There's been a wonderful conversation flowering on the ol' blogosphere about the form of your avatar. Back in mid-July, I posted this about how common it was to be very skinny in Second Life and wondering if full-figured avatars might be something we could strive to have more of. Later I followed up with this post about Rosie Barthelmess, who's a beautiful example of such an avatar.










A couple of weeks later, and as far as I know unconnected to my posts, Iris Ophelia put up this great primer on how to be beautifully full-figured in Second Life.
















My lovely friend Kedawen Darrow took this to heart and expanded her own shape rather gorgeously, documenting it on her new blog.

New World Notes subsequently covered that (that Hamlet's always keeping his eyes open for pretty girls).

My other lovely friend Sophrosyne Stenvaag found all this a little concerning, and pointed out the virtues of using an avatar as an ideal self...










... which Hamlet Au also discussed on New World Notes, pointing out that you can use your First Life shape in your visions of idealization as well.

Phew, that was quite a ride! Still with me?









A hidden root of this discussion is the question of what an avatar is for in the first place. We need a placeholder for ourselves in the virtual world, but what ought that placeholder to be? Should it be the expression of our deepest selves? Or of the selves we want to be? Or of our daily mood? Should it be a faithful copy of our First Life self? Maybe an avatar is a mask, something we devise because we want people to treat us a certain way. Or maybe it should be as beautiful as possible. Or maybe it should be whatever's the most fun. Or maybe all this focus on what an avatar looks like is ridiculous and we should be paying attention to what we *do* with our Second Lives instead of how we look?

Well, if you've read much of my blog or met me in Second Life (or in First Life, in which case you had just better keep your secret knowledge to yourself, pal!), you may have noticed that I'm kind of an advocate of everythingness. The more the merrier, there's more than one way to skin a cat (ew), it takes all kinds to make a world, you take the high road and I'll take the low road...and here I'll just keep being me and say that there must be dozens of things we can use our avatars for: to be part of a group, to be beautiful, to express ourselves, to make wishes, to learn, to stay out of the way while we focus on more important things, to remake ourselves, to remind us, to create desire, to create art...


Which only means that I don't think getting curvy is anything to worry about for someone who doesn't want that, and I definitely don't think anyone ought to feel obligated to create an avatar that resembles their First Life self if they don't want to, and that art and beauty and self-expression and understanding are all wonderful things. I'm all for a world full of child avatars of adults and beauty queens and dashing fox-men and tinies and faerie and mermaids and people who look real and everyone else who's out there being something that it makes them happy or wise or smart or fulfilled to be.

Let me back up now, a moment, to Soph's discussion. Soph, who's a leading and well-spoken proponent of the position that Second Lives can be totally separate from First Lives. In her post about realistic avatar shapes, she poses the question: why come to Second Life? Her answer is "To create things, to do things, that can't be done better elsewhere."

I certainly agree that Second Life is a great place to do things that can't be done, or can't be done as well, in First Life. But that's not *all* it's for. After all, I can go out to clubs in First Life, and dance there, and meet people, and have conversations. I can go clothes shopping in First Life. I can even build things in First Life. And in some ways, I can do those things better in First Life than in Second Life.

But Second Life has its own set of advantages, so that the same activity has different advantages in different lives. For instance, in Second Life I can build large things - buildings, for instance - quickly, but in First Life if I were to build a house, it would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and would keep the rain off. Dancing is more fun in First Life, but it's much easier to have a conversation while doing it in Second Life.

So...only do things in Second Life that you can do better there? No, I don't think so! That's one good approach to Second Life, but it's not the only good one!

Some of this gets to the uncomfortable question of whether a person uses Second Life to get away from First Life or to complement it. Soph says "Look at you, there in your atomic world. No, I mean it. Stop and look ... Is that your ideal? Is that the best you can do?" (See: she's a great blogger, even when I disagree with her!)

