I've always found it fascinating that in a world with no limits to appearance, people cleave to stereotypical beauty types. It has struck me as extremely pathetic. And it gives rise to the notion for people outside the SL bubble that everyone in world is a fat, slobby shut-in masquerading as a super model avatar.
Whereas the pressures on male users may be immense, they are nowhere near the pressure on female users to use glamorous avatars.
This article at Your2ndLife is just one example of just who is deserving of "attention" in VR.
Just in the wording..."girl next door", which means "male avatars" won't speak to a female unless she looks like a male trannie on the Sunset strip. And this hyper feminine look is abundant around the grid. Why do I call it the male transvestite look? Because it reminds me of a video I once saw at the Museum of Sex in NY. It was a video showing men how to look like "women". However this female look was nothing I recognized. It exaggerated features that actual women never think about. Such as our way of walking. Or the fetishization of makeup, particularly eye makeup with extra long eyelashes. So that the men who wanted to be feminine did not end up looking like women but only itemized pieces of female anatomy that "straight" men find attractive. It was all Frankenstein's monster or Pygmalion's statue but not the essence of being woman.
The video in question literally blew my mind and my inculcated views of what is feminine. And I realized for the first time, that what society thinks of as beautiful was really just a male interpretation of what is feminine. We, women, don't know what is woman only what men think is woman. And so the pretty women I saw walking around the city no longer looked like women but just another version of the male transvestites in that how to video.
And when I got into Second Life, I just saw more of the former. Women turning themselves into caricatures that would be impossible in physical space but possible in VR. They aren't women but body parts exaggerated by fetishists. And acting in ways that fetish culture deems feminine.
In the article, a resident literally gives up her autonomy to others to create her "self". Think about that...and how horrific it is. Imagine not being able to control your own presentation in life. To have it be subjected to the control of another. To be someone with no self will. This resident gave up a perfectly fine avatar with personal looks to be something lifeless. She is someone else's fantasy. A commodified body that will soon go out of style.
I'm not an advocate of style police. I don't want to tell people how to look. But I do want women to question WHY. Why look this particular way? Why is this considered more attractive than looking closer to human? Is this really what you, as a member of the female population, would really find attractive or is it because the male gaze wants it?
