Acceptance In SL

So...

Maybe I'm just grumpy because it's update day, but this strikes me as a blanket condemnation, based upon your notion of what is aesthetically "good." Isn't that exactly what you are arguing against?

Audible Tone - that is indeed a valid point. People should indeed feel that they can be who they want to be...what right as any other being, to question that? Perhaps I didn't put it across to well. I am merely wondering why people seem to actively choose not to be themselves...and if it is because of social conformity, or some feelings of doubts that they have of themselves, or escapism, or whatever. It was certainly not intended as a blanket statement - and apologize if it came across as such.

I have no real idea of what is intended as aesthetically "good". What pleases one culture, will not please another, and that goes for the individual within the individual cultures. But it just seems to me that there is a very similar ideal that as far as vast majority of the more humanoid representations that I've seen goes, paler skinned 'model' types, are the norm.

It is also very sad that a few people have noticed and pointed out that Grieffers have taken on larger forms, or thicker body sets, with disproportioned features. Maybe this too affects how people respond to the larger AV's.

Still, I am really fascinated by all the replies received, and once again, thank you to all who have taken time to read and reply.

Well, I went through a flurry of self-discovery when I started out in SL. Had little intention of representing the true me but then I introduced a couple of RL friends and reverted to type.
I have however, an alt avatar which is for escapism and fantasy. They are still me inasmuch that I will not lie and I will not decieve .. but I will also lay a line which I will not allow their friends to cross.
My alt has their own friends and they understand my rule, are not perturbed by it and remain, friends. Most people are quite happy to accept SL is some people's fantasy. It makes it no less valuable and through it, it remains a learning experience and more.

Hello, Jinny

Regarding your coment about darker skinned AVs, I've always heard from several well known skin makers that dark skin is a lot harder to get right than the lighter versions, so not many people attempt it.

The way I see it, SL is where I get to play dress up or shoot up or whatever strikes my fancy every time I log in. Sometimes all I do is sit around and talk to friends and random strangers, just to unwind. Like somebody else mentioned before, I see Kikki as the tool that enables me to do all these things. Emotionally and intellectually, it is me but that's as far as it goes. Kikki does / wears things I do and wear everyday and then some I would never even consider in RL. I change skins and shapes and AVs on a whim and for no reason other than for fun and I never considered making her look like me. The way I see it (and probably a lot of other folks) is, I get to be "me" everyday... why log in and wear jeans and t-shirts in playland too? Boring

I don't think it means we're not happy with who we are (maybe for a few, who knows?), we're just taking advantage of the possibilities

K.

This has been an interesting discussion. As would be expected in such an open-ended environment as SL people have different ideas of what it all means and are taking different approaches to expressing themselves. I find that rich and exciting. Thanks for bringing this up, Jinny. It sounds like you've found acceptance with the person it matters most to.

Personally I didn't give "me vs. avatar" much thought until recently. When I first concocted BP's appearance I had an idea in mind of not necessarily a role-playing character but rather a collection of symbolism that includes, among other things, a green beard. As I wandered around in-world I noticed how much better other people's skins looked than mine, color and tone-wise at least. (Comparing to others--> Thinking about acceptance) So I've begun skin shopping and the first time I tried one on I felt a little jolt when I noticed my beard was gone. I've come to identify with the guy and it just seemed wrong. Added to that, the skins don't fit the shape I feel he needs. So I'm thinking of creating another look for "public" and one for when I'm at home in my environment. But that almost seems like a sellout. But, then, I tend to overthink things

Anybody, feel free to IM me, 'specially you, Jinny and drop by and we'll sit in my garden and chat. Like I said, I find this all a very interesting subject.

Narcia

You are so, so right. I feel the same. This is my SECOND life. Why would I want to model it on my real life? Here I feel so much more self confident, so much more outgoing. I'm a different person and I love it! And yes, my appearance has a lot to do with it. Here I think I'm pretty, and that's one of the things I want to be. You think I'm just a Barbie? Well there's more to me than that, but my appearance has given me the confidence to express it. Maybe you think I am shallow, but hey, I've found friends, I've found a real relationship, it makes me happy.

And no, I'm not blonde, but so what?

Love Suzi

The disconnect between "real image" and "ideal image" dips deeper into psychology than I'd be comfortable with tackling...

Some people create avatars that embody who they want to be.
Some people create avatars based on body types they find attractive.
Finding straight guys that use female avatars is not unusual, in SL or many of the MMO's out there.

Keep in mind that there's a big empty gap between "goth white" and "doomed to skin cancer tan" as well. It's not just the darkest skin tones that are missing.

The OP could, of course, say that they're a beanpole in RL and the idea of being able to put on weight is something they obsess about.