As for me, my answer is...um, yes. No matter how beautiful the views are in Second Life, there are more gorgeous ones in First Life, and I can go out and touch them if I want. I have wonderful family and friends, I'm happy with how I look and with my health, my work is satisfying even if it's dull sometimes, my house is relaxing and a happy place to be...my First Life isn't perfect, but it's pretty wonderful, and yes, it's the best I can do. Chances are your First Life has some wonderful parts to it too, even if there are rough parts. First Life is the main show. Second Life can have real friendships, emotions, successes and joys, but it can't offer real sustenance, a real place to stay, a real embrace, or a real plate of waffles with real (or fake) maple syrup. Really!

Now, it's my theory that people come to Second Life to meet needs in our lives, but we go visit friends or take hikes in the woods for the same reasons. Second Life isn't a do-over for First Life. It's just another place to grow and be.

I'm more enthusiastic about Mygdala March's point of view in this whole great whopping discussion, which is that Second Life is not supposed to be a precise imitation of First Life. She mentions several things that I find (frankly) a little creepy in Second Life: deserted stations and pregnancies. And I find them creepy just because of what she's saying, that they're imitations of First Life things that are kind of false in Second Life. The reason a cash register or information desk is neat is that there's a person at it. The reason pregnancy is beautiful is that there's a new life coming out of it. If they're just images of those things without the humanity behind them... *shiver*.





Well, that's enough from me on the subject. I'm curious to see where the conversation goes next!

^^^\ Kate /^^^

PS - OK, who else thinks it's Kit Meredith's turn to post on this subject now?

PPS - You may wonder how I can possibly keep up with all these posts. I answer you with an evil laugh and say: this! (Shh, it's not officially open yet.)

I won't be the first (or the last) person to say that male avatars in Second Life have a much harder time getting gorgeous than female avatars. I thought of some reasons for this, which I'll mention in a moment, and maybe you know of some others, but here's the question I'm really interested in at the moment: how gorgeous can male avis get in Second Life, and who are some really gorgeous examples?



While you think about that, I'll name some of the reasons I know of that men get the short end of the stick in Second Life in terms of physical beauty.

* First, and most obvious, is that there are lot fewer things for male avis to buy for themselves. For instance, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of really pretty hairstyles for women in Second Life. I own about 150 good ones myself, and that's with me having almost all longer styles and almost all of them in a medium brown shade. Good men's styles? Very few. If you want to be very picky, you might say no more than a handful!

* First Life men seem to be a lot less likely to be interested in shopping to make themselves more visually attractive, and my sense is that a lot of the males who are interested in shopping and self-beautification in Second Life find it more fun to do that as Second Life women.

* This one may be mostly personal taste, but good women's hairstyles usually seem to need more body and sometimes length than men's, and I don't think Second Life is very good at hair that is short and doesn't have much body, which is what would look good on men. So many of the men's hairstyles either look a little girly or just don't look great, and it's hard to be really gorgeous without great hair.

* What generally seems to makes a man attractive may have to do with more things that are hard to simulate on Second Life. Of course, attractive personality and behavior look good on anybody, but when you're in a world where facial expressions and gestures and even posture are hard to influence, your visual attractiveness has more to do with your clothes and body and face than with how you stand or with the character of your gaze. The standards for beauty among women, generally (making a big sweeping statement about our society and not about your tastes in particular), have a lot to do with the kind of things you can see even if you stand her very still, stiffly, against a wall. Personally what I find attractive in a woman has more to do with how she smiles (and how much she smiles), and the tilt of her head, and the subtle ways she physically communicates, but even I find it much easier to admire a cute woman's body in a pretty dress than a strong man's body in what (in Second Life) passes for a nice suit or something.

* Second Life is much more competent to show avis who look like they're in their twenties than it is with avis who look like they're older, and so while we get completely ripped off in First Life by getting subtle clues that we're not as beautiful as we were when we were 22, men on the other hand can often stay on the top of their attractiveness game well into their fifties. Did I mention that this is horribly unfair? But women have a bit of an advantage in Second Life, where an older man just looks older, and usually not more in possession of himself or wiser or kinder or more magnetic.



