"Petite" vs. "Child" avs. touchy subject but...

Lets just ban all people in real life under 5'6" tall.

Just in case.

Yay! I'm safe! \(^_^)/

I'd make it, but my grandmother wouldn't.


From what I've seen, a lot of the people who use child avs do so for the whole 'magic of childhood' thing. They want to spend some time in Peter Pan-land, do some psyche-healing. Play. And that's absolutely fine with me! I think it's healthy for adults to go ahead and fly kites or make sandcastles.

So yes, many of those do have a kind of dress code. They dress as children - probably either the child-stereotype from the early half of last century, or however children dressed when they were children.

I have a petite shape I use sometimes, and yes, I've been treated as a 'child' while in that shape.

Small! Not a kid! Just small!

I think the whole subject sucks.
its SL job to keep the RL kids out of here so us adults can act as crazy as we wish

ok...this is one of my hot buttons too and I am thankful for the opportunity to rant about it for a moment . I have an accurate height gage I made months ago available at my place in Tikka. It is a simple 100 inch scale you step into and measure yourself. I also have a scripted bounding box measure next to it with a clear note that it isn't accurate.

My usual avatar is 5'7" and I often wear heels that bring me up to 6'2" (yeah...try wearing 7" heels in RL). Even at that height I get the occasional person telling me I look like a 10-year-old because I am too short. Wow...they grow 6'2" 10 year olds where you come from? what planet is that?

The fact is (and I do mean fact) that most experienced SL residents I know have avatars that are short by SL "standards". It is the noobs that are 7' to 8' tall. I have a few friends who protest that, imagining themselves far more experienced with SL then they really are. But I have watched a lot of people shrink a couple feet as they learned their way around this virtual environment.

I do have a couple kid avatars too (um...no scripted diapers or tantrum gestures thank you). I use them for good clean fun. I never hesitate to report someone who gives a clear indication they are under 18 or anyone who I see actually engaging in "child play". I help a lot of new residents get started in SL and those who are under 18 often confide in me about it. I have seen them as young as 11. I encourage them to request a transfer to the teen grid if they are over 13 and report them if I don't see it happen.

Because of my awareness of the number of children in SL, I am a fanatic about only doing sex play with people who have pay info used (not just on file). Maybe that isn't a perfect screening method but you have to start somewhere. I also state straight out in my RL info in my profile that I am over 18, age verified, with payment info used. Perhaps it is SLs responsibility to weed out the kids but that is no excuse for just ignoring the problem yourself.

So anyone who starts harassing me about my "small" size or even my kid avs is going to get an earful til they mute me. I won't put up with that immature nonsense. You want to really deal with child sex in SL don't just take kneejerk reactions to normal size avatars because they don't measure up to your distorted gargantuan proportions, then go hit the free sex places and jump on the first naked body without even trying to verify if they are old enough to drive. that certainly does NOT impress me.

/rant

Sadly there are always those, especially in SL these days, who tend to look down on anyone who does things differently, who doesn't fit into their ideal of 'normal'. I've encountered that myself with a member of a group I'm in, her ideal of me that she wants me to be isn't my ideal, she would prefer me to be emotionless, have no individual spirit and be someone I'm not.
Also being disabled in RL has gotten me looked down upon as well in SL by a few, they see the condition, not the person. I've done all I can to prove that I'm as capable as anyone else.

Sadly however no matter how much a person can do, there's always someone or a few who just hate that person for being themselves. Have a child av, you get attacked for it, have an adult av that's small by personal choice, you get attacked. Do anything different that doesn't conform to a few people's self-made standards and you get attacked.
It's a shame that those who have their own individual spirits are always hurt by those who hate individuality.

~Reina~

SL does seem to suffer from height inflation. I think part of it is that when you first set up your avatar, you're given no indication whatsoever of how tall it is. All you can tell is that if you move the height slider up, you get taller. I think that if new residents were given that information, you wouldn't see the distribution of heights you do in SL.