As far as handicaps go... I suspect that most don't portray disabilities because who wants to be accused of mocking people with disabilities? I do have a 'blind' midget avatar, dark glasses, white cane with a red tip, and his service dog Jabberwocky, the seeing-eye Chihuahua. I used to wear it when I had so many script windows open I couldn't see anything in world around me. =)

Ultimately, regardless of appearance or world, people will make snap judgements about others based on appearance, it's how we identify people we have things in common with, right or wrong. Keep looking though, you'll find people that are comfortable with a more realistic appearance that appreciate you for who you choose to be here I'm sure.

Yeah, I think I was grumpy.

Anyway, please don't apologize. Inquiry is good.

one thing I have noticed, is the issue of one avatar "not being acceptable" everywhere I go. This, I think, is kind of screwed up... frankly, I mean, on one hand, it's "just an avatar"..

Furries are not allowed in many gorean sims. And will be banned on sight.
Child avatars are treated with incredible disdain and abuse in many places.
Fetish themed avatars are harrassed in many "public" areas.
Anime styled, "weaponed" avatars are harrassed repeatedly.
and if course, "realistic(tm)" avatars are given greif in almost all situations.

I'm sure there are plenty of examples of other types of intolerance like this. I'm sure there are many places where robot avatars, or "Storm Troopers" aren't welcome, and are made to feel inferior.

I can't, for example, go into a tech support call, for a malfunctioning or mal-used genital attachment.. as a 6 year old. Oh.. I could.. but... the customer would have a heart attack. Likewise.. there is a huge.. and I mean HUGE segment of the SL population that has never SEEN a furry.

One lesson I have learned, in RL.. is that regardless of how "open minded" and "forward thinking" a group or organization is alleged to be.. they group is still made up of flawed human beings. Even in a Star Trek Fan Club, or a video game.. there are always people who will "hate" people different from themselves. Secondlife residents are no exception. Be it in language, payment status, or avatar.

As much as we each might WISH that SL was an open, accepting place that would allow you to live your dreams.. almost every person in this game has a type of avatar they will react negatively to.

This is an interesting thread, thanks.

For what it's worth... when I started in SL I first wanted to be fat, since I am fat in RL. I found the sliders uncooperative.. I could get a distorted shape, but not a fat one that looks like an attractive real fat person.

So instead I made a slender avie that vaguely resembles myself at 20, and I've become quite attached to her, since while she is not me in my present self, she reminds me of a former self.

To try to make up for all this I have put a real picture of myself in the first life tab of my profile. I am also hoping this will be enough to warn away anyone who is chasing me merely for fantasy, that this is me.

I haven't faced any difficulty with acceptance from groups that I am aware of, but have lost what I thought was a promising relationship because my RL weight was known. On the other hand, I've had compliments on my RL picture, which I think is very ordinary. So... it's all a matter of taste.

I am very sad that the prejudice against fat people in RL has come into SL, as it's extreme beyond reason. Anti-fat bias has had a very negative impact on my RL, since my family of origin shares it, and for this and other similar reasons I have had to let them go. That is very painful. However, there are a lot of different types of people in this world who suffer very bad prejudice, so it's all part of a larger problem.

People want to pretend we're so advanced these days, and we're barely holding a level above medieval barbarism. I'm trying hard these days not to expect too much and not to absorb shaming from people whose worldviews I don't respect anyway.

I guess I'm just a big nerd. When I started, I played with the sliders for a while and produced an avatar that vaguely looked like me. Two years later (!), it/I remain unchanged.

Pure laziness of course, as opposed to any sort of identity. The effort to create a good looking av, compared to the result, just seems ludicrous to me, and probably will remain so until SL improves signifigantly.

There is such diversity of things to do in SL and let's face it, the human is pretty diverse too, that some people never do change their avatars. They're by far more into building and landscaping and exploring. Some on the other hand, create dozens of 'looks' - not through vanity, not through guilt but just plain fun.
It's very sad that some people take exception to certain 'looks'. I've always considered that SL brought down a lot of social barriers and gave us a level playing field - clearly not everyone else's view

I couldn't agree more, bilbo! The avi is just a visual aid, if I like a person in SL then it's because of his/her character and not the avi. Also I have no need to know how a person looks in RL, after all what happens in SL stays in SL. Just my point of view....

Mandy C

Almost - perhaps THE - first thing I bought in SL was a pair of spectacles. I just don't feel me without them. But I've had a lot of comments on that. "Not many people here wear glasses".

However, I've taken recently to replacing them with sunglasses, which attracts less comment.

But I do find I want to adhere as much as possible to a "me" look, and the more I do, the more comfortable I feel. Especially, I feel much more at ease now I have a custom skin that's exactly the right complexion.