So there are some reasons it's an uphill battle for men to be gorgeous. So who are the exceptions, and what are they doing, and where are they shopping? I'd like to invite everyone, whether you usually read this blog or not, to post comments with pictures of men you think look especially gorgeous. But please don't post pictures of your boyfriend, lover, or husband, or of yourself (unless you feel you can be completely unbiased!). And remember that this is not a question of which men *are* attractive, which takes into account speech and behavior and personality and achievements and all those wonderful things, but a much shallower question of which men *look* attractive. Please do post! Or if you know of someone you'd like to see included but don't have a picture, let me know and I'll try to get one. :)

PS - Thanks, Kit, for inspiring me to think about this from a comment in passing in your post about Rezbians!

Post-PS ... Thank you, Eris, for the new userpics!! :)

Those Second Life appearance sliders-and all the tools that go with them-have a sort of sneaky appeal. You might come into Second Life wearing an avatar that looks a lot like the First Life you, but then one day you log in and say to yourself "You know, if I can stand to lose twenty pounds in my First Life, why not in my Second?" Or you don't wait that long and trim off the extra 20 pounds (or what have you) when you start. I don't think I have trimmed off 20 pounds, but I'll bet I've trimmed off ten. Actually, I imagine it's hard to find anyone (at least, anyone who isn't in top shape in First Life) who hasn't lost a little weight in translation to the screen.



It's a bit like this for kara_timtam, who says "The other"-she means one of her two avis-"is not so perfect because it is a re-creation of the real me. Admittedly, I knocked off probably about 50 pounds. Maybe that's narcissistic, I like to think of it as positive imagery."

I think she's right that it's not narcissistic. Is it positive imagery? I think the way we tell that is whether we find ourselves making changes in our lives to be fitter or healthier or more self-expressive because of our Second Life selves. I haven't heard of anyone doing that, but then, I don't think people usually like to talk about looking less than perfect in First Life when they're in Second Life among so many idealized bodies. The only problem with this attitude is if your Second Life avi sends you back to First Life despairing about your weight or face or gender or species or height or whatever you might have made different on your avi.



When I first joined Second Life, and for some months after, it was kind of a point of pride with me that I kept to roughly my First Life hair color and length and eye color. Why this should make me proud, I have no idea. Maybe it's the Puritan idea of forgoing anything that seems self-indulgent?

keikotakamura is no Puritan, but she seems perfectly at peace in sticking with an avi that's closely modeled on her First Life self. "My AV is a sort of flattered version of my RL self," she says. "I tried to make the face and hair and general shape as close to me as possible. Asian eyes, little snub of a nose, glasses, pudgebelly, etc. I tend to dress better in SL because I can afford it, unlike RL. :/"

I like her attitude toward not Barbie-ing up: "What, is my sparkling personality not /bling on enough for you??" she says.



With me, though not with Keiko to date, there did come a day where I put on a dress that seemed to minimize what I had going on up front, gave my avi a good, hard look, and moved up my breast slider. It goes up and down now, between 52 and 72, as the outfit seems to demand. And then over time there were other experiments: fashion experiments, racial experiments, and recently a week where I decided to be a redhead, which felt as strange and playful to me as if I had colored my hair in First Life. I guess one of the benefits of staying having an avi that looks something like you is that changing your look is that much more exciting.



rena_mayne has done this with more self-awareness, I think, than I have. She says that her avi "started out more like me, hair color, eye color, skin tone, height, and she wore the kinds of clothing I wear in real life. The more I learned about SL the more she changed and evolved. I began experimenting with different hair colors and eye colors and then different skins. I started noticing that I reacted differently to situations depending on how I looked. If I looked shy and innocent, I acted accordingly because I felt shy, and a little vunerable. If I looked fierce and sexy I acted appropriately. It was an interesting phenomenon."

