Bimbofication

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About

Bimbofication, also known as the Bimbofication Trend, is a type of fetish and genre of fan art in which people are transformed into hypersexualized caricatures of themselves, typically featuring exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics. Online, the genre is hotly debated between those who argue it promotes misogyny and those who claim it is a harmless kink.

Origin

The exact origin of the genre is unknown. One of the earliest known references to the fetish as "bimbofication" was submitted in a "Weird Fanart Thread" on Something Awful^[11] on April 28th, 2009.

Spread

On May 9th, 2010, the /r/transformation subreddit was launched, which lists "bimbofication" among the approved topics of the transformation fetish art genre. On June 18th, 2011, YouTuber MrUrsulaHitler uploaded a video discussing whether the bimbofication fetish is "sexy or sexist" (shown below).

On February 22nd, 2013, the /r/bimbofication^[1] subreddit was launched as "a place to share fan fiction involving a female (or male) being transformed into a bimbo." On January 11th, 2015, the bimbotransformation YouTube channel uploaded a skit in which a businesswoman is gradually transformed into a hypersexualized version of herself by a man with a magical remote control (shown below).

On November 4th, Urban Dictionary^[5] user Faultliner submitted an entry for "bimbofication," defining it as a "sexual fetish." As of February 2017, there are over 8,800 results for the keyword "bimbofication" on DeviantArt.^[6]

Debimbofication Controversy

On February 9th, 2017, DeviantArtist Sortimid posted an illustration of a tanned, blonde woman in heels and a dress transforming into a brunette in jeans after reading a book titled "CMSN – De-bimbofication" (shown below). On February 15th, 2017, Twitter user @hausofriya^[3] reposted the illustration, stating that the person's mother would be embarrassed that they drew the artwork (shown below). Within 48 hours, the tweet gained over 54,000 likes and 26,400 retweets.

That day, YouTuber Philip DeFranco uploaded a video discussing the controversy, in which he noted that the illustration wasn't meant to be a misogynistic social commentary, but was merely a genre of erotic fan art (shown below). In two days, the video received more than 1.03 million views and 9,400 comments. Meanwhile, BuzzFeed^[4] published an article titled "This Sexist Cartoon Everyone Is Freaking Out About Is Actually Fetish Porn."

Also on February 15th, Redditor cleantoe submitted the illustration to /r/niceguys^[10] in a post titled "Pick up a book and your booty will shrink and you'll turn into a brunette." On February 16th, the drawing was posted in two threads on 4chan's /pol/ (politically incorrect) board, where users were invited to speculate about what the woman read in the illustration (shown below).^[8]^[9]