App Review: Suzy Dress Up

Suzy Dress Up is a tough app for me to review. Let me start with this – my daughter loves it. And that makes sense – lots of little girls like to play dress up, right? This app extends that appeal to the digital domain and allows you to customize a virtual girl’s appearance – her hat, shoes, pants, shirt, purse, dog, eyes, skin, jewelry, purse – much like creating a Mii character for the Wii.

Suzy Dress Up Screenshot

Suzy Dress Up Screenshot

The design of the app is fantastic, the artwork is first-rate, and there’s a wide-array of accessories for you to choose from. You can make Suzy look like anything from a cheerleader to a princess to a nurse to a witch…

Suzy Dress Up Screenshot

Suzy Dress Up Screenshot

So if the app engages my daughter, is easy to use, and has lasting entertainment value, what’s the problem? I guess my concern surrounds what this app (and the rest of the barrage of media coming at her) might do to my daughter’s notions of who she is, what her possibilities are and what society values in women. Perhaps I’m reading too much into the content of a kid’s app, but I can’t help but be a bit concerned because I’m keenly aware of how my little two-year old angel is absorbing everything around her and using it to build her concepts about the world. The other night at dinner I slipped up and uttered an expletive after burning my tongue – which Emma then spent the rest of the night repeating. Not the end of the world – but definitely a timely reminder of how actively she is internalizing everything that she comes into contact with. I hold out hope that my daughter might want to become a scientist, a politician, a historian – or if she so chooses – a fashion model. Yet I’m not sure that this app sets her up for all of those possibilities.

Open to input on this one — especially from Moms. As a Dad, I may be in over my head on this one — and I don’t want to shutdown to an app that is in all other respects great. But I do want to know that as I put digital media in front of my little girl that it’s helping her to grow and not just serving as a virtual pacifier – or worse – something that’s shaping her self-concept in a limiting fashion.

Thoughts?

If you think I’m being too conservative on this one, please do speak up.

And if you’re just looking for the app, you can get it here.

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