very American dilemma

This Disney Princess knockoff is accidentally brilliant

Via BuzzFeed

That's right — those characters, in general, teach girls to be bland: dependent on men to define themselves, lacking agency, and generally vacuous.

I wonder if the people who named this toy were trying to say "white girl".

See also:

Via Cookdandbombd

Barbie... she's so benign.

Gap Kids sells sequined hooker shorts to tween and teen girls

PR Twitterer @woodlandalyssa shared a link to this item, from the Gap USA online catalogue:

Available only in sizes 12, 14 and 16, these "Sequined Party Shorts" have just a 2.5" inseam, putting them close to the realm of booty shorts.

Is this yet another horrible example of the fashion industry oversexualizing young girls?

Gap customers seem to think so. From the site comments:

Click to enlarge and read.

Cue the social media outrage in 3... 2...

JC Penney prepares your daughters to be sugar babies

In a product failure reminiscent of the "Math class is tough!" talking Barbie fiasco of almost 20 years ago, JC Penney has discontinued this shirt from its back-to-school girls' line:

In the early '90s, however, outrage spread much more slowly.

Care2 reports that, in this case, consumer reaction was swift and effective:

Tuesday night, Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals – Redefine Girly, shared the link to the shirt on her facebook page. Since then, the shirt has been shared across Facebook and Twitter by parents expressing shock at that the department store would be selling a shirt like this. While some people think the shirt is meant to be funny and not taken seriously, others like parenting blogger and advertising industry professional Liz Gumbinner (known as Mom 101), don’t see the humor. On Twitter, Gumbinner wrote: “How is it funny to promote to young girls that what we value in them is their looks, not their brains?”

Sure, it was probably designed by someone with innocent intentions of being cutesy with the whole "princess" tween culture. But the gaffe is still a shot against gender equality.

If such statements were simply foolishness, I guess it would be easy to let this one go. But attractive people (of both genders) really do have an easier time achieving success. It's just human nature. But it hardly needs to be hammered home to girls 7-16, who have already learned that their society values their cuteness and/or sexiness above academic achievement and independent thought.

The other scary thing about this is that there are women, just a few years older than this shirt's target market, who are putting its worldview into practice. Sugar Daddy "dating" sites and apps encourage attractive young women 18+ (especially cash-strapped students) to accept payment and gifts from older men in exchange for "company".

I guess they won't have to do their homework either.