Well, I've tried being "actual size" (which is to say, I tried shrinking my avatar to more closely match my First Life height) and I don't really think there's much in it for me. Here are some reasons for that.

First of all, Dale Innis pointed out that even people who have measured themselves may well not know what size they are! joshooahlove kindly sent me a height detector (thank you, Joshooah!), and although it tried very hard, it told me I was a good bit shorter than I thought I was. Here's the picture:


So the chance of other people being properly scaled to my height is not very good at all, even if more people were to become interested in matching their First Life height.

Second, as I shrunk myself down, things started fitting worse. The one hug I tried at that height worked all right, but there have been other animations that shortchange me even at my usual, taller height. When I was small, my jewelry floated above by skin, and my hair began to look like an ill-fitting wig.

And third, there were some excellent points made in comments to my last size post that convinced me that a "normal size" in Second Life is not the same thing as a "normal size" in First Life. It's not much use trying to recreate First Life exactly in Second Life, not only because Second Life isn't capable of it, but also because a lot of other people in Second Life are going out of their way to make it a place that *isn't* like First Life. But then, I probably fall into that camp, what with the wings and all. :)

One thing I really did like about being shorter, though, was that my body felt more real to me, a little less stretched or skinny. For a long time my Second Life self has felt comfortably proportioned, but in the last month or two for some reason I've been feeling too skinny. I don't mean that I've felt like I needed to add pounds to be more realistic, because I'm pretty slim in First Life too...it's just that I felt stretched out. So when I moved my height slider from 40 back up to 57, I also moved the next slider, "body thickness," from 0 up to 10 (after experimenting with 15 and 20, which looked too blocky and heavy to me). The difference seems barely noticeable in these pictures, below, but it feels nicer somehow. :)


OK, who else is experimenting with their body these days? My friend Eveline made a beautiful transformation from a form she'd had for quite some time (that was also quite pretty). Any chance of a guest post, hon?

^^^\ Kate /^^^

Hamlet Au posted today about avatar size, featuring a post from Doreen Garrigus's blog "Original Detail". Here's the thing in a nutshell: avatars in Second Life are naturally a little tall. The default shapes are tall, 50% on the slider is quite tall ... but why (Doreen asks) do people stay that size once they eventually realize how unrealistic it is?

Well, I was a little puzzled about this, since I had measured myself before and *thought* I was about 5'7" in Second Life, about to scale with my First Life self. But just to be sure, I logged in and measured myself. To do this, I took off my shoes (5" heels ought not to count in height measurement!), turned off my animation overrider so I would stand up straight (my grandmother would approve), and created a phantom prim exactly as tall as I was: I stood in the middle of it to be sure I was getting it right. I used Google to convert the meters to feet so that I could understand it, since we Americans aren't too clever with those fancy metric measurements everyone else uses.

Kate's estimate of her height: five foot seven
Actual height according to the stretch-a-prim method: six foot three

Six foot three?? I was an Amazon! I immediately checked my sliders and took my height down from 57 to 47, which I thought would at least get me under six feet. It also made me look a little less skinny, which I approved of (lately I've been looking a little stretched to myself).


But when I measured, I still wasn't under six feet! I tried again, shrinking to 40, which brought me to 5.99 feet as I calculated it. This was strange! 17 points shorter, but only 3 inches lost? Of course, that's not 17 *percent* shorter, since if that were true, setting the slider to 0 would make you disappear. But...am I doing something wrong? Mismeasuring? And for that matter, did sizes change at some point? I'm really sure I was once 5'7"! But then, maybe I increased my height since then when it got too inconvenient.

Because it is inconvenient to be short. Doreen asks why people don't change their height to something more realistic once they find out how tall they are, but this lack of change doesn't surprise me at all. First of all, how often do we measure our height in Second Life? Not very often. But let's say we all suddenly knew our Second Life heights. Would we prefer to have more realistic ones? Well, not necessarily. After all, there's very little payoff, unless it's important to you to be realistic with your avatar (it isn't so much to me - note the wings!).