Hello!

What a thought provoking post. You might find this interesting:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/30/lily_white_and_not_loving_it/
"The Register" now has a SL blogger and this post is called "My big, fat, lily-white Second Life." -- it doesn't cover size issues though. Personally, in RL I used to be a 300 pound (and female, but that part hasn't changed) but I lost 175 pounds in 1998 so I have first hand experience of being treated much differently in RL. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, but I ended up quite attractive. Good for you for deciding to be more like the real you in SL, but considering the obstacles in RL faced by people of size, it's going to be almost, if not impossible to overcome this in fantasy.

I'm now disabled in RL due to an accident a few years ago. I can barely walk and most of my everyday activities cause me pain. I can't imagine wanting to simulate this.

hehe yes the rest I agree with I ended up having to use some crazy super model avatar i hated till just recently (I now look more like i want to)

the only thing I have to say is unfortunately I agree with the PVP thing and know and understand their perspective. Its competitive and having played a million online games with pvp I learned long ago that if i dont want to die fast and stop having fun and watch from the sidelines to pick the smallest avatar or the one with the fastest response (if avatars have abilities like speed). So this is one justified reason. In a part of the game where wining and loosing matters and you have to stand up and actualy "kill" other avatars being dead is something of a disadvantage because you will get dead in like 5 seconds flat and honestly its not going to be much fun. So for this I would get an appropriate avatar probably as small as i could find (abilities are scripted and not attached to avatar in this game so you can add them at will) I would probably pick something very tiny hehe and probably use a ranged weapon and run around and jump a lot and be very hard to hit.

The rest though is true its very very hard to find anything not modelled after a super model and as learning goes on I am moving towards designing skins/hair etc that is not just georgeous and that might even be "ordinary" or "messy" even

lastly in order to sell clothes though I do switch to the drop dead hunk guy because he does in fact sell clothes better

stereotypes hehe

have fun be who or "what" you want to be and by what if you want to be a mailbox second life can do that or even a trash can or a pile of goo. Its for your fun not theirs. Just if you want to participate in some stuff and remain there for any length of time you might have to adapt for it though its true

I haven't changed the sliders much for two years or so. I don't really care a lot about externals and I think I look fine. If someone else doesn't I never know it so it doesn't matter.

Now that would be a wonderfully iconic avatar for a community

But that train of thought makes me start to wonder why we in SL have houses, cars, legs. What purpose do trees serve in SL? Ultimately if we strip away everything that could be considered pointless, SL would be white blob avatars moving around a grey graph-paper like grid!

Hiyas Jinnywitha,

in some forms yes, but dont be to quick to jusde us SL supermodel barbie types. those get seen as sex toys by some idiots out here. but i do agree with You whole heartedly about the darker skin tone issue. my in world partner adjusted his to his liking and now he is a sexy ebony man(yummy!). wherea i go to gala skins because she does have very nice dark toned female skins. if You would like, i can ask Him to help You with that?

ok back to the body beautiful, like one poster said, its Your SecondLife, You can be whatever You wish. yes i chose a barbie type body lets get real, have You ever seen a 7ft dragon rl? a five tailed furry? giant robots with laser eyes?

in spite of the issues SL is currently having i so enjoy it. to me its a chance to step out of the everyday pressures and just be who i want for a while. so hang in there Jinny, if You want You can im me in world or stop by our club plaisir d amour, and have a blast with us!!

hey brenda, im me in world and ill help You with that

Types of "regular" users in SL:

-Those who treat the game like The Sims MMORPG. Tend to be really boring types.
-People who are into pixel porn. Now, I have nothing against sex, but I don't see how two avatars having sex is at all erotic. It is just silly.
-People who use it as a pretty chat interface and haven't wandered far from a WA.

The above people are the ones who tend to have undifferentiated, barbie doll-like avatars. They account for most of the people in the game. Then there are people who actually want to do something with the game Create truly unique avatars, creative builds, play with scripting, etc. For a very damatic example of the difference between "regular" users and people who use it creatively, first teleport to a random location on the southern continent. It is filled with bad builds, stock houses and shadowy commercial ventures with nothing really unique to offer. Now, teleport to the new sim Saphira, which I recently discovered. Already the group has made it quite a cool place to explore, and I am sure it will only get better.

So, "acceptance" in SL depends on what you are trying to do with it. If you make an unusual avatar, "regular" users may ignore it, while the creative will appreciate it.

and this is exactly the kind of attitude i do believe the OP was speaking of. so see OP(origninal poster), its not just you(avatar) who gets discrminated against, some see the barbies/kens as vapid, and judge as above never getting to know them or what they do in thier SL.

Yeahbuwhaaa?