But there are some in Second Life who have other things on their agenda, and tend not to worry about the sliders. Mari McCann (mmccann), says about her child avi, "she is largely based on RL me (at that age), and contains 'flaws' of sorts. Glasses, freckles, a bit of chubbiness, some overbite, and some slight knock-knees are all part of her." But Mari has also modeled children's clothing, and it's hard to argue that she isn't a pretty child. With that said, she both says and demonstrates that she's not trying to be a baby beauty queen.



tekelili goes farther than that, saying "For some reason, I play what would be considered by many to be an ugly AV, and am exceptionally comfortable wearing him. I believe he's more 'unique' looking than flat out ugly, but, he's in no way "beautiful". He's pale, rail thin, creepy, and rather ill looking, and not in a 'goth' way, rather, just unwell-looking.

Although I have two other AVs for RP/admaking, I don't tend to be either one unless it's for one of those activities...it seems a simple case of being comfortable in the AV."



Don't think this is the end of the subject, but I think I've gone on long enough for now. Let's call this the end of part 2 and I'll pick up with part 3 in the next week or so.

^^^\ Kate /^^^

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 /^^^

I'm constantly amused by the things that are hard in Real Life and easy in Second Life, and vice-versa. Second Life lets me fly and have wings, but it's impossible for me to raise one eyebrow. I can wear gorgeous clothing made by the most brilliant designers in the (Second) world, but can't always prevent it from occupying the same space as my limbs. And so it goes!

The skin I wear most, Gala Pale Katydid

And one of the things that Second Life makes possible that I really love and wouldn't have even thought about in Real Life is changing my skin. At first this appealed to me because I was able to go from having the complexion of a piece of copy paper to having almost indecently creamy skin with a faint cast of rose to it (that's my Gala pale skin. I think it's probably clear that I love Gala skins, for which tip I thank the really interesting Second Life fashion blog Linden Lifestyles).

My usual coloration in Second Life is the same as in Real Life: skin on the pale side, dark brown hair, green eyes. This seems to mean that I can wear almost any darker color, or white, but not pastels-unless (I discovered before long) I wear a darker skin.

The tan version of that same lovely Gala skin

And then I started experimenting even more. I made a green-tinted faerie skin for Faerie Kate, and I've come to love the effect I get from a very dark skin I have from Pixel Dolls (for L$50, ridiculously cheap!), which friends often refer to as a dark tan and I think of as a sort of darker Indian (from India) tone.

My dark skin from Pixel Dolls

All this playing with complexion is odd for me insofar as I'm fairly conservative with my appearance in other respects. I virtually always have long, brown hair, green eyes, and the shape I created when I entered Second Life and have only tweaked slightly since then. Without those things I don't entirely feel like me, and I like feeling like me. Yet I seem to be able to turn green or chocolate brown without a qualm.

Before I depart from the frothy side of the discussion, I'll comment that when I use skin to accessorize my clothing, I then tend to change my eyes and hair to match my skin. All of this coordination gives me a degree of control over my appearance that is unmatched in the Real World outside of Hollywood makeup departments. With my dark skin, I tend to wear a more intense pair of green eyes that throw off a bit of sparkle and a lighter shade of long, brown hair. With my faerie skin I depart from my normal coloring and wear short, red hair and gold eyes. (Gold eyes! How cool is that?)

My faerie skin. This is a tintable skin from Cryogen Labs; the more human-looking version is below.

And since the same skin can have a very different effect in different lighting, sometimes the lighting determines the skin, which determines the clothing...well, you get the idea. You can see why I change into a new outfit at the drop of a hat (but you can still snicker at my doing that if you'd like).

As you will have picked up, I don't quite feel like myself in red hair and gold eyes, but then, it would be disappointing if I turned into a faerie and felt normal!

All right, on to slightly deeper matters. Some questions: first of all, why are there so few people of real color in Second Life? Are avatar complexions reflecting Real Life complexions, so that the absence of people with any real richness of melanin in their skins means that Second Life is populated with overwhelmingly by a bunch of white folks?