But let's say that you knew you were weirdly tall and you really did want to be more realistic: then would you shrink? Well, maybe not: after all, your friends are probably all weirdly tall too, and your clothes are designed for weirdly tall people, and animations, and ... well, it just doesn't sound very appealing. Worse yet, your shape changes. You don't just scale down everything: you get shorter without getting proportionately thinner. For me, this was an advantage: I've been wanting to gain a little virtual weight without looking lumpy. For most people, I think it would be very unappealing indeed.

So, are we doomed to a world ruled by giants? For a while, I think we are. What might change that is if at a certain point, we start "importing" structures and things from First Life. If a handy tool were to come into existence to, for instance, take multiple pictures of First Life structures or objects and recreate them in Second Life to scale, then we'd start looking kind of huge in those builds, and if those kinds of imported things became very popular, we'd have very good reason to shrink.

Then again, some people--men especially--might prefer the added "authority" that height gives...and other people might keep their avatars large to stay in proportion to those height afficianados. Maybe we should just allow gigantic avatars so everyone can get it out of their system. What do you say? Greece, according to myth, was once ruled by a race of Titans, but everyone there is pretty much normal-sized now. Couldn't it happen in Second Life, too?

^^^\ Kate /^^^

As you know if you've read a few of my posts, this is not a fashion blog (although I admit I've chirped happily over some wings here from time to time). No, this is my spot to talk about Second Life culture and psychology and the virtual emotional landscape and all that great stuff. Which is why this post is about skins. (I'll explain that in a sec.)

It's ironic that Second Life, where people can be anything, is so homogenous in some ways. Almost everyone is human, the great majority of people choose to build an avatar that's as attractive as possible, and most of us look like we're in our 20's. And who can blame us? Not only is it quite difficult to put together a well-designed older avatar, but in the cultures that most of us come from, age is not particularly prized. Even a few lines in the face produce panic in many women (at least) in the Western world.

And in Second Life it's a vicious cycle: the less demand there is for items for older avatars, the fewer designers will make any nice things for older avatars, which makes older avatars even less appealing to have. Although I'm not suggesting that anyone has to go out and get aged up, or match their First Life age in Second Life. There's no obligation here: just a wonderful option for self-expression and growth, just like with larger women's shapes.

Anyway, we're fortunate because Beebo Brink (pictured over there on the right) stepped in to help break the cycle. Her store, Brazen Women (which has a Web site at http://www.brazenwomen.com and here's the SLURL) offers both attractive no-makeup skins and older skins for women, along with some other items I'll get to in a second post.

Classic Lines is Beebo's set of older skins, and they come in 3 age ranges, from a 40ish look to an 80ish one, and four makeup choices (one of which is no makeup) and several hair color choices (to match eyebrows and so on) for each makeup. Classic Lines skins are a modification of the freely available Eloh Eliot skins, and Beebo even makes the Classic Lines Photoshop files available for free download on the Brazen Women site.


If you're interested in these skins, though, it's affordable enough to buy them directly from Brazen Women or through Beebo's store on OnRez. Each set of skins with four makeup options is L$550, which for a decent quality skin strikes me as a more than fair price.

You can judge the skins for yourself, either from the pictures here or by getting a free demo through the store or OnRez. For what it's worth, I'm impressed with them: the no-makeup, 40ish skin is nice enough that I expect to wear it out sometimes, and there are few skins I actually wear out...let alone ones where I have no makeup and look older!


The versions with makeup look a little angry to me, which I think is a combination of just how the eyebrows are tilted together with the little lines between the eyes. The nice thing about that is that these skins make a woman's face look more resolute than usual. It seems common to me for Second Life skins to make our faces look sweet, and sometimes (I'm sorry to say) a bit vapid. These do the opposite. Need to go into a business meeting and make it clear you're not there to cyber in IM (well, unless it's a meeting full of First Life lesbians, in which case all bets are off)? This skin may help...in addition to its other virtues.