Unsual =/= Creative. I could run around in one of those Space Marine avatars or in a Mongoose avatar or some combination and be unusal. Doesn't mean the creative are going to appreciate it. And I often find some of the best builds, textures, and clothing come from people who would probably be labeled "undifferentiated, barbie doll-like avatars".

Now I'll admit that yes, some people in SL are discriminated against because of the what their avatar looks like, as Aminom's post clearly illustrates, but as so many others here have already said, if people are going to snub you just because you're a different shape size or color than them...those probably aren't the type of people you want to be associated with anyway. Well...ok...I'll give the combat group a pass because yeah...a huge huge avatar makes an easy target, but socially I don't understand why people care how you look....when it's how you act that makes all the difference.

I've had jeers come my way because of my avatar's complexion, because even as far as people of color in this game go....I'm dark.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/EoA/JW_red.jpg

So yeah...there are people who'll make assumptions, and discriminate, and even insult you and make jeers. But you see.....that's why the prim gods created baseball bats and the scripting angels gave us tracer bullets ^_^.

I've read through several of these posts and found some of them to be insightful and others to be quite ironic.

The first point I'd make is that there is no such thing as Utopia. There will never be a place where everyone likes, accepts or finds everyone appealing. The sooner each person comes to accept that the happier they will be in RL or SL. The fat people don't like the skinny people the barbies don't like the furries and all other kinds of generalizations which the idealists who claim to hate stereotypes and generalizations often stereotype and generalize about. This dislike ranges from silent whispers shared with friends of the same like mind to out right bigotry and it will always exist. It reminds me of free speech advocates who rant and rave and have their sit ins and protests about free speech until the local White Supremecist (sp?) group shows up and then it's all about suppressing something that isn't viewed as "acceptable" in their eyes. An extreme example, yes, but where do you draw that line?

Why are most avatars "attractive" and thin... my supposition is one of RL biology. Society finds these people attractive be cause the qualities people look for in a mate are qualities of health. Being thin, strong and young with reletively equal porportions on both left and right sides of the body demonstrate health. That is what we look for in mates (yes, that nasty animal part of us that has evolved with us since we crawled out of the primordial goo). If one presents a less healthy appearance they are less likely to attract a mate so each one of us strives for beauty. This is why most people make their avatars physically presentable as /they/ would see fit. (Hey, I dont' like crawling out of bed and getting made up in RL... hell why don't we all walk around in our bathrobes with curlers in our hair then and proclaim, "hey... this is me, deal w/it"?) Does this mean we are slaves to our biology... no, but when you meet someone for the first time you have absolutely no way of understanding who that person is except by the way they look. Example: If someone walks around with an axe sticking from their forehead and blood spurting and I've never met them before, no, I'm not going to want to walk up and strike up a conversation with them because it's not my thing, yes, they could be a great person and playing a prank or just being funny or doing some "in" kind of thing that I don't understand, but I don't know that... so we evaluate by first impressions.

Why aren't there disfigured people in SL? I don't know about anyone else but I've never met a disfigured person that /wanted/ to be disfigured or a person in a wheel chair if given a choice would choose not to walk. So why is it so surprising that there are no disfigured handicapped people in SL? Just a guess but I'd say because no one wants to be disfigured or handicapped.

Live and let live people...
I get a little tired of people who claim to be accepting of all viewpoints and ideologies and then sit proudly on their high horse until someone comes along and disagrees with their perfect world view and/or ideology. My personal point of view is just accept people's avs for what they are because that is what they want to be at that particular time. Who givea a rat's @ss if they are fat, pretty, male or female behind that av. That is what Second Life is about... having a second life that is maybe just a little bit better than their first.

My av has been goth white, green, blue and now standard caucasian. I've always had a "good" body and IMO attractive because that is what /I/ want for /my/ second life. Because that is what /I/ want does not make me a bigot and it does not mean I discriminate wholesale of any other body type or skin color or species or robot (and so on and so on), it is just what /I/ want. So lets not try to devalue anyone's choices because they aren't "real" in their second life (and no my figure in RL is not the same as it is in SL I made it what I would ideally like it to be) and they don't subscribe to any one individual's "world view", ideal (or less than ideal) body type. Bottom line, everyone is different. People will gather with those of a like mind and world view (birds of a feather anyone) and they will criticize others to some degree (small or large) for not being like them. It doesnt matter if they are in the majority or the minority it will always occur.

Oh... and I've been to many of the most sought out skin makers (I make them myself) and a vast majority have a full range of skin tones from "begging for sunburn white" to "charcoal black", not to mention a rainbow of other non-human colors.

Acceptance of others means exactly that, even those you don't particularly like or agree with.

/end rant