Being a mother or father in these times It has brought us many advantages thanks to technology and the constant discoveries that are made every day. Unfortunately, just as advances are made that make maternity easier, there are also situations that should alert us and that in previous years did not exist.
This time we talk about apps for mobile phones or tablets, from which a new one emerges every day. In the case of children, they often launch new games apps aimed at them on the market, whether free or paid. But do we know the content of the apps that our children use on mobile? Sometimes what seems like a game more to the naked eye, can become something that affects our children in terms of their way of thinking and in the way they see themselves.
This is the case of games applications for children whose focus is on cosmetic surgery, in which Children play to be a plastic surgeon, "repaired" and "correcting" the imperfections of the characters in the game. Of course, the message sent with these games is not the one for them.
That's why an association in Buenos Aires, called AnyBody Argentina, has launched a campaign against this type of applications that use plastic surgery as the argument of many games for children. Its initiative requires Apple, Amazon and Google, the leading brands in app stores, to better regulate the criteria for selecting which applications are suitable for children and which are not.
Using hashtags #CirugiaNoEsGuego Y #SurgeryIsNotAGame, this group, which is also global, created this campaign on social networks, mainly Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and has managed to generate outrage and annoyance towards this type of applications.
Luciana Mollar, representative of AnyBody Argentina, shares her testimony as a mother and the reason for the campaign in the petition they have published on change.org:
There are applications for Android and Apple that girls and boys play to "change" their face through plastic or cosmetic surgeries. By simply leaving them "prettier." At home we usually review the content of games that they have on the tablet, and decide what they can use and what not. We are not in favor of games that reify women or that have to be perfectly beautiful, without granites, or hairs. What is perfection in beauty? What the media tell us? At home we look in the mirror and know that we are beautiful and perfect. That taught my daughters, to look in the mirror and feel beautiful and powerful. That they are unique and perfect. May you love your body. Sometimes it is difficult, because society is sick, hyper skinny women and muscular men are seen. They sell clothes for sizes that do not exist. I don't want a world like that for them, and for no other boy or girl. That is why these applications have to be eliminated, we cannot allow our children to have access to something so violent. We cannot teach them that "being beautiful and perfect" is what the world asks of us. For these things many end up sick and / or dead, due to the excess of perfection.
As the mother of a girl I couldn't agree more. We live in a world where we are taught that the image of women is important, thanks to all the images of models and celebrities with "perfect" bodies (many of them retouched) or unattainable that we see in magazines and television.
According to the organizers of the campaign, only in the Google Play store There are more than 200 applications of this theme. And it is that the applications, although they must be validated, have ample permission to be published. In addition, the classification system is not the best, since for example, these images that are from an app called "Plastic Surgery Simulator", Google Play classifies it as "E", that is, for all ages.
The plot of the application is about patients who survived the explosion of a chemical power plant and are people who need the "surgeon", in this case the user of the application, to save them, helping to make their appearance return to normal . While this sounds like something positive since it helps "the mentioned patients," in the mind of a child the idea is imposed that any physical defect can be "repaired" thanks to plastic or cosmetic surgery.
Of course Our job as parents is to teach our children to know and love their bodies to prevent them from feeling insecure or low self-esteem in the future.. That's why it's very important to talk to them about beauty before the beauty industry does. As I mentioned before, the media sell us that image of perfect bodies retouched with Photoshop, creating in us negative feelings such as inferiority or dissatisfaction with ourselves.
While we cannot protect our children forever from external influences and stimuli, we can We can teach them since they were little that they are well as they are and how they are. That if such a model or celebrity looks perfect, it's because they get paid to do it that way, and that everyone must love and accept his body, with or without imperfections. And remember that it does by setting the example.
As the organizers of the campaign say: "Children deserve to be challenged and inspired by their games and toys, not spending their free time worried about how they look".