Alternatively, maybe for people of color in America and other places with racial intolerance problems, it's a relief to be able to exist in an environment where you can make your skin color a non-issue, good or bad. Or maybe there's widespread, active prejudice in Second Life that I haven't seen yet. Even in my dark skin, my features are unmistakeably European, so maybe I've been spared because of that, or have just been lucky. I hope this isn't the case, though. I'm hoping that Second Life is by and large a more enlightened place than Real Life. Sometimes it really seems to me to be, the occasion griefer or unevolved individual aside.

Or maybe it's just that it's hard to find a good skin in Second Life that looks authentically African or Asian, say. For one thing, it's harder to have detail show up well on quite dark skins. But then, that can be all there is to it: I see avatars with more Asian features, but those avatars are usually whiter even than me in my Gala pale skin. Would it help for me to dig up some of the places that sell good non-European skins and post them here? I'm guessing not, but I'll be happy to dig them up if I can find them.

It's interesting: it seems to me that in Second Life, more of us are green or blue or purple than are black or taupe or golden-brown.

And why aren't more of us pale folk playing around with skin color the way we seem so comfortable playing with hair color or eye color or size or gender or species? Maybe it's just unappealing to take on an appearance that you know comes with the danger of being targeted by ignorami? Or maybe it seems presumptuous or rude to take on a different skin color when skin color can be such a touchy issue? I don't know, but in any case I really do recommend trying it if you have any inclination. It's fun, and it might help make the place feel friendlier to residents of all Real Life skin colors (whatever skin they wear in Second Life).

Now back to the frothy stuff: what makes a good skin? Don't think you should stop reading now (providing I haven't lost you already) if your avi is male. You especially I want to talk to! And why? Because skins are an easy way to make a male avatar look *much* more attractive. Trust me on this.

A Second Life default skin. Do you see what I'm saying here?

Now, first of all skins are a bit expensive by Second Life standards. The good ones usually start at about L$1,000, which is just under $4 U.S. You can easily get up to L$5,000 or even higher, especially if you want a variety of makeup or facial hair options. (I don't recommend mixing the two, by the way...but then again, it's Second Life! I take it back: do what you want.) I can understand that there are many residents who just don't want to get into spending noticeable amounts of Real Life money in Second Life, but if you're not opposed to it in principle, I recommend a nice skin even if you're not really interested in appearance overall.

Here's the thing: an avatar with a good skin not only looks nicer, but also looks more real. More than that, the right kind of skin can give you a kind of glow or a sheen or what have you, depending. The things that mark a good skin in general are the effect of the complexion and the quantity and quality of detail. A couple of months ago I put up a post basically wondering what was wrong with my freebie darker skin, which I really liked because of the coloration and the makeup. I finally began to understand why it didn't measure up to, say, my Gala pale skin as I got used to looking at avatars in Second Life: in the freebie skin, my features were a bit blurred and undifferentiated. In some of the skins I've bought since, as well as that Gala pale skin, my face comes through with much more clarity and richness. In Real Life, you can't buy beauty. In second Life, it's available for the price of some discernment and a fairly low number of Real Life dollars.

The CS default skin, which is great for a freebie, but falls short of some of the better non-freebie skins

Why this took so long for me to cotton to I think can be explained by this anecdote, which I don't even know for sure is true, but which is certainly illustrative: when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and traveled around demonstrating it. People literally *couldn't tell the difference* between the scratchy, tinny recorded sounds and real life sounds. Today, any of us would instantly be able to tell the recording from the real life sound, and greatly prefer the real life sound for richness and clarity. It's the same thing with skins: as you are in Second Life longer (and I'm speaking in terms of total hours spent, not in months since you started your account) there's a chance that some avatars will start seeming more beautiful to you, or that you'll begin to notice the skins of avatars that have seemed more beautiful to you all along.

It's hard to find a skin that's just right. First, there's the coloration, or shade. Then there's the detail, tone, and complexion in general; a lot of skins fail at this stage because they're too flat (although those skins still represent far more artistic skill than I have, by the way!). Then there are the details of muscles and ears and fingernails. There's the question of how the muscles are defined. The physique might be really "cut," with sharply-defined muscles, or smoother, and all of this plays on individual preference.