In all of this, I don't mean to suggest that Beebo's the only one who has ever done more mature skins for women in Second Life, but even so I consider these high-quality, inexpensive skins with their good range of options a major find.


Admittedly, I wouldn't quite put these skins in a category with my very favorites, like the ones I use most often from Gala and Cake, but then, Classic Lines skins offer something that no other skins in my overflowing inventory have: a bit of maturity.

^^^\ Kate /^^^

(I'll be following up soon with a post about what Beebo brings to the lesbian community in Second Life. What could be more fun than a Dyke In A Box?)

PS - Sorry about the not-so-great quality of the images...next time I'll be more careful which programs I process my images through!

I set out to write a post about narcissism. After all, it seemed to me that in Second Life, it's normal to obsess over your avi's appearance and then gaze joyfully at it for hours on end, thinking to yourself how lovely you are. (In my case, I obsess over my avi's appearance and then gaze at Eris for hours on end, but that's a different subject.)

And while that certainly goes on, I realized that things were more complicated than that after I began talking with everyone over at the second_lifers Live Journal group about whether they had chosen to try to be beautiful in Second Life and if so, why.

Personally, I like to be beautiful in Second Life. I'm more or less of the same mind as cyfishy, who says "Why pretty? Because we can. We don't need breast implants or liposuction or even years at the gym to give ourselves the body shape we dream of--just sliders." and thymeenough, who says "In real life, clothes are one of the languages we use to express status, group identifications, interests, financial background, etc. In SL, why not go a step further and use the whole avatar?"

caliah is especially interested in the self-expression Thyme talks about: I don't think there's any conceit in wanting to create (and look upon) a thing of beauty - it's just our human sensibilities kicking in regardless of our moral ones. I believe the question should be - "Why conform to the accepted standards of beauty rather than establishing your own?"



I also like to be as beautiful as I can manage without drawing unwanted attention in First Life, but it seems to take much more work and to include more flaws. In Second Life, your sense of your own beauty is limited by your creative abilities, your effort, and a little bit by how much money you have. In First life, you're limited by genetics, habits, your understanding of nutrition, how much spare time you have, exercise opportunities, your ability to afford a wardrobe, the health of your skin and hair, your skill with makeup (if you wear it), the talent of your hairstylist, and any number of other really tricky things.

I know I'm making an obvious point there, but I'll leap to a less obvious one: people sometimes feel guilty about looking prettier in Second Life than they do in First Life, and this is a mistake. No one has any right to tell you to look one way or another in any life unless you've given that right to them. Beauty does not detract from intelligence or humor or talent or kindness. It does not in itself separate you from nice people. It can attract jerks, depending on what kind of beauty it is, and it can be something people try to substitute for being good people, but it doesn't *have* to be either of those things.

Oops, I saw a soapbox there and just jumped on it without thinking it over. Let me get back to some of these interesting thoughts people have expressed.

I already had the impression of First Life men who are Second Life women that most, as grizzygriswold says, "...seem to have made our avatar someone that we find cute and attractive." What I didn't realize was a point that Grizzy made and others demonstrated, that women who have male avatars seem to do the same thing. It seems obvious when I think about it!

For instance, cyfishy says "All this has changed, of course, now that I'm roaming around in a male body. Then it becomes slightly different. The male avie (pictured in the icon . . . yes, that's supposed to be a guy!) has an even fainter resemblance to me facially, but when I was through tweaking it into a shape I was happy with I kinda took a step back and thought "Damn, what a hottie!" (What can I say? I'm a Duranie. I love me some girly-boys.) It is a curious sensation, being the kind of guy I wish I could hook up with in RL."



And azureavian (Featherfoot Fadoodle in Second Life) says "i have a guy avvie that is what i like my guys to look like, and he is most often bald (except when wearing Wolverine hair, sqeee!)."

Well, there's much more to cover, and I can see this is getting long already, so let's call that Part I and leave more for next time.

^^^\ Kate /^^^