Plastic surgery app for girls pulled from iTunes
pharmafile | January 15, 2014 | News story | Medical Communications | Apple, app, digital, itunes, surgery
Experts have welcomed a decision to axe an app that encourages young girls to have plastic surgery saying that it was ‘beyond bad taste’ and could lead to mental illness.
‘The Plastic Surgery & Plastic Doctor & Plastic Hospital Office for Barbie’ game, hosted by Apple on iTunes, prompted a deluge of complaints on social media sites. The bad press led to the app being withdrawn from the US and UK this week.
Laura Bates, of the Everyday Sexism Project, said: “It’s hugely damaging that this app sends the message to girls as young as nine that being skinny is the Holy Grail, their looks are the only thing that matters and the only way to [become skinny] is plastic surgery.
“It just contributes to a culture that tells young girls that they need to change themselves to be acceptable to society.”
She said that removing the plastic surgery game quietly from iTunes when other similar products were still on sale was “sweeping the problem under the carpet”.
The app presents a picture of a young girl, and tells players: “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.”
Players are encouraged to wield the scalpel on so-called ‘problem areas’ before resorting to a hand pump to remove the fat. On completion of this task, they are rewarded with before and after pictures and encouraged to dress the slimmer patient in fashionable clothes.
Nigel Mercer, a surgeon and former president of the association, said: “This app blatantly and shamelessly uses child-friendly brand names to target young, vulnerable children and exposes them to sexist and disturbing rhetoric, as the ‘game’ critiques the body of a cartoon character who does not conform to an unrealistic beauty standard.
“Even more shockingly, the app then encourages children to utilise surgery – going so far as to include images of syringes, scalpels and liposuction cannulas – to ‘fix’ the patient, who is described as an ‘unfortunate girl’.”
Ben Adams
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