Then there's the either meaningless or rather important question of how the genitalia and nipples look. This is much more important for women than for men, since men have to buy their genitalia separately from their skins in any case. Some skins have very fuzzy or even absent naughty bits, and others skip the whole question with mandatory, unremovable underwear. This can be a problem even if you're never tempted to get naked, because the design of some Second Life clothing is such that underclothes will sometimes peek out in an undesirable fashion. Sometimes they have to be dispensed with altogether. (Um, I'm not making my wardrobe sound slutty, am I?)

And finally there's makeup for women, or facial hair (sometimes including sideburns) for men. Natural-looking facial hair seems to be a bit hard to find for men, although fortunately for most of the population clean-shaven seems to be the preference anyway.

Makeup is a little harder, because if as a woman you wear none at all, that tends to stick out in a world where makeup is so widely used. (My friend Chilly makes it look very good, however, so it can be done.) After all, it takes hardly a moment to apply and can be perfect forever without ever having to redo it. It's kind of a less-creepy version of that disturbing Real Life phenomenon of makeup tattoos.

My own problem with makeup on skins I find tends to be that most skins have more of it than I want. For instance, I really like the skin below, from Au Naturel, but like all of the examples from that store, the makeup is dark and heavy. Pretty, yes, but frankly I think I look a bit mean with that much makeup on, at least compared to my usual, less dramatic preferences.

My Au Naturel #6 skin

Gala solves this problem by having a very wide range of makeups in different styles for each skin tone. In my experience, it's rare for a skin vendor to offer not just different makeup coloration, but different styles of makeup. Fortunately, with some skins (not all!) this can be accomplished with makeup facial tattoos.

There are also tintable skins, including an impressive tintable skin system that lets you choose each part and isn't really that expensive (I think it totals L$1,500 or so) at Cryogen Labs. Unfortunately, tintable skins achieve that effect by being largely transparent, so the more transparent they are, the less detailed they can be, and the less transparent they are, the less you can tint them.

My tintable skin from Cryogen labs in a more human shade

Why did I want you to hear all of this? Well, two reasons, really-neither of them life-shakingly important, I admit! First of all, I talked about beauty some time back in an entry about "Barbies", and frankly I think for an avatar to wear a skin that really works for him or her makes Second Life significantly and noticeably more beautiful.

The other reason is just how people might react to you. In Real Life, beauty is hard to come by, whereas as I seem to keep repeating rather tediously, the same isn't really true in Second Life. In Second Life with a bit of effort one can look both very individual and strikingly beautiful (or handsome, if you prefer the word), and that can change people's attitudes toward you in a positive way. In Real Life that's kind of a raw deal, because if you don't have luck and money on your side, it's sometimes hard to look beautiful in Real Life, especially if you're busy with more important things. In Second Life, beauty doesn't have to be such a big hassle, and it's nice to be able to have people react positively to you because of your appearance, especially since in a very real way you can claim credit for it.

Ultimately residents are more interesting for what they say and what they do than for what they look like, aren't they? So don't take my skinthusiasm too seriously. At the same time, it's a fascinating element to be able to play with in a world that is even more dependent on what you see than Real Life, and where people can zoom closer to you than they ever should get in Real Life without permission and maybe a bouquet of flowers.

^^^\ Kate /^^^

As far as I can tell, most Residents in Second Life choose to have physically spectacular avatars. Sometimes this means being a vampire or a furry or a gremlin or something...but most of us seem to settle for a Plain Old Human (well, sometimes a POH with wings) who is Plain Old Physically Attractive.

Honey, you call that an inventory?

Of course, opinions on what's attractive vary from person to person, so there's the whole question of whether a person's idea of what makes his or her avatar look sexy is actually working, and how well, and on whom-but for the moment let's settle for the idea of making your avatar attractive by your own measure.

Wanting to be sexy seems perfectly sensible to me. If we're in a world where we can be and do anything, wouldn't we want to be hotter than anyone we knew in high school? From what I've seen, most human beings would rather be sexually attractive than not even when they're not trying to attract anyone. I think this is built in: your carefully devised Life Plan may say "stand pat", but your genes will say "Attract a healthy mate! Now!"