5'4" is (or at least once was) the average height of women in the US. (Alas, I've not seen any listing of the standard deviation.) It's ridiculous that someone with an avatar of that height or slightly below should be accused of being a child (and even more so that one should have to use the word "accused" in that context). For that matter, there are adults in RL who are considerably shorter than that; shouldn't they be able to make their avatars look like themselves if they wish?

Well i always find it sad whenever some negative aspect we usually find in RL seeps in SL, such as bigotry over how one's avatar appears. Some people just don't leave their prejudices at the door when they enter SL, it's sad such stereotype and ignorance is ingrained so much in them. It is also sad that SL must appease to those kinds of crowds because they want this universe to appeal to everyone.

SL, for what it is to everyone who has been here longer to realize it's potential, is also for me a place where you can leave those RL aspects behind and choose be in a utopia where it doesn't matter if an adult has a furry for an avatar or chooses to live in SL as a child.

There's nothing in SL, save for scripts that dictate age or simulates age. We are in a virtual fountain of youth where imagination should NEVER be curtailed. Our minds will always be dynamic and our avatars should match that. BOO to those who are still wearing their RL prejudices in SL and insist to be small brained.

I refuse to see SL as a game though, but as a world, a metaverse, so to speak. SL can be a games in some areas within SL, but for most part, it is a world where we have another chance to be who in our hearts we want to be. Some people choose to fantasize, like me, who choose a very idealized shape and wear clothes I can't normally have the guts to wear in RL, and some choose to be real with who they are, be it chubby or petite. We live together in harmony because we celebrate our TRUTH and IMAGINATION. Our minds ultimately levels us, not the way we look.

Unfortunately, as SL opens up to more and more people, there will always be people who will be the way they are, and I only hope that in SL, they develop manners in how to address avatars they are not comfortable with, and be more tolerant. They, after all can choose to teleport away if what they see doesn't agree with them. SL IS A BIG UNIVERSE, so instead of insisting that those who look different should never exist in the first place, or putting one's job in danger over their judgemental comments, they should just let us be and just go to those sterile places where they can exist with their bigotry.

I am enjoying reading the comments in this thread. There are some really good thoughts being expressed here.

About new people not realizing how tall they are...um...take a look at the selection of avatars they have in the library for newbies to choose from...

Boy next door - 7' 2"
Club goer female - 5' 10"
Club Goer Male - 7' 1"
Gamer Female - 6' 4"
Gamer Girl - 6' 3"
Gamer Guy - 7' 2"
Gamer Male - 7' 4"
Girl Next Door - 6' 11"
Girl Next Door 2 - 6' 8"
Musician Female - 6' 11"
Musician Male 1 - 7' 6"
Musician Male 2 - 7' 2"
Professional Female - 6' 8"
Professional Male - 6' 11"

Boy next door is 7' 2"???!! what flippin neighborhood is that in??? Girl Next door is 6' 11"???!! On what planet??? ROFLMAO! The shortest avatar is 5'10". Some of the old library avatars (that they just removed) were 8' 2"! (the cybergoth male and female were both that height)

But on a more serious note...have any of you noticed that they killed the furry avs and the only child avatar in the library...unless you consider Grendel's cardboard box robot. Are they saying the only good child av is one with a cardboard box covering their head? I am really surprised this move hasn't caused an uproar. No more furry newbies. and they killed little red riding hood!! The big bad wolf didn't even manage to be THAT bad!

Agree with you, Reina. There is one good cure in SL for this problem: Grow a thick skin. I'm not being unsympatheitc when I say this, but just the opposite. If you are running into jerks (as who does not?), you need one. Fortunately, they cost L$0.

You might also take lessons from Brenda on how to zap the buggers and hand their heads to them, but that is optional.

This is the first time I have ever posted here before. I read through all the previous replies to the original poster, and I do not wish to offend anyone here. Where to start though. I suppose that the issue with the "child" avatars is something that hits really close to home for me. As a gay man, I find myself in constant fear from the rabid, self appointed piety police. There are many such people who, out of utter and sheer ignorance or else hate and bigotry, who insist that gay=pedophile. I have no interest in children, in talking to them on line, meeting them for sex or anything else. I really do not even care to have children around me, as they often tend to be too rambunctious (I know not all kids are this way but most I have met are) for my nerves! So much for my preamble.

