Last week we brought you a story that offered a little insight into the process of how Apple reviews and approves apps for the iOS App Store. It turns out that the App Store review team is a drastically understaffed group of people who sit in an office in Cupertino and are forced to spend a startling amount of time looking at pictures of penises. That, it seems, is part of the reason that the occasional app slips through the cracks – whether it’s a good app that gets rejected, or a bad app that gets let through. The fact is, sometimes these people make decisions that make you wonder just what the hell they were thinking.
Case in point: Pole Dancer Pro. Pole Dancer Pro is a universal iOS app in the App Store’s health and fitness category. As you might expect from the name, the app is designed to teach the basics of pole dancing. Specifically, the description of the app says that the goal is “to help you enjoy getting into shape” while “transforming you into a lap dancing sexpot.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the app is generating a bit of controversy. Now, I’m not one to judge. If somebody wants to learn pole dancing, they’re welcome to it. And if they want to use an app so they can do it in the privacy of their own home, that’s fine too. What’s raising eyebrows, though, is the app’s age limit. Ordinarily you’d expect an app like this to be rated 17+. In this case, you’d be wrong:
Yep, you read that right. An app that teaches people to pole dance is rated 12+. Now, I’m the dad of a young daughter, and I get that there’s a tendency to be a bit overprotective. All the same, I like to think that when she starts dating, I’ll be pretty cool about the whole thing. I mean really, she’ll be 30, so who am I to interfere? Seriously, though, the fact that Apple rated this 12+ is a little creepy. Call me a prude if you want, but I maintain that a 12-year-old has no business learning to be a “lap dancing sexpot.”
Fortunately for dads like me, though, there’s good news. The app itself is clearly aimed at adults, not pre-teens, so this is almost certainly a screw-up on Apple’s part, rather than a deliberate marketing decision by the app’s developer. Which means that you can bet that Apple will be changing the rating before the day is out.