I keep saying attractive or sexy when I want to say beautiful, but really, people are much more often trying to be sexy than beautiful. More of us want to look desirable than want to look aesthetically pleasing. Fortunately there's some beauty in Second Life avatars, too, and of course that's often mixed together with the sexiness, but I'll put it out there: is there anything you would want to do to make your avatar not necessarily more attractive, but more beautiful? (You could make an argument that’s what my wings are for, but they're more for metaphor than aesthetics. I like being a flying girl more than I like being a winged creature, although I'm happy to be both.)

So all this is natural and predictable, but at the same time it's a little embarrassing. Second Life is one of the few situations I can think of where there's a derogatory word for just being attractive: Barbie. There's kind of an implication in using that word that there's something wrong with being attractive. Some ideas: maybe it's self-indulgent, or it denies the sometimes less obvious beauty of our Real Life selves, or it strikes some people as deceitful. Maybe it focuses all the attention on the externals, the surface things, the distracting coating of prettiness that hides the deep and important things in the world. Maybe it takes a perfectly good Virtual World and makes it difficult for anyone to just enjoy it without getting aroused. Maybe it masks individuality or encourages the idea that there's a single standard of beauty. Maybe it creates unrealistic expectations of Real Life lovers.

For my money, there's a little truth in most of those concerns, but only a little. If Second Life were capable of making really, really realistic-looking avatars, like it probably will be in five or ten years, instead of avatars that are halfway between a well-drawn cartoon and a magazine photo, then maybe it would be worth getting into avatars that were less physically attractive for some people-but even then I'm not really sure non-Barbie avatars would be that common. It's probably an indication that our culture isn't as healthy as it should be that so many of us-whether we're very attractive in Real Life or not-don't want to be unattractive as we relate to people. Or maybe it's part of that built-in thing, just natural for a human being to always want to look good for everyone, no matter what. Either way, it's a little sad for us. A person can still be beautiful and not be generally considered sexually attractive. And beauty is a little more of a public gift than sexual attractiveness, kind of like the difference between a gorgeous spring day and a really exciting dance club. The gorgeous spring day is just making your life a little more enjoyable no matter what you're; the dance club is trying to make you come in and dance, and is distracting and useless if you're not going to be dancing that night.

Um, no comment on there being winged Barbies

My friend Andr3 (I pronounce that "Andrie," but she doesn't know that, and there is no official pronunciation) is both sexy and beautiful. She has a long-limbed grace that seems to have come not just from a desire to be desirable, but a desire to create something visually stunning in the world. I know a lot more of you out there are doing this, but I've only just realized the distinction, so bear with me. :)

I know a few people who have purposely adopted more realistic avatars, avoiding sexual attractiveness. I'm sure this is easier for people who aren't interested in Second Life sex, but even in that case it must be hard. In a world full of women with perfect breasts, who wants to be the ugly duckling, and is it worth the trouble? But it must yield some interesting insights, and I think a couple of those have been posted in the Second Life LiveJournal community at http://community.livejournal.com/second_lifers

And a lot more people have adopted avatars that are somewhat realistic but also potentially a bit gorgeous. This is my attempted approach: I don't want the perfect supermodel face or breasts that draw the eyes of any unwary pedestrian, but I also built myself in a very particular way, with certain proportions and attempts at grace that make me happy. I don't get a lot of "hey baby, great tits!" (which is a mercy) but I do get to appreciate the benefits of looking like I have designed myself to look, expressing what is desirable and beautiful in my mind. I get what I want out of being (to some people) beautiful: kind words, attention, pleasure in being me, pleasure in seeing someone else enjoy how I look...and the ability to wear horizontal stripes without looking like a hippo.

I think I can usually make a case that I'm not a Barbie, but if sometimes that label sticks, well, Barbie needs love too, and if it makes Ken happy-at least the versions of Ken that aren't flamboyantly gay-then so much the better.

^^^\Kate/^^^