I would like to say this: what difference does the avatar make? A 35 year old adult can make a nine year old avatar, and a 9 year old child can make a 35 year old avatar. I would think that most children of even 10 years old (on TV, in books, on video games, whereva) have been exposed to people with facial piercings, tattoos. There are a lot of bright, intelligent, curious kids who are smart enough to manipulate software to create an avatar of many sorts that mask their true ages. And at least one poster has said here that he or she could imagine making child avatars simply because they, to summarize, wish to "be a kid again" and build sandcastles or fly kites. Anything wrong with that in principle? Not in my opinion, although I think there are places where one ought not to take their child avatar in SL...sex toy shops or Hot-C**ks-R-Us for instance.

I think it is a form of discrimination to judge someone by his or her height in SL, just as it is in RL. Wild animal avatars run around SL along side dapperly-clothed gentlemen. You can be Darth Vader, a sea horse, a big hairy man in a leather corset, a slinky vixen with heels up to her neck. And that's the way it should be. Its not really the age of the avatar that should be questioned but rather the person behind it--and from an 18 and over standpoint only, then.

I am writing this in a bit of fear right now. I was in a certain place in SL that caters to ADULTS who want to have ADULT fantasies played out. Some of these fantasies are quite rough and graphic sometimes. While in this particular facility, "locked up," I met a guy who says he is 19, and had a lot of fun with him in my "cell" for a while. Avatar "looks" between 19 and 25. Then as I spent more time around him, it seemed he was acting a little less mature than a 19 year old would act. Perhaps if he is an adult, he could be described as mercurial in his behaviors. At one point he admitted to me that he had been on SL since he was a minor. I now wonder if he isn't still a minor and lying about his age. Are guys in trench coats going to show up at my door one day soon because some 16 year old kid's parents have flown into a blind rage? In cavorting around SL in various degrees of dress and undress with certain adult appendages in view (in Mature lands ALWAYS), did I somehow in ignorance "virtually" expose myself to minors? After this, I am backing off SL for a while until I get some better ground rules set for myself. At the very least it will involve staying clear of being nude at any place or time in SL, avoiding discussions about sex altogether, or even conversations with people that might be perceived as my having sexual motives. As this is a nearly impossible goal in a world as open and free as SL, I may well abandon my account and terminate it at my next membership renewal.

What to do about it? I really do not have a lot of answers. Bickering about avatars doesn't seem to get anything accomplished except angering folks whose avatars are petite. Perhaps there ought to be tougher policing of SL for real minors. At least one US Congress-critter (cannot remember his name--he is a Republican from Illinois I think) has his eye set on SL in his song and dance for reelection this year. Wouldn't it be more effective to show people like this guy that SL is solidly behind keeping minors off? I don't have the real world solutions for the issue. I don't know technology that well. But this seems to be the problem, not the avatars themselves. So, please, to the original poster, stick to your guns and keep on being your petite and outspoken self. I think it takes real conviction to stand up for yourself as you did in refusing to compromise with your SL boss. I also ask you too, though, to consider for the sake of the owners of SL's adult fun-time attractions, the times in which we live.

For everyone to consider: the US government almost patently refuses to keep its nose out of anyones' business, and many agencies have broad-ranging power to exploit existing legislation for purposes for which it was never intended. Also, consider how rabid society is right now about anything remotely related to pedophilia. A mere accusation of it, regardless of innocence or guilt, is enough to wreck a person's life. Should you take offense at what I am saying here, please keep in mind I write this partly out of fear of simply not knowing if that guy with whom I shared some great "cyber-moments" was really 19 as he said he was. I can only imagine the level of fear or paranoia that the proprietors of various adult-themed venues on SL must feel as people file in and out of their establishments.

Again, I apologize if my comments here are offensive to anyone. Being that I write this as a guy who is pretty nervous at the time, take what I say with a grain of salt.