The free plastic surgery app entitled ‘Plastic Surgery & Plastic Hospital Office for Barbie’ encouraged children to perform plastic surgery on the image of a woman whom ‘no diet can help’.
Children could download the game and begin using scalpels to ‘operate’ on an overweight character, before pulling off bandages to reveal a much thinner and ‘more beautiful’ girl.
The game tells users to help the ‘unfortunate girl’ by making cuts on ‘problem areas’ and ‘suck out the extra fat’.
The game’s description reads:
“Barbara likes to eat a lot of burgers and chocolates and once she found that she looks ugly.
“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.”
The women’s rights group, Everyday Sexism, posted the game on Twitter, urging users to complain to iTunes that the app encourages impressionable young women to develop body issues.
Thousands of Twitter users retweeted the complaint, calling the app ‘disgusting, offensive’ and ‘dangerous for impressionable young girls.’
In a statement, former British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (Baaps) president Nigel Mercer described the Plastic Surgery for Barbie app as "sexist and disturbing".
He said: "This app blatantly and shamelessly uses child-friendly brand names [such as Barbie] 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.
Apple and Google have now taken down the app, with a Google spokesman adding: ‘We don’t comment on individual apps, but will remove apps that breach our guidelines.’